Crack
What is it? "Crack" or "crack cocaine" is a form of regular cocaine. It comes in a solid "rock" (instead of powder) and has been changed chemically so it can be melted at lower temperatures. Crack cocaine is smokable and reaches the brain faster than cocaine that is snorted or injected.
How does it make you feel? Smoking crack gives users all of the effects of snorting or injecting cocaine. There's an energy rush, a feeling of confidence, power, and intense pleasure. The difference is that crack smokers experience these things more intensely. Because crack messes up the natural balance of chemicals in your brain, crack can make the user feel many different ways at different times. It can make a person feel really cranky, or very sociable, or paranoid (afraid and mistrustful of everyone). It can also make you aggressive or very depressed.
What does it do to your body? Crack causes breathing problems. Because the drug is going directly into the lungs which are so big, crack users can have larger doses of the drug at a time than cocaine snorters. Things are also more intense with crack because it is more easily absorbed into the brain. Crack gets to the brain faster through the lungs. It takes only 5-8 seconds. It takes 15-30 seconds to be absorbed by the brain if it is injected.
it's so easy to misjudge amounts and overdose.
Like all drugs, crack is especially bad for pregnant women. If they smoke it, the baby gets the crack in its body within a few seconds. This can cause the baby to die. Babies born to crack users are born addicted. These "crack babies" have many health problems and must begin life going through painful crack withdrawal.
How easy is it to become "dependent"? All drugs are poison to your body. But because your body is so amazingly devoted to keeping you alive, it can become "tolerant" to having poison in it.
It gets so that the absolute only thing users wants to do is smoke cocaine, no matter what anyone says or what's going on around them. They just keep on smoking cocaine. Also, because it is sold in rocks, smaller pieces can be bought at lower costs than powdered cocaine. This makes it more affordable to young people. Though if you figure it out on a per gram basis, users actually pay twice as much for crack than for snorting cocaine.
What is an overdose like? Users of cocaine and crack get more sensitive to the negative effects of the drug rather than less sensitive. So the more they use the drug, the more they experience the negative stuff. Too much crack in a person's body can cause muscle shakes, irregular heart beats, very high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes (burst blood vessels in the brain), very high body temperatures, mental breakdowns, or comas. A crack overdose can end in death if the user is not in the hands of trained medical people.
What's withdrawal like? It really depends on how much crack a person has been using and for how long. Cocaine and crack users have been "running on empty" which means their bodies are squeezing out energy that isn't being replenished with food and sleep. When they stop using cocaine they collapse and can be extremely depressed for months.
Is it legal? No.
