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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

I'm not so sure about that (never seen it myself)... but cocaine is a LOT more prevalent than people realize.

There is a funny meme I saw recently that rings true:

    Two biggest shocks of adult life. 

    1. everyone does cocaine

    2. cheese is fucking expensive

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Man, I really wouldn't. My understanding is that of the people who present to the emergency department with chest pain, something like a third of them have been using cocaine. It causes Real Problems.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-relate...

Manchego on the other hand, worth every penny and a great source of butyrate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304454916_The_neuro...

This is a little disingenuous, without further elucidation. As far as the statistic you have quoted is concerned, it tells us nothing about how dangerous cocaine is. We need to know how many out of the total population of cocaine users experience chest pain, how many of them go to an ER, and then how many of those (who in total make up 1/3 of ER presentations with chest pain) are further diagnosed with some actual serious problem...

if we don't know what the outcome of these ER visits are, then it could well be that for some tiny percentage of cocaine users there is a side effect that causes the perception of chest pain, which disappears with no ill effects after a few hours. or, maybe, this represents almost all cocaine users - 90% of them experience severe enough chest pain to warrant an ER visit, all of whom are pronounced dead withing minutes of arrival.

annoyingly, the website you linked to which details this singular datum, does nothing to clarify as to what the truth of the matter is. it certainly doesn't appear to be "advancing addiction science" in any useful way...

That could also mean a third of the population uses cocaine.

thanks for the link. I need to find updated stats on that. I wonder if the number of those in the ER because of cocaine has risen....

I don't think this is actually true. I've certainly been in places where there have been people on cocaine (and sneaking off the bathroom to "top up" mid-party), but in my experience that's rare, and even rarer for it to be an in-your-face, obvious thing. There are certain social/professional groups where it _is_ the norm, but more so in the sense of being a "vocal minority".

While I'd give you the point, my personal experience is that its only prevalent in certain circles, and in those circles its EXTREMELY prevalent.

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