From: deeb@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Stephen Humble)
Subject: Re: Danger of cocaine questioned by WHO researcher
Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University
	<1992Dec24.133049.428@linus.mitre.org>
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 21:29:02 GMT

lewis@aera8700.mitre.org (Keith Lewis) sez:
> From my own observation, a higher proportion of cocaine users "kick
> the habit" than users of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana.  But what
> does this mean?  Is it less addictive?  I doubt it.

Alcohol and nicotine cause more intense withdrawal syndromes than
cocaine and marijuana.  Alcohol withdrawal has caused a significant
number of deaths.  Marijuana doesn't cause significant tolerance;
alcohol causes moderate tolerance (less than opiates); cocaine causes
tolerance to some effects and sensitization to others
(Goodman&Gilman8, p543).  It seems reasonable to suspect that the
amount of drug-seeking behavior a drug causes is unpredictable without
knowledge about the specific person involved.

	"Drug addiction involves resonance, tolerance, and morbid
	craving."
		-_The Case for Legalizing Drugs_, Miller, 1991

Cocaine causes less (complete) tolerance than alcohol, less resonance
(withdrawal syndrome) than alcohol or tobacco, and may or may not
cause less morbid craving.  (There are alcoholics who don't like
cocaine and cokeheads who don't like alcohol.)  Maybe it *is* less
addictive.  It also has more severe short-term toxicity than alcohol
or marijuana, so it's easier to kill yourself with cocaine than with
alcohol or marijuana.

IMHO, the objectionable part about drug addiction is that it causes
"morbid craving", i.e. drug-seeking behavior intense enough to alarm
the other primates in the tribe.  Resonance and tolerance just
reinforce the behavior.  I am currently "addicted" to Prozac. I
demonstrated to myself that halving my dosage for a week causes a
return of symptoms (as my psychopharm predicted), I associate the
return of symptoms with a lack of Prozac so I take more (i.e. I
restored my dose to the previous level), and my drug craving is morbid
in that I tolerate the unpleasant side-effects of Prozac in order to
obtain my drug of choice.

Strangely, American society (or at least American politicians) doesn't
consider me addicted (i.e worthy of being beat up as a taboo-
violator).  It also doesn't consider someone who's hooked on any of a
long list of drugs addicted as long as the drug is prescribed by a
licensed shaman.  (Whether a drug is taboo or not and possible
restrictions on its use are only weakly related to the danger that the
drug poses.)  I wonder what benefit a drug-addicted person's liver
gets from the opinion of the attending physician.

lewis@aera8700.mitre.org (Keith Lewis) sez:
> The main difference I can see is that cocaine is much more
> expensive.  With alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana, $5 will buy you (at
> least) good evening's supply.  $5 worth of cocaine is a small rock
> of crack, which will last you fifteen minutes if you're lucky.

$5 worth of LSD (in the US at least) will put you on the Moon for 8
hours.  Some people don't want to go to the Moon, at least not that
way.

(Yow.  The things we do when we're bored and it's too cold to go
shopping...:-)

Stephen




Xref: sparky talk.politics.drugs:8085 alt.drugs:20341 alt.individualism:6154 alt.society.civil-liberty:7144