Cocaine withdrawal

Cocaine withdrawal happens when a person who uses a lot of cocaine stops using cocaine.  It can also happen when a person who uses a lot of cocaine starts using less cocaine than they did before.

Cocaine (also called coke) is a powerful stimulant.  It is an illegal drug outside of hospital usage.  It makes people feel very happy, talkative, energetic, and not want to eat as much food.

Side effects of cocaine

Cocaine's most dangerous side effects include:
 Increased body temperature (high fever)
 Irregular heart rate or rapid heart rate
 High blood pressure
 Increased risk of heart attack
 Strokes
 Sudden death from cardiac arrest
 Sudden aggression
 Sudden very bad paranoia
 Feeling, seeing, or hearing things that are not really there (hallucinations), including feeling like there are insects under the skin (this is called formication or coke bugs)

Withdrawal effects of cocaine
After using cocaine regularly, some users will become addicted.  When a person who is used to using cocaine stops right away, they will go through what is called a "crash" along with many of other cocaine withdrawal symptoms, like:

 Paranoia
 Depression
 Exhaustion (feeling very tired)
 Anxiety
 Itching
 Mood swings (quick changes in emotions)
 Irritability (feeling easily annoyed)
 Fatigue (feeling tired), sleeping many hours
 Insomnia (trouble sleeping)
 A very strong craving for more cocaine
 Nausea and vomiting.

Some cocaine users also report having similar symptoms to schizophrenia patients and feel that their mind is lost. Some users also report formication: feeling like things are crawling on the skin (also called, "coke bugs" or "spiders").  These symptoms can last for weeks or, in some cases, months.

Even after many withdrawal symptoms go away, most users feel like they need to keep using cocaine. This feeling can last for years and may get worse during times of stress.  About 30-40% of cocaine addicts start using other kinds of drugs or alcohol after they stop using cocaine.

Treatment

Therapy
Twelve-step programs like Cocaine Anonymous (modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous) have been widely used to help people addicted to cocaine.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Motivational Therapy (MT) have proven to be more helpful than 12-step programs in treating cocaine dependency. However, both of these approaches have a fairly low success rate.

Ibogaine has been researched a treatment for cocaine dependency.  It is used in clinics in Mexico, the Netherlands, and Canada, but it cannot be used legally in the United States.

Non-drug treatments like acupuncture and hypnosis have been studied.  However, these studies have not clearly shown that acupuncture or hypnosis helps with cocaine withdrawal.

Cocaine addiction continues to be the second-most difficult addiction to manage, behind heroin addiction.

Medications
Medications that have been studied to treat cocaine withdrawal include acetylcysteine, baclofen, bupropion, vanoxerine,  and vigabatrin.

Kim Janda has been working for years on a vaccination that would treat cocaine use disorders.

The anti-depressant desipramine, and the stimulants methylphenidate and pemoline, have been used to treat cocaine dependence in people who also have a mental illness.

Several drugs have been used to treat cocaine withdrawal and cravings:
 The anti-convulsant drug carbamazepine (Tegretol);
 Medicines which increase the amount of dopamine in the brain, like L-DOPA/carbidopa
 Amino acids
 Tyrosine
 Tryptophan

Finally, drugs have been used to cause an "aversion reaction" (a very bad reaction) when given with cocaine.  The most common of these drugs is phenelzine.

Reward-based treatments
On February 14, 2011, two Swiss psychologists published two years' research on cocaine addiction.  They found that addicts who gambled were less likely to use cocaine or to relapse on cocaine.  They think gambling may refocus the brain's "reward center" from cocaine to gambling.  They said that psychotherapy should be used along with gambling.  More research is being done on long-term relapse rates (the number of people who eventually start using cocaine again).

However, a more recent study looked at prize-based contingency management: a treatment method that offers addicts chances to win prizes if they do not use cocaine.  This study found that prize-based contingency management helped cocaine addicts stay off cocaine, whether or not they had gambled recently.  This suggests that it is the chance of a reward, not the gambling itself, that helps cocaine addicts stay off of cocaine.

References

Addiction