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Cocaine Overdose, how does it happen?

Discussion in 'Cocaine' started by amin021023, Jul 14, 2015.

  1. amin021023

    amin021023 Community Champion

    Hey All. I've seen different kinds of overdose in various movies, in hangover part 2 that Chinees guy had his heart stop beating for a few moments after consuming a big amount of cocaine. But in Californication TV show, Hank's friend had a stroke and in the popular movie "pulp fiction" the girl had a heart attack and they had to inject something into her heart...

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  2. rightct

    rightct Community Champion

    Movies aren't really a good reality check indicator, to be honest. Cocaine overdose usually happens because of the overly large quantity you snort. I'm not accustomed with any other form of overdose. About the amount... it largely depends from person to person.
  3. missbishi

    missbishi Community Champion

    Cocaine abuse has been known to be a contributory factor in heart attacks so the movies aren't that far from the truth. You'd need to be snorting some pretty serious amounts of the stuff to cause serious physical problems if you were in good health otherwise though.
  4. vegito12

    vegito12 Community Champion

    In the movies, there is some truth as the character gets so addicted that they lose control of their life and also don't think of their responsibilities and also relationships which get affected by the choices they make while in a drug state. I reckon that we can sometimes not think what we are doing is abuse, and also this can cause people to take more in and not realize the harm they cause to the body in the end. I do think a person would need to spend a lot of money to take in a lot of cocaine, which can be surprising how money can be wasted easily.
  5. floeyes

    floeyes Member

    In pulp fiction she sniffed a line a dope and thought it was coke, he went to that dudes house before the date and bought dope. They went on the date and danced she was doing her own blow during The date, they went back to her place, he went to the bathroom and she took the dope he bought out of his coat pocket and mistakenly thought it was coke. She o'd'd bc she was speedballing and didn't even know it, that was irony of the scene, don't you know anything ?
    amin021023 likes this.
  6. bsthebenster

    bsthebenster Community Champion

    Well it is a stimulant, which makes your heart beat faster. Make it beat too fast and it won't want to beat any more.
  7. JoshPosh

    JoshPosh Community Champion

    Movies will distort the truth for entertainment purposes. You can theoretically overdose on anything. Some are lethal, most aren't. Like the previous poster did say, if you snort too much of it, you heart can't handle it and will stop beating.
  8. amin021023

    amin021023 Community Champion

    you're right, I missed the part where he went over his buddies and bought dope.
  9. stridee

    stridee Active Contributor

    It happens when someone takes too much of it. For many, this is a daunting task because it can be very addictive. The rush that people get from cocaine causes them to repeatedly take it. This is how the addiction to cocaine is formed. Sadly, an addiction to cocaine is scary because it can very much damage a person's life. The high from the cocaine causes the user to not worry about it because they feel great at that moment. Cocaine is truly a dangerous drug.
  10. Sparkster

    Sparkster Community Champion

    In that scene in Pulp Fiction they are giving her an adrenaline shot straight to the heart. Yes, this is done but it doesn't work anything like they make out in the film and there are no guarantees that it will work. Here's something to think about: the human body can only handle an average of about 2.5 grams of pure cocaine, depending on height and body weight, before experiencing an overdose.
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2015
  11. MrAmazingMan1

    MrAmazingMan1 Active Contributor

    Movies aren't an excellent source for how overdoses happen on cocaine, do some research online!
  12. Sparkster

    Sparkster Community Champion

    Cocaine can also cause an overdose through hypothermia which is caused by vasoconstriction (constriction of the blood vessels). This constriction of blood levels can also lead to an aortic spasm - when someone suffers an aortic spasm there is a 75% chance that they won't make it. Obviously, the constriction of blood vessels also causes poor circulation. Cocaine can also reduce ventricular functioning and can increase end-systolic wall stress.
  13. JayLyn

    JayLyn Active Contributor

    Uhhhh, sorry to nitpick, but in Pulp Fiction, she is overdosing on heroin, not cocaine. She thinks that the substance in John Travolta's character's pocket is cocaine because its white and powdered, but its not, its very pure heroin. And now that I think about it, her character is supposed to be a regular cocaine user. How is it that she doesn't notice the difference in the texture of the substance? I mean sure, both of them are white (I am assuming that Travolta's character is using a white form of heroin commonly known as China White as opposed to browner heroin powder), but good cocaine powder would be slightly chunky or at the very least shiny like hard packed snow in the winter. I guess she could have thought that it was already finely chopped for snorting. I am surprised that you would reply to a post about cocaine overdose with a clip on heroin overdose. It is very different.
  14. JayLyn

