How to tell if someone has a cocaine problem?

[Aenigma]

My ex told me that she only used cocaine "twice" in the past and had quit after that. I think that she was lying through her teeth to me. Aside from the obvious physical symptoms (eyes dilated, nose bleeds, etc) how can you tell if the person you're with is a cocaine user? Do any of you know the signs and symptoms, espically behavioral, that give away the addiction? It seems to be the drug of choice for hot YUPPIE women, and I don't want to make the same mistake again.

 

[decades]

just keep watching. you will learn a lot.

 

[Vulpine]

She told you "twice", too, huh?

* avoids you at parties (or other venues where she may have opportunity)
* suddenly has to stay over somewhere/frequent change of plans/flakey
* just got paid -> broke already
* crazy mood swings: elation > sadness, anger > happiness, etc.
* disappearing acts, unaccountable blocks of time
* "we were talking" ...in the bathroom (closed room, garage, car, etc.) for abnormal length of time, hurried whispers and "hustling" noises if interrupted
* YOU HEAR ABOUT IT FROM FRIENDS
* friends "uneasy", "nervous", or "edgy" around you at gatherings
* "I went for a drive", "I went to McDonald's" and other such flimsy excuses for being absent
* drinks a lot of booze, but, doesn't get drunk
* fidgety, anxious
* unusually horny, sexual aggression after returning from somewhere
* "fighty", argumentative after a "disappearing act"
* hand-held mirror in living room, glass coffee table, etc.


Many of the signs give you the overall feeling that she is cheating on you...


She is.

Coke pleases her in ways you can't.

 

[backbreaker]

i'm an a recovering addict of 3 plus years, cocaine and then crack.

cocaine drug use in it's early stages is extremely easy to hide. has no smell and it's controllable for the most part. if you got smart, you can take some nasal spray and put about a gram in it, shake it up, and you could have a runny nose all day long and no one would know.


the easiest and quickest way to tell if someone is lying is very simple and straightfoward... go to wal greens or wal mart and buy a 15 dollar drug test and pop it on them. that will cut the BS right then and there. if they wont' take the test they are BSing you. About a year ago I had a similar situtation that I actually posted in this very forum if some of you remember.. my GF now had left a rolled up dollar bill with cocaine residue on it.. she told me she used a couple of itmes with her old roomate but that she wasn't really into it and stopped. and i'll be damned if she wasn't right. so don't jump to conlusions all the time. I told her I would give her drug test a couple randomly though the year, not becuase I don't trust her, but because I really, really cannot be around someone using, espicallysomeone now living with me. it was more about me than her. passed them all with flying colors. she even had the nerve to give me one a couple of months ago when I came home late! (hey..sometimes you really DO get lost on the way home.. iwas on the phone, made a couple of turns not paying attention to where I was and ended up in a part of the city I had no idea where I was, i'm not from here)

anyway, symptoms are figitiyness, hyper activity, it's an stimulant remember.

when it gets worse, the ability to NEVER keep any amount of money, always borrowing money, they don't keep themselves as groomed as they used to, weight loss


cocaine itself is not the worst thing on earth. it's not great, but if I could have kept my addiction at cocaine... yes you want to get off of it, but there are worst drugs to be addicted to, trust me. you want to stop her before it's too late becuase once you realize that you can get higher, faster, cheaper smoking crack.. the game is over. I consider myself very lucky to be drug free.. becuase i Know alot of people who are still using ,and alot of people who have died becuase of crack.


any more advice/help you need just let me know

 

[Vulpine]

Oh, and one thing this chick used to do that I initially wrote off as just "goofy"...

She didn't just blow her nose with tissue, she would twist it up and actually shove it up her nose and twirl it to get "boogers" out.

I've done that before when I've had some "clingers", but this chick did it all the time... like, every night before bed.

Be weary of seemingly odd nose attention.

 

[Aenigma]

i'm an a recovering addict of 3 plus years, cocaine and then crack.

cocaine drug use in it's early stages is extremely easy to hide. has no smell and it's controllable for the most part. if you got smart, you can take some nasal spray and put about a gram in it, shake it up, and you could have a runny nose all day long and no one would know.


the easiest and quickest way to tell if someone is lying is very simple and straightfoward... go to wal greens or wal mart and buy a 15 dollar drug test and pop it on them. that will cut the BS right then and there. if they wont' take the test they are BSing you. About a year ago I had a similar situtation that I actually posted in this very forum if some of you remember.. my GF now had left a rolled up dollar bill with cocaine residue on it.. she told me she used a couple of itmes with her old roomate but that she wasn't really into it and stopped. and i'll be damned if she wasn't right. so don't jump to conlusions all the time. I told her I would give her drug test a couple randomly though the year, not becuase I don't trust her, but because I really, really cannot be around someone using, espicallysomeone now living with me. it was more about me than her. passed them all with flying colors. she even had the nerve to give me one a couple of months ago when I came home late! (hey..sometimes you really DO get lost on the way home.. iwas on the phone, made a couple of turns not paying attention to where I was and ended up in a part of the city I had no idea where I was, i'm not from here)

anyway, symptoms are figitiyness, hyper activity, it's an stimulant remember.

