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Comment by smolder

2 months ago

This title is stupid. Comparisons to crack cocaine should have stopped in the 90's or early 00's at the latest. They're never made by people who have the slightest idea about what idea crack was, and whoever wrote that is extremely out of touch.

About crack: The public discourse was racist, the CIA had a lot to do with creating the problem, and in general it's no worse than the cocaine my fellow white people seem to think is so much cooler.

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smolder

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GuB-42  2 months ago

By someone who tried both cocaine (snorted) and crack (smoked), the craving is much stronger with crack. That's because it is much faster acting, it also wears off faster, and he said that part of him was ready to get violent for an other dose as it happened. Other than that, the effect was similar, it is the same molecule after all.

It is common to smoked drugs in general. For what I know, smoking is the fastest route of administration. That instant gratification makes it more addictive than slower routes of administration, like snorting in this case.

It doesn't mean the laws weren't racist, but crack cocaine is more addictive.

ndriscoll  2 months ago

It is worse than powder cocaine though, just as meth is worse than an extended release Adderall despite both being amphetamine variants. I believe meth (a "white people drug") carries harsher penalties than other forms of amphetamine?

ChrisMarshallNY  2 months ago

You have to see real compulsive gambling in action. The comparison is not so far off (but still over the top).

  • smolder  2 months ago

    I know what kind of havok a gambling addiction can cause, and it's no joke. It's powerful enough (for some people, at least) that a comparison to addictive drugs generally is apt, yet the traps are everywhere and usually legal. Exploiting the psychological weakness that underpins gambling addiction is something sought after and optimized for outside of overt gambling, like modern video game mechanics, social media, cryptocurrency, retail stock investment, and so on.

    In reflecting on why it's so addictive, I've come to believe there's a sort of feeling of adventure in random outcomes --that people like the entropy as well as the wins.

    That said, going back to what I said before, my issue with the title of the article is with invoking crack specifically as some especially scary super-addictive thing, which is an idea that was over-hyped at one time. They could have just said cocaine, or better yet, made a comparison to opiates, but they're playing to an old and incorrect bias.

    • ChrisMarshallNY  2 months ago

      You have to see real crack addiction in action. It’s not over-hyped at all. It’s just that not everyone gets addicted to it.

      People get hung up on physical addiction, but the mental obsession is the real destroyer. Most folks aren’t wired for that kind of obsession. They can get physically addicted to opiates, quit, and never go back. I’ve seen exactly that. I’ve also seen folks become so obsessed with pot, that it makes your worst Central Casting street junkie look tame, by comparison.

      True addicts don’t need physical addiction. It’s a mental disorder that doesn’t make sense to most people, but it’s definitely there.

      2 replies →

    • ericyd  2 months ago

      Respectfully, it feels slightly rude to suggest that gambling addiction is due to psychological weakness. Perhaps that's your view, but I don't think it matches the modern medical perspective on addiction.

      1 reply →

zahlman  2 months ago

Powder cocaine cannot be smoked at all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_base) and smoking anything naturally carries additional risks.

If it didn't make a meaningful difference in the experience but only increased the legal penalties, there would be no good reason for dealers to prepare crack, yet they did.

Nothing about a the race of a cocaine addict compels that addict to prefer one form or the other.

The comparison is made as a metaphor for strong addiction exactly because of the old political connotation. Those don't just go away. There are almost certainly more addictive substances out there; that is completely irrelevant to how humans use language. I would argue, even the phrase "crack cocaine" has more sticking power because of the phonetics.