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Comment by voidmain0001 | Hacker News Reader

I inherited a small hardcover handbook on the use of cocaine in medicine and the household. I don’t have it in front of me at the moment so I don’t remember the print date. I’m guessing late 1800 or early 1900. Ah. DDG to rescue, here is a version of it. https://www.thebookmerchantjenkins.com/product/coca-and-coca... Certainly a different perspective on it from today.

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Reading the complete Sherlock Holmes stories a few months ago, I also noticed how casually the frequent use of cocaine by Holmes is mentioned as a small vice, a recreational drug that is also "chemically clean", so nothing to worry about. Opium, on the other hand, is associated with disease, crime, and the criminal underworld.

Is it not still the same?

We won’t talk about crack, of course

Probably pretty hard to get "chemically clean" cocaine if you don't have a pharmaceutical source.

I’m not sure Victorian England pharmaceutical grade cocaine would actually be much cleaner, but yeah.

I use cocaine semi-frequently but avoid all opioids. The people I've known with cocaine problems always have tangential problems with alcohol abuse, excessive/irresponsible partying and generally unstable lifestyles. I've rarely seem people with acute addictions. The (many more) people I've know with opioid addictions are often 'regular' people with moderate-to-severe pain or mental health issues that become severely addicted, usually starting with prescriptions. We shouldn't pretend that the use patterns or use cases of the two drugs are the same, even if the dug war tried really, really hard to make us think that way.

I don't know your age, but as I've gotten older a consistent observation is that vices grow tend to grow with time and we tend towards becoming the older versions of the people we hang around. The social heavy drinking of our 20s becomes the solo heavy drinking of our 30s and the alcoholism of our 40s.

It's rare to see 70-80 year olds with a casual cocaine habit, and of the people I've known who have been interested in cocaine - the consequences caught up to them by the time they turned 30 with a consequence peak in their mid-20s.

Maybe a dumb question, but would a 70-80 year old be able to use cocaine without dying? If you're not using it often enough for it to be a problem, you also probably don't have much of a tolerance. I would think anyways.

Using a huge amount of cocaine could kill anyone, but a moderate amount can be tolerated by anyone without preexisting cardiovascular problems. That might rule out a lot of people 70+, but certainly not all. Like with most recreational drugs, most of the risks come with using large amounts or chronic use. Remember, these are substances used by tens of millions of people every year and have been for decades if not longer. They may not be FDA approved (well, some forms of cocaine are) but they are known quantities (well, minus the black market impurities).

I'm mid-40's.

I've seen the use of "party drugs" lessen or cease as people I know get older. It gets harder to fit those drugs into your life when you have increased responsibilities and fewer opportunities. Opioids are not party drugs for the most part. Alcohol is obviously a party drug, but like opioids it can become an acute addiction and a maintenance issue (even more so than opioids due to the uniquely dangerous withdrawal symptoms). A drug like cocaine is, to me, similar to molly/ecstasy. It's not fun to do maintenance amounts or to do a lot solo. So use seems to wax/wane with lifestyle. A pattern I have seen a lot is people who used/abused cocaine and alcohol frequently when partying, eventually stopped with the cocaine, and continued on as alcoholics into their 30s/40s/50s.

One interesting things about cocaine addiction is it has one of the strongest genetic/hereditary links of any addiction...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01256-1

I’ve never known someone to do cocaine in moderation unless the window between uses was very large (like once a year). It’s all anecdotal but if you’re doing it once a week or once a month, it will eventually grow over time to take over your life.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/coca-and-cocaine-their-history...

Here are other printings as well, in case anyone else wants to pick up a copy.

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