Cocaine and Depression

It might seem natural for someone who is depressed to abuse cocaine. The stimulant drug counteracts many of the most painful and debilitating symptoms of depression by boosting mood, energy, and confidence. However, these short-lived effects leave people stuck in a cycle of repeated use that can quickly progress to addiction.

Even when people who have depression and use cocaine do not develop a substance use disorder, they ultimately worsen their depression. Chronic cocaine abuse changes brain chemistry in a way that deepens and prolongs dysphoria and makes it harder to feel happy. People who use cocaine to feel better prevent themselves from achieving long-term recovery from depression symptoms.

Cocaine Effects

Cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant that affects the brain by stimulating high levels of dopamine, a brain chemical associated with pleasure and reward. Over time, Cocaine negatively affects every part of the body with the potential for severe long-term effects. It can cause changes to genetics in brain cells, nerve cells, and proteins, among other permanent effects.

Symptoms and Effects of using cocaine include:

How people use cocaine also alters the potency and duration of the effects. The effects of snorting it are short-lived, lasting approximately 15-30 minutes. Smoking or injecting cocaine is more intense but lasts for an even shorter period, about 5 to 10 minutes. Most cocaine users will frequently dose to maintain the desired effects. Injecting the drug poses a higher risk of overdose than snorting.

Cocaine abuse is hazardous because continued use can cause strain on the heart. The most common cause of death of infrequent cocaine users is stroke or cardiac arrest. If you or someone you know is abusing cocaine, get help now.

Even when Cocaine is a highly addictive drug, one of its main issues is that it may be hard to recognize an addiction to it. For example, craving cocaine, even if the use or need appears every few days, and ignoring the consequences that come with it are signs of an addiction. 

The psychological addiction is often the hardest part to overcome, although there are undeniable physical symptoms of addiction as well. Someone who uses cocaine frequently will develop a dependence on it, meaning they need to have it to feel normal. Once dependence has developed, a tolerance will develop and withdrawal symptoms will occur when stopping use. Once someone becomes addicted to cocaine, it can be very hard to stop. This is because cocaine abnormally increases the level of dopamine in the brain, eventually reprogramming the brain reward system.

• Paranoia
• Panic
• Hallucinations
• Aggression
• Irritability

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Impaired judgment
• Repetitive or abnormal behaviors

Many jokes about cocaine in popular culture emphasize how the drug can make people feel invincible. Unfortunately, fewer people are aware of the lows that inevitably follow these highs. For people who use cocaine, depression after use is common, even when they do not use it regularly.

The reason cocaine and depression have this relationship relates to how the brain works. As a stimulant, cocaine activates the sympathetic nervous system, which governs the fight-or-flight response. The state of intensified alertness and surging energy triggered by the release of norepinephrine can’t be sustained for long and will be followed by a crash.

Most of the time, this shift isn’t an issue because people feel relieved to have escaped a threat or overcome a stressful challenge and enjoy resting afterward. However, when substances trigger these changes, there is nothing to feel relieved about when their effects wear off. The disappointment people feel as the drug rapidly wears off is one of the ways cocaine can cause depression, especially when people experience it repeatedly.

People who abuse cocaine risk experiencing a comedown as the drug wears off. A cocaine comedown may involve intense effects opposite to those the drug causes during the euphoric phase. Comedowns are similar to alcohol hangovers for many people, but some symptoms may be very intense and different from alcohol hangovers.

People who experience serious symptoms from abusing cocaine are at greater risk of bingeing the drug because they may take a lot more of it to offset the comedown symptoms.

Cocaine use is accompanied by an increase in dopamine activity, which leads to the euphoric effects often reported. As the drug wears off, there is relatively less dopamine active in the brain, which can lead to the opposite of many of these effects: depression, physical slowness or sluggishness, foggy thinking, exhaustion but trouble sleeping, aches and pains, and more.

• Tolerance or needing to use more of the substance to achieve the same effect
• Withdrawal symptoms, or unpleasant physical or mental effects that arise after the use
• Taking a substance in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended
• Wanting or making unsuccessful efforts to control or reduce substance use

• Spending a significant amount of time obtaining and using a substance and recovering from its effects
• Giving up important social, work-related, or recreational activities because of substance use
• Continuing to use a substance despite knowing it causes or exacerbates a psychological problem