Cocaine Addiction Recovery is Possible…
But It Involves Overcoming 3 Barriers
Cocaine addiction recovery is possible with drug intervention and treatment. This video by Bobby Newman, Certified Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, Prevention Specialist and Intervention Professional (https://newmaninterventions.com) is the first installment of a 3-part series about cocaine addiction recovery and the barriers that would prevent a cocaine addict from overcoming addiction permanently.
This video explains the 3 main reasons why a person cannot overcome cocaine addiction, and offers solutions as to what would remedy these for a full cocaine addiction recovery.
Reason #1: Cravings
Cocaine cravings. There’s physical cravings and there’s mental emotional craving. Depression also occurs. There’s physical reasons for depression and also mental, emotional, or self-inflicted depression, and then there’s also guilt. If you don’t handle those three things, the likelihood you’re going to overcome addiction to any drug is very minimal. We want to talk to you today about the cravings for cocaine addiction. There’s physical reasons and there’s mental emotional reasons. The physical reasons are the neurochemistry of the brain, the little chemicals that are naturally produced by the brain that travel across the brain. These things are called dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, GABA, neuro-nephron, and things of that nature.
There’s several of these things, but the primary thing that cocaine affects is dopamine, known as the pleasure chemical produced by the brain. When you do things that are pleasurable, when you exercise or you have sex or you eat a good meal, dopamine that’s naturally produced by the brain is released and causes feeling of euphoria or a person to feel good. It’s what we call God’s natural reward system. It basically is trying to get the species or the organism to repeat that pro-survival action. What cocaine does, it actually causes the brain, it tricks the brain into releasing dopamine all at one time in the brain. But the cocaine will then go in there and cause all the dopamine that is being released, that the brain has to be released all at one time, and it causes a feeling of euphoria and people go, “Whoa, I really like the way that makes me feel.”
Reason #2: Body Toxicity
The other thing that people don’t realize is that when your body metabolizes or, basically, filters out any toxin, whether it be cocaine, whether it be methamphetamine, whether it be marijuana, whether it be paint thinner, basically, your body has a way of the toxin goes in and it goes into your liver and kidneys where, basically, a natural filtering system. They metabolize these toxins into a metabolite. When they go into a blood test or a breathalyzer test or any of that, or urinalysis, they’re looking for those little cocaine metabolites or alcohol metabolites that are created to see what’s in the bloodstream.
Well, those little metabolites are what we call lipophilic, meaning fat bonding. Lipo meaning fat. Philic meaning bonding. They stick to the adipose tissue. The adipose tissue is also fatty tissue. A lot of them will wash out the body when you go to the bathroom or when you sweat or anything like that but a lot of them don’t. They are actually stuck into the fatty tissue, into the tissue that’s surrounding your veins, your organs. Your skin is fat. Your brain is fat. Even people that are very thin.
Reason #3: Nutritional Deficiencies
The neurochemistry of the brain causes the cravings as well as toxicity build up in the body that then the body draws on and it gets a tiny particle back into the brain, into the bloodstream. There’s ways to detoxify yourself. There’s also ways to restore the neurochemistry of the brain through a proper program, a nutritional program. A lot of times people, when they’re trying to recover, should go get blood work done and see what nutritional deficiencies they have so they can restore that. Also, it’s a good idea to do a complete detox, not just withdrawal. It takes several weeks, if not months, to actually fully rehabilitate the physical effects of the drugs, as well as the person.
Learn more about our drug and alcohol addiction intervention course for families
Additional resources: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:10 Cocaine Addiction Recovery
0:35 3 Reasons you Can’t Overcome Addiction to Cocaine
1:08 Physical Reasons for Craving Cocaine
4:14 Ways to Detox from Cocaine
7:32 Mental/Emotional Addictions
9:18 More Cocaine Addiction Help
