A young college student died of a cocaine overdose during lovemaking on the last day of April in the Boca Raton bedroom of her lover, despite his frantic efforts to save her life.
The incident occurred a mere few blocks from the home of my sister, Deborah, who sent me clippings from Florida newspapers.
Apparently, the young college student didn’t know the danger of mixing sex and drugs—nor that cocaine is so deadly there is no time to save the victim who overdoses.
Last month her lover was charged with third-degree murder.
Parents were horrified and shocked.
They would be even more shocked if they knew how many of their children and friends are snorting coke and experimenting with it in lovemaking.
One former cocaine user and smuggler told a Palm Beach County therapist that cocaine is a $30 billion a year industry in South Florida and, nationally, a $100 billion industry.
“That is probably an accurate figure,” Dr. Charles DeWitt said. He is associate medical examiner for Dade County and has been taking a body count of cocaine-related deaths. He related that a Miami newspaper estimates the cash flows to banks from cocaine smuggling has exceeded the tourist industry economically, and blames the cocaine traffic for causing the average cost of a house in the Miami area to be inflated by as much as $100,000.
“I want to emphasize to people that there isn’t any safe recreational drug,” Dr. DeWitt said. “The use of drugs in combination with sex in and of itself is dangerous—but it is extremely dangerous when a person is alone.”
The pot user, meanwhile, may well be perceiving an enhancing (sensual) effect, but, in reality, his sexual performance is unaltered or may even be impaired, according to sex therapist Ginger Bush.
“The people most affected were those who are ordinarily very anxious or guilty regarding their sexual behavior,” she said.
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In the interim, officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) don’t seem to know just how big cocaine smuggling is in America.
According to one information officer for the DEA’s southeastern region, estimates the cocaine smuggled in the U.S. for last year alone amounted to $112 billion to $140 billion—70 percent of it smuggled in along the South Florida coast.
The National Institute of Drug Abuse estimates that 6.5 million Americans used cocaine last year, and about 10 percent of high school graduates last year tried it at least once.
The Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network reported the number of cocaine-related deaths from overdose or smuggling incidents has tripled since the mid-1970s, and hospital admissions related to cocaine has tripled since 1975, having increased by some 90 percent.
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At the same time, some medical authorities are not surprised that cocaine is being used as a love drug. After all, recreational drug use “runs in fads” and whatever is popular at the moment is the one touted as an aphrodisiac.
It happened with alcohol and then with marijuana when it first became possible. It happened with Quaaludes and now it’s happening with cocaine.
Cocaine is a different—and deadly—story because it stimulates the nervous system instead of depressing it, and it is unpredictable.
In other words, it definitely is not a recreational drug, and some abusers are as young as 10.
With cocaine, there are probably three factors which will lead to an unexpected fatal reaction: How much of it gets into your bloodstream, how fast it gets into it and your history of prior use of cocaine.
The more frequently you use cocaine, the more subject you are to an unexpected untoward reaction to the drug.
That was why, when “coke” was discovered more than 100 years ago, it was not acceptable as a local anesthetic.
Experiments have shown that if you give a bunch of monkeys the same dose of cocaine a day, within one month’s period all the monkeys will convulse.
Even so, cocaine has long been a party drug of the affluent and upper middle-class status-minded who openly swing tiny golden coke spoons and golden vials of coke on charms around their necks.
Today, it is a street drug of unknown quality popular with the party set and youngsters, as well. It is snorted through the nose, or smoked, or swallowed, or injected intravenously—and sometimes it is applied locally to a man’s genitals for its numbing effect so he can prolong the sex act.
However, if you combine local genital application of cocaine with snorting, sniffing, smoking, swallowing, or injecting it into your blood stream, you are probably going to get too much too fast “and away you go.”
And though you are going to die, sooner or later, even just snorting can kill you.
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Top o’ the morning!