How Long Does Cocaine Stay In Your System? Cocaine is like a vine that grows on a tree and feeds on its nutrients period until the tree withers out. No drug exhausts you faster than cocaine.
COCAINE IS A STIMULANT THAT CAUSES EUPHORIA (A HEIGHTENED SENSE OF EXCITEMENT).
It causes the strongest dependence on drug and takes you down in no time. Your body can easily become tolerant to cocaine, and then the amount of intake won’t matter anymore. Wondering how long does cocaine stay in your system? Well, first let’s dive into the details.
How Long Does Cocaine Stay In Your System?
So, how long does cocaine stay in your system? In general cocaine, itself, remains in the system for around 3 – 5 hours. However, the primary metabolite of cocaine known as ‘benzoylecgonine’ stays in your system for a longer period of time, up to around 1-2 days! The reason is that cocaine has a half-life of 1 hour while benzoylecgonine has a half-life of 6 hours.
What Is Cocaine Made Of?
Cocaine, being one of the most addictive drugs, is produced from leaves of the cocoa plant. It’s rawest form is white powder.
Cocaine is a stimulant that causes euphoria (a heightened sense of excitement). This stimulating effect causes the heart to beat faster which leads to,
- Constriction of blood vessels
- Increasing the risk of cardiovascular arrest
- May result in a brain damage
Cocaine is a highly soluble substance, hence, when metabolized, can seep across any cell membrane. This way it enters the brain, bloodstream, alveoli in lungs, etc and stays there from few hours to up to days.
What affects the lifespan of cocaine in your system?
Following are the factors that influence the persistence of cocaine in your system:
1-Amount Of Dose Taken
The more the dosage, the longer cocaine lingers in the system. According to ADDICTIONS and RECOVERY.org, if cocaine is given to a mouse when it presses a lever, it will keep pressing the lever without ever stopping, and will ultimately die.
2-Mode Of Administration
Different ways of intake lead to different absorption rates and lengths of ‘highs.’ For example, intravenous injection creates a high in a few seconds and also wears out much quicker. On the other hand, oral ingestion may cause a high after an hour, but the effect will stay for a much longer time.
3-How Long Have You Been Using It?
Long-term users will experience a much longer effect as compared to short –term users. This is because the highly soluble metabolites of cocaine are stored in the fatty tissues (such as liver) of long-term users. Detoxification is much slower in long-term users as it takes time for the drug to be released from fatty tissues into the blood stream.
4-Frequency Of Intake
The more the user takes cocaine, the less efficient the body becomes in drug elimination. The brain and body adapt to slow down the process of drug clearance.
5-Purity Of Cocaine
Cocaine in its purest form has a larger amount of the active ingredient, hence, cocaine is retained in the system for a much longer time. On the contrary, a diluted form of cocaine will be cleared much quicker.