Cocaine (1 ene 1860 año – 1 ene 1884 año)

Descripción:

First isolated as part of a dissertation for the doctorate of one Albert Niemann in 1860, it wasn’t until about 20 years after the fact that cocaine saw utility. Lauded as the cure for morphine addiction, alcoholism, TB, and impotence in the first few years of the 1880s, coke was naturally ignored as the proverbial forest for the trees. Even Sigmund Freud, charmer that he was, got his friend hooked on coke while trying to take him off of morphine. However, in 1884, cocaine found a bit of actual medical use, its numbing properties finding a niche for ocular painkilling, allowing for sensitive operations on conscious patients, the fact of which was rapidly hailed by the medical community as a bit of a godsend, though tales of abuse and addiction were prevalent. 11 years afterward, Novocain would take up the mantle, created by Alfred Einhorn and brought into medical usage by Heinrich Braun, carrying with it the benefit of being a nonaddictive painkilling agent. Novocain’s discovery was fortunate, as cocaine has always held the crown for one of the strongest behavior-altering drugs, and by far one of the most addictive. Bringing with it extreme euphoria, excitement, and a preternatural sense of self-confidence for between a quarter- and half-hour, coke toys with the brain’s reward mechanisms quite substantially, and can incur some hefty penalties. Vivid, paranoid persecutory delusions, extreme anxiety, and sensations of bugs on the skin similar to that of meth can all come alongside the high in large doses. However, doses large enough to be toxic can become a one-way ticket to a date with death, disrupting the rhythm of the heart, possibly even causing heart failure. Quitting cold turkey is no easy feat either, with a 95% relapse rate looming over your head on top of depression, exhaustion, and extreme cravings for months on end.

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