    JayLyn Active Contributor

    OK, now do you want to hear about cocaine overdose? I can tell you first hand about cocaine overdose. I'm getting a little tired of reading about what someone saw in a movie cause from what I can see, some of you don't know the difference between a heroin overdose and one from cocaine in a movie let alone real life.
    I've overdosed smoking crack and I've overdosed injecting. Both are extremely scary and I don't recommend that anyone ever push the envelope to the limit as was popular some years ago in the crowd I hung with. The first time I overdosed it was while I was injecting cocaine. I went into violent seizures and couldn't control the jerking and violent movement of my arms and upper body. I hung onto a bathroom towel bar in a hotel while I violently jerked back and forth banging into the wall and trying my hardest to keep myself upright. My two month old daughter was in a baby seat on the bathroom floor of the hotel. It was all I could do to keep from falling on her. The next time (and yes there was a next time, isn't that sad?) I was in a campsite picnic area, again I seizured but this time I didn't know about it until I was told because I was unconscious while it happened. I came to on the grass, got up and did some more cocaine. That happened a few more times, some conscious some not. When I overdosed on crack it was like an elephant just sat on my chest. The second I inhaled it, I knew I had done to much and I blew it out as fast as I could. Still, it was too late. It was like I could not get air no matter how hard I tried. I called it "freezing my lungs." It is the only way I can describe it. I was unable to get more than the tiniest bit of air into my lungs and it was all I could do to do that. I knew that if I didn't get help I might slip into unconscious and that I would not have the reflex to breathe enough air to keep me alive. I called the person who got me hooked on the stuff in the first place. He lived in another city but he was the only person I could trust. I croaked out the situation as best I could and told him that if he didn't hear from me again in five minutes to call an ambulance and send them to my address in the city where I was living. I considered going and lying with my youngest child (the other two---one who was the baby in the baby seat----were with their dad as I had given their care over to him) but thought it would be too frightening for her to wake up to her mother dead. I thought about staying put but then thought about her coming down the stairs in the morning and finding her mother dead. Those thoughts made me fight for every bit of air I could get and saved my life. I was like that (barely breathing) for about 10 minutes before it started to subside. When people think of intravenous cocaine being the only lethal way to do cocaine, think again. Every way is lethal. Stay away from it, period.
  15. Jasmine2015

    Jasmine2015 Community Champion

    If the director or who ever it is in charge of the movie does accurate research, then the movie being produced might not be too far from what happens in reality. Though lots of movies are produced for entertainment vs educating so be careful thinking a movie is accurately telling or showing something.
  16. dyanmarie25

    dyanmarie25 Community Champion

    Well, the effects of cocaine overdose may vary from one person to another. It somehow depends on the health of a person. For example, if this person already has heart problems, and he/she consumed a huge amount of cocaine, his/her life may be put into more danger than someone who never had any health complications before. However, cocaine abuse is still dangerous thing to do.
  17. OhioTom76

    OhioTom76 Senior Contributor

    You can overdose on it in a variety of ways which can affect you directly and indirectly. You can obviously have a heart attack or a stroke while on it. You can succumb to the side effects of sleep deprivation as a result of continuous cocaine use. Being on cocaine can also spur your judgement, and cause you to be more careless about abusing other substances such as alcohol while on it, which can not only lead to alcohol poisoning - which can also be lethal - but the presence of both in your system can form a new toxin call cocaethelyne in your liver, which can also be lethal. Incidentally, as dangerous as it is, the cocaethelyne actually produces a much more intense high.

    One of the first times I did cocaine I overdosed on it while drinking very heavily, and it was not a pleasant experience at all. I had bough about 5 lines worth and didn't really know how much constituted a standard "line" at the time - I just paid the guy $25 and got a small bag worth which didn't look like much. Stupidly I went out to my car by myself and snorted the entire bag at once, figuring it was just one line worth of it. Of course by the time I walked into the bar I felt like a million bucks, and over the course of an hour I ordered and sucked down 4 very strong Long Island Iced Teas (I know they're usually weak at most places, but this place served them in tall carafes and they were very generous with their pours). Shortly after that the bar closed and we went to leave and by the time I got to my car I broke out in a cold sweat and turned white as a ghost and started to black out. My friends had to drive me around for an hour with the windows open to try and sober me up, and were almost ready to take me to emergency. All I remember was being keeled over in the car hugging my knees and could barely breathe and was sweating gallons of sweat - I was soaked head to toe. Not fun at all, and I seriously thought I was about to go when it was happening.
  18. oraclemay

    oraclemay Community Champion

    This sounds really awful again. Thank God I have never had any experiences like this or seen any either. I did have a cousin who overdosed years ago and he never made it. I'm not sure what it was, but it does not really make a difference. An overdose can take your life. Any addiction steals your life anyway.
  19. Regretful

    Regretful Member

    Hey all, just thought I'd share my overdose story, it was horrible.
    Long story short I've always been a binge drinker, and found the new habit of cocaine, which in the end didn't mix well with binging.
    One night decided to have a couple of drinks, next thing I had a few drinks, next thing a few lines of cocaine, turned on a bender with a friend into the next morning and then the next evening. We pretty much had a line every 45 mins for 20 hours, and drank alcohol with it. We ended up really ruined, my friend's nostrils were clogged, and was feeling very unwell and decided to go home. When my friend left, there was probably 2 big lines left on the plate so I thought I'd snort them, even though I just had one. I have no idea how much I had all up but it was way too much.
    I think about 10 minutes later it really hit me, I knew I was not ok. Started with shortness of breath, heart racing, so I made my way to lay down in bed. I felt like I was burning up, taking deep slow breaths, my hands were numb with a tingly feeling, my feet felt the same, and my legs were having spasms. I couldn't even move to get my phone and felt paralysed for about 10 minutes, I thought I was going to die. I tried to contact my friend to see if they were ok, and they wouldn't answer. When they left they were very unwell so I was real worried as there's no way I thought they'd be able to sleep, so maybe dead. I had intense paranoia and freaked out for a few hours, sweats etc. It was the worst thing I have ever been through. I eventually fell asleep. As it turned out, my friend was vomiting etc and ended up in hospital on a drip and morphine, this is a wake up call for me, clearly need to make some changes in my life. It's now the next night, I feel ok, but still very anxious and sore nose etc. I think I am lucky to be alive.