Noding in a more personal style, the cocaine high feels… well, pretty great, but it’s nothing to ruin your life for. Posting for the sake of the curious, here is the opinion of one noder, who has taken the drug only a handful of times.
Upon snorting the damned stuff, one may soon expect a hideously irritating post-nasal drip and an anaesthetized sensation that says “ah, must be at the dentist’s office” in one’s sinuses and often in the roof of one’s mouth as well (this sensation can last an hour or longer from one line). Shortly you will notice that you cannot stop talking about absolutely anything, and to absolutely everybody. You might feel like you’ve just had a great pep-talk and are ready to take on at least some of the world. Strangers who would normally be intimidating become your favourite conversational targets. There is no visual element such as hallucinations, and the “rush” is not similar to the full-body-tingly-luvvy feeling of ecstasy, either. The main target of cocaine is, weirdly enough, confidence.
Two elements contribute to its effectiveness. First, the stimulant itself boosts your energy and your confidence, allowing you to temporarily forget all the things you hate about yourself and all your social doubts. Then, as you talk to people, a kind of positive feedback loop emerges, because you notice that the other person is more interested in you than usual, and altogether seems more charmed. This is not to say that you’ll always come across as an arrogant bastard – usually one feels happy to be among other people, and can even get a bit affectionate towards the whole human race. You could go to work on this drug and be extremely productive (until you have to take a week off for reconstructive surgery on your septum). In fact, if you’re in advertising, you probably do.
After the first time I tried coke, I tried talking to people – strangers and acquaintances alike – with the same level of self-assuredness and energy as when I’d been high, and the results were really quite funny. You don’t need the drug to be the kind of movie-star personality, because if you exude confidence, you will get an appropriate response from other people (that’s right, they start the “we’re not worthy!” chant immediately).
If you take a lot, you feel extremely great. The downside? The rush doesn’t last very long (so you have to keep snorting), and how great you feel now is directly proportional to how low, insignificant, and generally crap you will feel later. Plus, it’s relatively expensive. To those who are interested, I’d say there’s not much harm in doing it once, especially if you’re smart enough to limit yourself to one line, just to see what it does in a nutshell. Used sparingly, cocaine can be fun. Used often enough, this drug can turn you into an idiot with no sense of self outside of a bag of white powder. I know a lot of people who might do it once or twice a year; likewise I know others who do it every week. Just ask yourself whether you’re the type of person who will remember how to have a good time without it afterwards, and act accordingly.
(Nose Candy)
Warning: Do not try this at home. No specific amounts are given here, because the exact recipe varies from region to region and from cartel to cartel.
INGREDIENTS
Coca leaves. Coca leaves are native to the Andes: the best ones are grown in Colombia and Peru, although you can also find them in Bolivia. Efforts to grow coca leaves elsewhere have not been successful, so unless you live in this region, you will need to find a way to import the leaves. In general, you will need a hundred kilos of leaves for every kilo of cocaine you plan to make.
Gasoline. Benzene will do in a pinch. (A good deal of money is made in South America by gasoline runners, who buy cheap gasoline by the coast, take it into the mountains, and sell it to the drug cartels at a huge profit.)
Acid. Hydrochloric acid is the most popular. You can also use sulfuric acid.
Ammonia.
Potassium permanganate.
Acetone (paint thinner).
STEP ONE: GRIND UP THOSE LEAVES.
The most common way of doing this is to dig a pit in the ground, called a pozo. Throw the leaves into the pit, pour some gasoline on top of them, and stomp on them with your feet until they are ground into a nice mush. It’s a lot like the old European method of stomping on grapes to make wine.
Next, strain the gunk you’ve just created, to get all the stems and loose pieces of vegetation out. You should have a somewhat runny paste, a combination of cocaine and ecgonine in gasoline. This is called coca paste in drug lingo.
The next step is to add some acid, which will dissolve some of the extraneous chemicals in the mixture. Filter the remaining paste again, and add the potassium permanganate and some more acid. Filter once more, and let the paste dry until it begins to harden. Add the ammonia, and let it dry once more.
You should end up with a substance called cocaine base that is strikingly similar to crack rock. (In fact, crack is actually cocaine that is reprocessed back into cocaine base, so theoretically you can stop here and smoke what you’ve already got… but do you want to become a crackhead? I think not. Read on, kimosabe.)
STEP TWO: MAKE IT SNORTABLE.
Dissolve the base in a bucket of acetone for several hours: you should get a light tan mixture. Then add some more acid, and allow the base to precipitate out of the solution. You should see tiny white crystals begin to form at the top of the bucket. By filtering the slurry through cloth, you can capture the crystals, and let them dry in the sun or under a heat lamp.
Congratulations! You just scored some coke!
