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Comment by JasserInicide | Hacker News Reader

Anyone here ever actually try coca leaves? Going to guess its effects are somewhere between coffee and cocaine

I used to drink coca tea a lot when I lived in Argentina where you get it in the supermarket. It's around on par of nicotine as an appetite suppressant for me, as a stimulant I feel caffeine and mate are better for the "stay awake" but coca tea is better for "zoning in", with less of anxiety driving but it's a more single tasked high where interruptions are harder to deal with than with caffeine. Like if I have a lot of meetings I prefer coffee and if I have to code for four hours I prefer coca tea. I used to rotate coffee, mate, and coca tea as a daily driver and having something else on the rotation may have been helping more than that something else being coca tea.

> single tasked high where interruptions are harder to deal with than with caffeine

That comports well with my contemporary and anecdotal understanding of cocaine's most popular effects.

Yes, anyone who’s ever been trapped in a conversation with someone yakked to the gills can tell you all about singleminded focus as an effect of cocaine.

Cocaine in the U.S. is at least 5/10% anfetamines tho, so it's probably worse.

>I used to drink coca tea a lot when I lived in Argentina where you get it in the supermarket.

Really? I've never seen it. Were you in a northern province? Reading the comments I became curious and figured I could probably find it somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to find it in a supermarket.

The Chinese supermarkets all had it, I moved out on 2018 and I think they had it in the Jumbo in Palermo in the section where they had some Peruvian stuff on the back of the store. I can't find it on the online Jumbo store, but Mercadolibre has it.

That's close to the office. I'll have to check. Weird that I've never seen it. I guess I just haven't been paying attention.

Thanks for replying.

I used them while hiking in Peru.

It's better than caffeine, because it comes with a mild euphoria. Nothing crazy, just enough to have energy and not feel like hiking at altitude is work.

When I hike with coffee I just feel determined to finish. With Coca it just felt natural to keep walking.

I likewise had it in tea several times hiking in Peru. I personally didn’t notice any effect whatsoever, might as well have been mint tea.

Perhaps it's the fact that I was chewing them? I don't know! I'd assume tea was more potent. But I definitely had a decent reserve and was imbibing all day.

Wikipedia says that 59% to 90% of the alkaloid is absorbed when drunk as a tea [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca

Interesting, I'd always assumed people snorted the powder because it's not absorbed if consumed orally, but apparently that's not true. Maybe just it's just for the absorption speed? So... if someone drank industrial quantities of coca tea in one go, it'd be a 2-12 hour cocaine high?

snorting means it is absorbed into the bloodstream in your nose - that is very fast. Drinking means it goes through the stomach and then is released into the intestines to be absorbed (depending on what else you ate this could be slow or somewhat fast - but always much more drawn out than snorting).

Hiking in altitude is hands down the hardest thing I did in my life. On the first day I almost died of an altitude sickness. On the following days, climbing 5 meters up the mountain felt like climbing the whole mountain twice. After every 10 steps I had to stop for 30-60 seconds and catch my breath.

I drank a lot of coca tea and couldn't feel anything different.

Peru, especially cordillera negra/blanca is the most special place on earth I've ever been too. Everything is magical in a weird way. It's literally breathtaking. I can't really describe it. It feels mystical, even with no drugs involved.

> Hiking in altitude is hands down the hardest thing I did in my life

HOw much preparation did you do before hand ? I'm looking at a himalayan trip next year to around a 23k feet summit (over the course of 30 days or so). I'm taking a year to train for it, but I have no way to train for 'altitude', and as I understand it reaction to altitude doesn't correlate that much with overall fitness. You can apparently be super fit but still get altitude sick, which is concerning me.

If you can't train at altitude, I'd focus on distance/time in. Go on long runs, long hikes, long bike rides. Endurance. Elevation gain is good too. Try to at least mirror the conditions per mile in your training. Hill intervals are useful - walk up a big steep hill at a steady pace, and then walk back down; rinse/repeat. A solid cardiovascular base should prepare you just fine.

There are two factors.

1) cardio fitness (ability to do x amount of work)

2) altitude adaptation (ability to exist at altitude)

It takes from several days to several months to adapt to altitude, depending on exactly what you mean by adapt. The first 24-72 are the highest risk for altitude sickness (which can be life threatening).

Both factor into performance at altitude.

Three friends and I summited Vulcan Misti in Peru (~19k ft) over 2 days with no altitude training. All of us came from sea level, had 2 days to acclimate staying in the town nearby (~7k ft). This was a year out of college, all of us were D3 athletes so reasonably fit but probably not considered elite level fitness.

