Cocaine is a hard drug whose harmful consequences such as impaired sleep, behavior or even judgment are relatively well known. Behind other side effects and diseases it generates remain unknown.
- Experts fear an increase in overdoses with the end of confinement and the loss of habituation among consumers.
- Each year, cocaine directly kills 500,000 people and causes addiction-related disorders in more than 35 million users.
- Among the little-known problems associated with regular cocaine use: erectile dysfunction, destruction of the nasal septum and shameful necrosis.
In Colombia, experts fear an increase in overdoses with the end of confinement. After months of withdrawal due to quarantine, the sudden resumption of consumption could have terrible consequences. “People who have cut back during quarantine can’t take what they were taking before because it could cause an overdose”, warns AFP Julian Quintero, director of the Institute of Social Technical Action (ATS) in Bogota, the Colombian capital confined since March 20.
A replaced nasal septum
Every year, cocaine directly kills 500,000 people and causes addiction-related disorders in more than 35 million users, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published last May. . Behind these official figures, the regular consumption of cocaine leads to many other side effects and diseases that are still unknown. “People hardly go to the doctor for a cocaine addiction and they don’t think it causes other conditions”, supports Efren Martinez, scientific director of the detoxification center of the Colectivo Aqui y Ahora foundation.
AFP has collected three testimonials from cocaine users who report on problems other than those we are used to reading or hearing. Nicolas Merizalde, a 47-year-old Colombian, explains the nasal consequences that result from the regular intake of lines of cocaine. “With a handkerchief, with anything, I cleaned up the blood, waited for it to dry a little, then relied on it again and again until it bled.”, he shares. Result: his nasal septum was replaced by platinum. “The Acids In Cocaine Have The Power To Eat Bone, Literallyhe testifies. The most serious are micro cerebral infarctions” caused by the perforation of the nasal septum which causes the powder to rise to the brain.
His addiction took him very far and his consumption became “obsessive“: where his friends “snorted a line, me two”. Very quickly, his life slipped away from him. “He stole, hit his girlfriend, smuggled drugs to Peru, let himself be groped by a dealer in exchange for his dose”, list AFP. He ended up making an abortive attempt at an overdose before deciding to take his life into his own hands and become “clean” then to line up as director of a rehabilitation center.
Sexual disorders, marks on the skin
Another problem directly related to the regular intake of cocaine: sexual impotence. Alberto (his name has been changed) used this drug daily for eight years when his problems appeared, causing his couple to break up. “This is the worst that can happen… this is what triggered our separation because my body, my life, everything depended on drugs”, he recalls, bitterly. Today this 40-year-old suffers from cerebral ischemia, a direct consequence of the “snow” which he sniffed for a good part of his life.
For Jorge Rodriguez (his name has been changed), 50 years of which half spent using powder, the scars of these years of drugs are on his chest, his back and his arms. Everywhere, small scars the size of lentils are visible. “The itch wouldn’t let me do anything, read or write or love (…) It poisons life. To go to a meeting, I had to do without painkillers on my skin. I had to stop having a public professional life (as a researcher and consultant) and work as a recluse”, he says. Doctors had a hard time diagnosing it, thinking scabies or mites. His problem is actually the result of cocaine being mixed with Levamisol, a veterinary anti-parasitic, by dealers in an attempt to increase profit. A problem that disappeared once he changed dealers and found a purer product.
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