The Drug Experience: Cocaine (Part 1)

During this Briefing we explore the dynamic world of heavy cocaine use as revealed in a provocative, high-quality study by Dan Waldorf and colleagues. This research, conducted in the US in the 1980s, challenged many of the prevailing myths about cocaine.

There is a good deal of misinformation about cocaine, which does little to help society tackle the problems that excess use of this drug can produce. Waldorf and colleagues set out to study cocaine users and present their world as they see it, without making moral judgements about the drug-using behaviours.

"Some heavy users noted psychological transformations. The world that had once been good to live in became a place that was far less hospitable – paranoia increased and depression sometimes developed.”