when it gets worse, the ability to NEVER keep any amount of money, always borrowing money, they don't keep themselves as groomed as they used to, weight loss


cocaine itself is not the worst thing on earth. it's not great, but if I could have kept my addiction at cocaine... yes you want to get off of it, but there are worst drugs to be addicted to, trust me. you want to stop her before it's too late becuase once you realize that you can get higher, faster, cheaper smoking crack.. the game is over. I consider myself very lucky to be drug free.. becuase i Know alot of people who are still using ,and alot of people who have died becuase of crack.


any more advice/help you need just let me know

I confronted her about it but she denied it and said that she hadn't used it in over a year. The fact that she asked me if I wanted to do coke a few times, admitted to snorting off of a toilet seat in the past, and that she actually tried to but it in front of a dealer with me tells me she's a liar. She also said to herself, when drunk, one night "ok- you can't do coke, if you do coke, you'll just want to do more coke".

She also displayed many of the red flags Vulpine pointed out. I excused it away at the time, but in retrospect its obvious that she was either cheating on me or doing drugs (I think coke since she actually admitted to it in the past, but theirs no guarantee that's the only one). She won't admit it, even now that we're getting a no fault divorce and I didn't want to believe it. Its a real blow to the ego to realize that you're the chump- that she's cheating on you and/or doing drugs behind your back and you were too blinded by love to see it. Even now, its hard to believe it; but I trust my gut on this.

Incidently, when I confronted her about all her suspicious behavior she told me "well, we were fighting alot- so I wanted to make you think I was cheating on you. That's why I was acting so suspicous and hiding my phone and going off without you!" Yea, like I'm going to buy that.... her behavior was suspicious because she wanted me to be suspicious.... whatever. Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Those who love you and respect you don't play games with you.

 

[MacAvoy]

The biggest and most obvious sign is a runny nose. Especially after a night of drinking. The other thing will be going to the washroom or somewhere else private on a regular basis with a small group of people.

Most coke users I know, do it together and not on their own. The other only real sign to watch out for is the person not getting drunk when drinking. I personally never got a high from doing coke but the only reason I ever did it was to not get wasted. Its also great for picking up strippers.

But like backbreaker eluded to, its a gateway to crack which is a very dangerous and addictive drug. I actually smoked it once and I didn't realize I was smoking crack, they just told me the coke was hard, I was naive and tried it.

I would however think your likely taking this out of hand, and your going to get everyone jumping on the paranoia bandwagon here saying dump her. However if it was my gf, I would trust her otherwise I wouldn't be her g/f. I wouldn't ask for a drug test but it would be a sure fire way to know if she's telling the truth.

I trust my judgement though.

 

[MacAvoy]

The fact is though, now its all irelevant. Who cares if she has a coke problem. Your getting a divorced, why waste your valuable energy worrying about her?

Forget about the fact that you were a chump, be thankful that now you are free and can move on. Its all about perspective. Your in the wrong mindset right now.

 

[Aenigma]

The fact is though, now its all irelevant. Who cares if she has a coke problem. Your getting a divorced, why waste your valuable energy worrying about her?

I want to know if I was right to be suspicious. I don't want to be making the same mistake and rationalizations again, but at the same time I don't want to be paranoid about these things in the future.

Forget about the fact that you were a chump, be thankful that now you are free and can move on. Its all about perspective. Your in the wrong mindset right now

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

 

[Vulpine]

She also displayed many of the red flags Vulpine pointed out. I excused it away at the time, but in retrospect its obvious that she was either cheating on me or doing drugs (I think coke since she actually admitted to it in the past, but theirs no guarantee that's the only one). She won't admit it, even now that we're getting a no fault divorce and I didn't want to believe it. Its a real blow to the ego to realize that you're the chump- that she's cheating on you and/or doing drugs behind your back and you were too blinded by love to see it. Even now, its hard to believe it; but I trust my gut on this.

You do feel naive... no question about that.

