Health, debt and death on cocaine slide

COCAINE use in Australia has quadrupled in the past two decades and is now the second most used illegal drug after cannabis.

Every week nearly one million Aussies use the drug that is killing 91 people a year and placing users at risk of stroke, cardiac and liver problems, kidney failure and memory loss.

The program director of a private hospital that provides rehabilitation for drug addicts says it used to be just high flyers that came for help, now its tradies, teachers, and “normal people off the street” with a cocaine addiction.

Many of these people end up in the hospital after amassing extraordinary financial debts due to their drug habit, which costs them $2000 to $3000 a week, Alyssa Lalor from South Pacific Private Hospital said.

Their relationships break up, their noses are bleeding spontaneously during work meetings and presentations and many have cardiac problems.

“We’ve had people with big inheritances from death of a parent or a payout with workers compensation or a windfall somehow, and they use it on drugs and they’re left with nothing,” Ms Lalor said.

It’s not just impacting the person using the drug, “it has an impact on their family, if it’s a parent that has kids, if they’re only using one gram a week even one session could be $300, $400, $500,” she said.

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug because it plays immediately on someone’s reward centre.

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) said the “rush” from cocaine doesn’t last very long – usually between 30 to 45 minutes, if snorted.

“People may experience a ‘comedown’ or a ‘crash’ the next day when the drug starts to wear off,” the centre said.

In 2019, 11.2 per cent of the population or 2.3 million people had used cocaine at least once.

Cocaine use was at its highest level in the last 18 years in 2019 the Australian Institute Health and Welfare reports.

And the rise in use is being driven by men aged in their 20s.

More than 900,000 people are using the drug weekly and the illicit drug reporting system shows a substantial increase in use in NSW.

The proportion of males in their 20s using cocaine in the 12 months before the survey almost doubled (from 7.3 per cent to 14.4 per cent).

NDARC reports that regular use of cocaine can cause insomnia and exhaustion, depression, anxiety, paranoia and psychosis, sexual dysfunction, hypertension and irregular heartbeat, heart disease and death, stroke, liver, kidney and lung problems, cognitive impairments like loss in attention, memory, and impulsivity control.

Snorting it can cause a runny nose and nose bleeds, nose infections, a hole in the tissue separating the nostrils and other long term damage to the nasal cavity and sinuses.

Ms Lalor said people usually sought help with their addiction when their family pushed for it or their life became unmanageable.

“There’s usually a relationship breakdown, you’ve lost your job, you’re in debt, your wife left, you’ve stopped going to uni, basic things in life are starting to become problematic,” she said.

It can take up to nine months to get into a recovery phase from an addiction to the drug.

“It might take them four or five attempts at rehab, they might die, they might overdose. It’s a deadly illness,” she said.