LONDON - HOW MUCH COKE IS BAD FOR ME?

A dentist friend treated a woman who had done so much cocaine it had rotted a hole between her nose and mouth, as well as perforating her septum. This woman had a three-centimeter-by-1.5-centimeter-wide black rancid pit on the roof of her mouth through which her rotting nose would drip. Her mouth was her brain’s own colostomy bag.

She was in her forties and had been using cocaine every day for 18 months, which doesn’t actually seem like that long to have hollowed her skull. They repaired it using a chunk of her tongue, which they flapped over and sewed to her palette. She also had damage to her lateral nasal walls, which will lead to what is called "saddle nose deformity." In other words, her nose will fall in on her face, that is unless she stays off the marching powder.

If this has made you delete the number of your dealer and stick your fingers up your nose to test the integrity of that delicate divider, then don’t worry, you’ll get a few warning shots before you wake up with the better part of your nasal cavity in a bloody lump on the pillow. First your nose will feel itchy, then you’ll start getting great crusty goliaths of scabs up there irresistible to pick, then recurrent nose bleeds – particularly in the morning, maybe some facial pain caused by blocked sinuses and eventually some bits begin to fall out, long before which you should have just stopped taking the shit.

Most people in London seem to do blow and so I guess many of you do too, and everyone asks the same question: How much do I have to take before the 30-minute rave in my heart will actually kill me?

There isn’t an answer, unfortunately. You could piss ten grammes for breakfast and have a rolled note permanently up one nostril, or be a class-A virgin and choke on your debut line. There is about 50 milligrams in an average line. People have been known to die after snorting 25 milligrams. Other people can have supposedly fatal levels in their blood (above two milligrams per liter) and only just break a sweat. It depends on medical history, tolerance, purity of cocaine, and luck. Each line of coke could theoretically cut off the blood supply to your heart, but usually it doesn’t.

Heart attacks aren’t fun. Patients describe it like having an elephant sit on you, or someone tightening an iron belt around your chest until the pain is excruciating. Except if you’re on coke, you might not feel anything except a bit of chest pain. Many serious coke users have scars in their heart from previous heart muscle damage and they never felt a thing.

I had a 26-year-old medical student come into A&E with chest pain after injecting cocaine with needles he took from hospital. He was shitting himself sufficiently to confess his coke use, which would land him in whole worlds of trouble. But if you don’t tell the doctor, the drugs to treat a normal heart attack could make you worse or kill you.

Now, if you’re looking for reassurance, this probably won’t make you feel any better. Of the 800,000 coke users in England, about 800 a year need treatment. About 200 of those die. One in four isn’t a great success rate, I admit, but when your heart fails you’re pretty fucked.

So, how much coke is too much? Sorry, there’s only one way you’ll find that out. But in the same way that drinking until you bleed from the arse is like an atomic bomb to your innards, so is snorting too much coke. Even if it doesn’t kill you, with enough dedication you’ll get a uni-nostril and a useless dick. But, whoever actually stops using racket? Annually? It tends to be just that unlucky 200, I'm afraid.

DR. MONA MOORE

Comments

[bloodyknow]

do they not teach you fractions in med school? 600 people surviving out of 800 is a three in four success rate.

[Bart]

So... the purer the better?

[pooch]

so...i shouldn't stop doing blow?

[zero]

i remember during the summer of 2007 i very well did about 15-20 grams of cocaine weekly (a gram a day plus a few 8balls on weekends). i remember at certain points where my nose would still be recovering from the shitty coke the night before yet i'd still manage to clear the passages/scabs and snort s'more! i heard stories about people having failed lungs/hearts and deteriorating nasal walls but once i took that first line, oooohweeee my nose was the last of my worries.

[dumbass]

what kind of retarded med student is injecting coke

[hester]

my roommate in college had a hole in his septum from getting lit every night. he could pick his left nostril through his right.

[realdeal]

i think once you start waking up every day with nose bleeds, thats time to cut back...

[sunnyday]

Theres no way this chick didnt start doing blow until she was in her 40s

[Halcyon]

I'm so glad I never got too big on the yay. That shit makes my armpits sweat and turns me into a creep.. not a good look.

[Halcyon]

Speed on the other hand.. well.. it makes you even more of a creep.

[nadiv]

I guess you really shouldn't be shoving just anything up there. Thanks doc.

[Dealio]

Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system. ~P.J. O'Rourke

[Great Odds Bobs your Uncle]

So, .001% of users need treatment and .00025% of coke users die per year in England?

Uh, that makes me feel a lot better actually...

Maybe you guys should lay off the "Maths" for a bit and just use Math (Short for Mathematics...) like we do in the USA.

[weedvocate]

why don't people just smoke weed?!

[Roy]

Fuck coke, reading this short article has convinced me to never do it again.

[Danimal]

A girl i used to date had a medical problem not mentioned in this post - she developed a sinus infection that decided, like the jeffersons, to move on up (to her optic nerves). She had to spend a week in the hospital getting mris, spinal taps, etc. to make sure it wasn't something more serious, then finally treatment with steroids to kill the infection. The fact that she worked at one of atlanta's most infamous drug dens/bars should help you figure out how this sinus infection developed in the first place...

[Lord Lucan]

terumo time.... kin waste rackin it.....boot it baby.... main line feels fine

[benne]

haha an atomic bomb eh...my close friend recently had serious problems via his pancreas...no bleeding but implications are huge...as far as the cocaine goes...all good things in moderation...those really fkn sweetarse things once in a blue moon maybe...

[Jack]

Cocaine causes untold amounts of human misery in Latin America. If some selfish fucktard dies from using too much of it, then frankly, ha ha.

[typepad.viceland.com]

London bollocks to the hippocratic oath how much coke is bad for me.. Super :)