The altitude impact was no joke, but for whatever reason it affected all of us to different degrees. I just felt a little more winded than usual, had to take my time a bit but was overall fine, whereas one of the group had a rough go of it, needed frequent breaks and vomited a couple times. The other two were somewhere in between.

So I'm sure being fit helps, but it seems there's more to it than that.

You can't prepare for acclimatization, and you don't know how well your body will handle it before actually going up there.

You will suffer regardless, acclimatization just makes things possible and over time mentally more bearable experience. But prepare for 3-5 steps and rest routine in higher parts, pushing through is actually pretty stupid and will fire back quickly and badly, listen to your body.

That being said, what others say is correct - a lot of endurance training helps a lot reaching the limit of your body. Plus train carrying medium backpack uphill a lot (10-15kg).

I've camped 6000m high on Aconcagua, but I couldn't sleep well above 3000m, almost nothing above 4000m, regardless of what mild medicine/support I took. Some sleep up there like babies. High mountains are just not for me, but I am happy with European alps though, they have it all apart from that much altitude suffering. Higher peaks just for hiking below/around them like Annapurna or Everest, loaded multi week 5500m hikes are not easy neither and you actually experience way more in 3-4 weeks rather than progressing slowly up one empty valley to the top.

> You can't prepare for acclimatization, and you don't know how well your body will handle it before actually going up there.

This is something of an enduring medical mystery despite efforts to find related genes, etc. I think part of it is the compounding of second order effects, like who can say whether individual performance one week into an expedition will be more affected by bad sleep, bad digestion, or bad headaches? If one is immune to some side effects, how long before the others really take a toll? The team member who is strongest one day may be weakest the next depending on how the schedule of different kinds of attrition and reserves all line up, so it’s really hard to predict in advance without some direct experience. Even then it’s a moving target as we train or age.

On site you can easily predict with O2 saturation in the blood, small portable testers are available for decades. You see any problems coming a bit in advance, btw this is also true for general health in normal altitude.

Now why the number is as it is in altitude while next guy was more fit down below, but now vomiting furiously is another question, I agree not very clear. Maybe red blood cell pace of production but even that is not a complete picture.

I also had it in hiking Peru. I found it to be a mild stimulant, similar to caffeine but wihlthout any jitters. Didn't notice any euphoria at all, TBH.

My wife and I drank coca tea during the whole stay in Peru, and the altitude didn't bother us at all, which I presume was because of the coca.

Had a hippy friend that discovered coca leaves while hiking in Peru. She packed a bunch to bring back with her to show us her great new discovery for natural energy.

Apparently they already knew about these new things called 'coca leaves' at the border because they took them away from her.

This is a true story. Friggin hippies man.

She had it easy. A local guy got 3 years in prison with no parole for bringing like 70 coca leaves. The level of retardness of some countries is unbelievable.

https://cluj24.ro/pictor-clujean-condamnat-la-inchisoare-pen...

This is a surprise to me. That airport doesn't look at me twice when I travel through it. I've been >30 times and I'm foreign. Never once questioned anything I brought in. To be fair I'm not trafficking anything

>> To be fair I'm not trafficking anything

Why don't you try it next time, let us know how it went :)

Now seriously I think they must have had some dogs or devices to sniff up the drug, otherwise I can't explain how they isolated him from the crowd.

I think it's pretty common for visitors to Macha Picchu to receive a cup of coca tea upon arrival, for altitude sickness. The people I talked to said it was like a cup of coffee.

I can attest to the magical effects against altitude sickness.

Had a lot of them chewed or in tea in Bolivia and it's pretty close to a caffeine buzz, it's very, very mild.

Caffeine affects people differently… it has very intense effects on me- I would never call it “very very mild”

For the vast majority of people caffeine is very mild compared to cocaine. Coca leaves are in the ballpark of caffeine, however you would rate that subjectively. And personally I think I would have found it hard to tell which was which in a blind test.

As a side note coca tea (or chewed leaves) are often recommended for managing altitude, and chewing leaves did seem to help with headaches I was having at > 12k feet, but again it was fairly subtle, and I am not convinced it's not just placebo/a nice distraction.

If I’ve gone a long time without caffeine a single coffee could keep me awake up for two consecutive all nighters. As a regular drinker I still cannot handle more than one cup of coffee per day. It turns out that I have a number of genes that increase the intensity and the duration of effect. I think genes explain most of the differences in experiences with caffeine.

