Combined use of Alcohol & Cocaine

Cocaine has become a popular drug to take on nights out and therefore it is often taken alongside alcohol. You can often find people in nightclub and pub toilets snorting cocaine.

Researchers have found that the human liver combines cocaine and alcocholand manufactures a third substance, cocaethylene, that intensifies cocaine's euphoric effects.  The mixture of cocaine and alcohol is the most common two-drug combination that results in drug-related death.

Cocaethylene is a psychoactive ethyl homologue of cocaine, and is formed exclusively during the coadministration of cocaine and alcohol. Not a natural alkaloid of the coca leaf, cocaethylene can be identified in the urine, blood, hair, and neurological and liver tissue samples of individuals who have consumed both cocaine and alcohol. 

Cocaethylene has similar euphoric properties to cocaine, but is longer lasting in the body. Some studies suggest that it is more toxic than cocaine itself, particularly to the heart.  Cocaethylene has been associated with seizures, liver damage, and compromised functioning of the immune system. It also caries an 18 to 25-fold increase over cocaine alone in risk for immediate death.

Scientists have also found that cocaine abuse coupled with use of alcohol leads to more impulsive decision-making and to poorer performance on tests of learning and memory than does use of either cocaine or alcohol alone. The negative effects on the ability to think clearly persist for at least a month after the substance use stops.

Please read the separate "Alcohol" and "Cocaine / Crack" pages,

to give more information on the side effects of each drug

http://www.nida.nih.gov/MedAdv/00/NR6-26.html

http://www.forensicmed.co.uk/pharmacology.htm

Last updated: 03 April 2007