A History of Cocaine

In 1860, a German scientist named Albert Niemann extracted and isolated the active ingredient in coca leaves for the first time and gave it the name "cocaine". According to archaeological findings, the psychoactive properties of coca leaves have been known to Meso Americans for some 7,000 years.

The natives of Mesoamerica used to use them religiously and ceremonially. Non ceremoniously, the leaves served as a stimulant and the natives used to chew them, in a way that is very similar to the chewing the Khat leaves in Ethiopia or Yemen.

But the story of cocaine in the West began with the extraction process developed by Albert Niemann. In the 1880s, the substance began to be used as an anesthetic in surgical procedures. At the same time, it began to be used in a liquid version as a popular miracle drug (including in the first version of the drink we know today as Coca-Cola). Why have people, intuitively, enjoyed (and still enjoy) using cocaine so much? To answer this question, we need to understand cocaine's underlying mechanism. Well, at the molecular or neurophysiological level, it can be said that cocaine prevents the withdrawal of dopamine to the presynaptic neuron (reuptake) and thus it actually prolongs and intensifies the effect of our natural dopamine. Dopamine is doggie biscuits for neurons. It is the molecule of positive reward. It is rewarded for successful execution of say, muscle movement sequences… we plan to get up and fetch something, if the plan culminates in a successful exertion then the neurons that fired in order to execute that plan are given a chemical signal that the plan worked well - in the form of dopamine.

Thus, inhibiting the reuptake of dopamine turns good decisions into excellent ones and excellent ones into brilliant. The point being, that it offsets the normal correspondence between a decision and our own internal judgment as to the outcome of that decision.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Federal Food and Beverage Regulatory Authority (FDA) was established, and cocaine, which was already recognized as an addictive substance, became a prohibited ingredient in the beverage industry.

In 1905, the custom of snorting powdered cocaine began in the way that people do to this day. As an analgesic, cocaine is particularly suitable for insufflation (snorting) because it annulls the discomfort (slight pain) that is normally part-and-parcel with this method of administration.

I find it a noteworthy observation that, compared to other substances I review here, cocaine is definitely both medically and socially problematic. Both because people develop psychological dependence on it and also because it has cardiotoxic properties (cocaine use greatly increases the risk of a cardiac event).

To loop back to my personal biography - cocaine had its chapter in my life story. When I started researching and using psychoactive drugs in 1998, I ran into cocaine quite quickly and I loved it - loved it too much. Later, I came to grips with the inherent pitfalls in using the substance, both medical and social. Around the year 2000, the quality of cocaine in Tel Aviv was very poor. It was on this background that discovering the use of cathinone as a potentially cheap and pure alternative to cocaine that was also legal came as a godsend...

Gold, M.S. (1993). The History of Cocaine. In: Cocaine. Drugs of Abuse, vol 3. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6033-9_2