Sigmund Freud had good things to say about....that first year, anyway:
Quote:
http://www.heretical.com/freudian/coca1884.html
....Coca is a far more potent and far less harmful stimulant than alcohol, and its widespread utilization is hindered at present only by its high cost.
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Like Mantegazza and Frankl, I have experienced personally how the painful symptoms attendant upon large meals – viz, a feeling of pressure and fullness in the stomach, discomfort and a disinclination to work – disappear with eructation following small doses of cocaine (0.025–0.05). Time and again I have brought such relief to my colleagues; and twice I observed how the nausea resulting from gastronomic excesses responded in a short time to the effects of cocaine, and gave way to a normal desire to eat and a feeling of bodily well-being. I have also learned to spare myself stomach troubles by adding a small amount of cocaine to salicylate of soda.
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Accordingly, I should say that the use of coca is definitely indicated in cases of atomic digestive weakness and the so-called nervous stomach disorders; in such cases it is possible to achieve not merely a relief of the symptoms but a lasting improvement.
c) Coca in cachexia. Long-term use of coca is further strongly recommended and allegedly has been tried with success – in all diseases which involve degeneration of the tissues, such as severe anemia, phthisis, long-lasting febrile diseases, etc.; and also during recovery from such diseases.
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I once had occasion to observe the case of a man who was subjected to the type of cure involving the sudden withdrawal of morphine, assisted by the use of coca; the same patient had suffered severe symptoms as a result of abstinence in the course of a previous cure. This time his condition was tolerable; in particular, there was no sign of depression or nausea as long as the effects of coca lasted; chills and diarrhea were now the only permanent symptoms of his abstinence. The patient was not bedridden, and could function normally. During the first days of the cure he consumed 3dg of cocaïnum muriaticum daily, and after ten days he was able to dispense with the coca treatment altogether.
The treatment of morphine addiction with coca does not, therefore, result merely in the exchange of one kind of addiction for another – it does not turn the morphine addict into a coquero; the use of coca is only temporary. Moreover, I do not think that it is the general toughening effect of coca which enables the system weakened by morphine to withstand, at the cost of only insignificant symptoms, the withdrawal of morphine. I am rather inclined to assume that coca has a directly antagonistic effect on morphine...
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f) Coca as an aphrodisiac. The natives of South America, who represented their goddess of love with coca leaves in her hand, did not doubt the stimulative effect of coca on the genitalia. Mantegazza confirms that the coqueros sustain a high degree of potency right into old age; he even reports cases of the restoration of potency and the disappearance of functional weaknesses following the use of coca, although he does not believe that coca would produce such an effect in all individuals. Marvaud emphatically supports the view that coca has a stimulative effect; other writers strongly recommend coca as a remedy for occasional functional weaknesses and temporary exhaustion; and Bentley reports on a case of this type in which coca was responsible for the cure.
Among the persons to whom I have given coca, three reported violent sexual excitement which they unhesitatingly attributed to the coca. A young writer, who was enabled by treatment with coca to resume his work after a longish illness, gave up using the drug because of the undesirable secondary effects which it had on him.
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After trying it a few times, I found it's effects underwhelming, considering the costs and the problem of the influence on the supply chain that it's illegality caused. You can only buy it from dealers of hard illegal drugs or from friends who buy it from them....
I ended up doing it as New Years eve "treat", for a few years, and then, not all.
I think, illegality aside, alcohol and cigarets are more immediately dangerous. I come from a time when there was much more concern about objecting to waging avoidable war and objecting to government oppression, than there was objecting to drug use.
It's a matter of priorities....I understand, not so much, the way they are ordered today. I don't think we've suffered 254,000 casualties to our young people, these last 5 years, as a consequence of coke use. |