Have you done a whole genome study?

Yes, a 30x WGS, I recommend it to everyone and you only have to do it once.

Do you have an affiliate link?

I do not, I went with Dante Labs, they have regular discounts down to less than $250. It might take a long time though.

interesting. i have about 1-2 cups most days but 5-6 over a few hours is fine and i still get ok (but poorer quality) sleep

Same, the first time I ever had a cup of coffee I missed two nights sleep.

I have only done 23andme not a WGS like you, but I have at least one liver enzyme SNP that dramatically slows down caffeine metabolism. It took me quite a while to realize that the advice of "no caffeine after 5pm" or whatever needed to be something more like - no more than one cup of coffee before dawn.

Yeah, it would be nice if these general life rules / advice could be written down somewhere with the exceptions listed. I would have appreciated getting a personalized handbook that would have given me a heads up that I was different. Given the price of WGS being low enough to be generally available I think this is something humanity could benefit a lot more from.

I'm sure someone has a list somewhere. I've seen a few of these from the colonial era, but I want a modern one.

That concept is so broad and generally useful it can only be broadly represented by something like Timothy Leary's statement of "think for yourself, and question authority."

Of course, knowing for sure specific facts showing that you are different in some way such that general advice doesn't apply is super useful because it saves you the effort of having to solve the problem on your own- you will always find new ones that nobody has already solved.

Wow. I typically drink 6+ cups a day and it doesn't really seem to affect my sleep unless I have it within ~6h of bedtime.

I brewed tea out of the leaves and also chewed them when hiking in Peru. Stimulant level-wise it felt similar to green tea. Maybe also a slight euphoria when chewing them but it's definitely still way less potent than a coffee (atleast for me).

The only interesting side effect was that both my wife and I experienced tingling feet when combining coca leaves with acetazolamide, the altitude sickness meds we were taking (tingling feet is apparently a side effect of those meds). I wonder if on some level it does have a similar mechanism for altitude sickness?

Tingling feet/toes and hands/fingers are an extremely common side-effect of acetazolamide (diamox).

Had more than few cups over the past week in Peru. Going up to Puno @4000MASL, I had the same tingling hands, I thought I developed CTS! My guess is that it had to do with swelling of the extremities? Overall I found coca tea to be slightly less stimulating than coffee, but more relaxing.

It’s extremely mild, not even as strong as coffee. It takes 1/2 a kilo of coca leaves to make 1g of cocaine!

I often wonder why nobody has CRISPR-ed the genes from the Coca plant that make the alkaloids into yeast by now… given the $100bn market you’d expect someone to give this or another process a go.

Probably because the DEA would find a reason to shoot their dog almost immediately haha

A lot of stores in Peruvian Andes sell concentrated coca leaf extract as candies. They help on higher altitude hikes. Theres one in particular that is as strong as a chemical extract.

Actually quite effective as an alternative to ADHD medicine.

I bought a bag of those very cheaply in Bolivia cca 8 years ago, locals used some sort of chalky 'activator' with it, so did I. And most if not all locals used it, ie in Potosi mines it was basically mandatory. Heck you could buy a stick of dynamite like from old westerns in random stalls across the city.

I got some anesthetic effects in my mouth in the place I kept chewing them. Wasn't checking whether it made me more alert, even coffee normally doesn't have much effect on me and I drink it for the taste.

Other than that, 0 effect. But I've never used any variant of cocaine so can't even compare.

The chalky stuff was probably bannana peel ashes, they have something in them that acts as a MAOI inhibitor.

Coca tea is ubiquitous in Peru. Morning, noon, and night. It's on a par with mate or green tea in other parts of the world. Mostly harmless.

The leaves are readily available everywhere, like right beside the chewing gum at the checkout in supermarkets and the like. I tried chewing some to help offset altitude problems; it didn't help with the altitude problems but it made half my face go numb and other than that, nothing. I understand the local combine it with limestone or something to release different alkaloids but I did not.

I'm sure it's dose / brew strength dependent, but the coca tea I had definitely had a noticable effect, but felt milder than a regular (caffiene) black tea to me. Much milder than a coffee. Mind you I'm quite caffeine sensitive, so if you YMMV.

I ordered some from a Bolivian website when I was a teen. I chewed them a couple times at work while doing landscaping. The closest thing I could compare it to is a nicotine buzz.

Only coca tea. It's a small boost, perhaps like coffee if you don't drink coffee everyday

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