And here's a sweet little gem of info:

"Substance misuse associated with BPD is often frequent and severe enough to warrant a separate diagnosis. As the Figure illustrates, about 50% to 70% of psychiatric in patients with BPD also have a substance use disorder (SUD), especially alcohol abuse or dependence but often in combination with other drugs.1,2

Depending on the sample, structured diagnostic interviews have found a variable prevalence of BPD among patients being treated for drug or alcohol dependence. The reported prevalence of BPD has ranged from 18% to 34% in patients receiving treatment for cocaine dependence.3-5 In large samples of patients treated for opiate dependence, rates of co-occurring BPD have varied from 5% to 45%.6-9 Among persons in treatment for alcohol use disorders, the prevalence of BPD appears similar to that for those in treatment for drug dependence, ranging from 16% to 22%.10,11"

Article: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/52091

At one time, I read that something like 40% of BPD diagnoses were due to treatment of a cocaine problem specifically, but I can't seem to locate that now... perhaps wiki was changed since then and linked to the information listed above.

 

[mikeraw]

It's very hard to detec cocaine use. I use to do it heavily a few years ago and despite my first-hand knowledge of it, I'm surprised whenever I find my acquaintances do it occasionally.

The biggest sign, IMO, is the diminished appetite. Cotton mouth (and therefore, bad breath) are also a give away.

 

[MacAvoy]

Oh the one other sign that I remember is the grinding of the teeth, you'll see their jaw moving but they have to have done a considerable amount of coke to do this.

But I agree with mikeraw, its very difficult to detect. I have been in a room ful of coke users and not known who is on it.

 

[backbreaker]

like i said, alot of people on this very forum told me to kick my GF to the curve because I found the coke... and I am so damn glad I didn't because she was being very honest with me about what happened. anytime you have drugs int he picture it's very touchy and should be a case by case senerio.

 

[st_99]

I was messing around with a coke head chic a little while back. Sex was fun :>

My rule:

Any girl over the age of 25 using coke should be treated like a worthless skank. No matter what
the circumstance.

 

[STR8UP]

When she's sitting next to you on the couch before your first kiss and she tells you "I just moved here from blahblahblah" and you say "Oh really? What made you move?" and she says "Are you sure you want to know?" and you say "sure" then she says "REHAB".

The the next thing you know she's running to the bathroom every 5 minutes to blow her nose. I'd say that's a pretty good indication.

 

[[S]alvatore]

If they watch Scarface/Blow on a regular basis.

 

[Aenigma]

Well, we're still on a "friendly" basis- so I suprised her with a drug test and told her I would have peace of mind if she would take it. To my suprise she did- and tested negative to every drug. Guess sometimes you do see things that aren't there.

 

[backbreaker]

tried to tell ya.

 

[mikeraw]

Coke only lasts like 3 days in your body and if you drink enough water or those cover-up chemicals, they won't show in your average drug test. I got tested in my high school and I had done coke on a SAT night like at 3 AM, technically SUN morning, and I still showed up negative on MON morning. Why? Because I've always drunk water like a crazed weasel in heat. And this was in Nicaragua, so we're talking about 90% pure stuff, not some cut down local crap.

Furthermore, you can also get false negatives and positives by taking other medications... watch out for anything that ends with the suffix -aine... most strong throat lozenges have an active ingredient called Benzocaine that can show a false positive and if she's a bright and cunning girl, she'll have that pack of cough drops in her purse.

 

[backbreaker]

Coke only lasts like 3 days in your body and if you drink enough water or those cover-up chemicals, they won't show in your average drug test. I got tested in my high school and I had done coke on a SAT night like at 3 AM, technically SUN morning, and I still showed up negative on MON morning. Why? Because I've always drunk water like a crazed weasel in heat. And this was in Nicaragua, so we're talking about 90% pure stuff, not some cut down local crap.

Furthermore, you can also get false negatives and positives by taking other medications... watch out for anything that ends with the suffix -aine... most strong throat lozenges have an active ingredient called Benzocaine that can show a false positive and if she's a bright and cunning girl, she'll have that pack of cough drops in her purse.

no on soo many levels.


First of all, which one is more likely.. that she is secretly physco mantis from the first metal gear solid, read his mind and knew he was going to spring a drug test on him, went out and drunk alot of water and passed the drug test, or that she ACTUALLY WASN'T LYING?

2) I'm a former crackhead. I know a thing or two about drug tests, I promise you. Probably more than anyone here. False negatives are the most possible with Amphetamines like Meth, the lowest false positive rate is Cocaine. The only thing that can give you a false positive for cocaine really is if you have s kidney infection or a uniary track infection. There have been some reports that amoxicillian can give you a false positive for cocaine as well but that's BS.

put it this way, it's almost impossible to get a false positive on a drug test for cocaine.

Novacaine, all the other Caine's do not give you a false positive for cocaine. when you test for cocaine, you are testing for the protein breakdown that cocaine produces called benzoylecgonine, which is extremely, extremely (to druggies detriment) unique to cocaine.


whearase there are literarly dozens of things that can give you a false positive, espically if mixed for meth.

3) if she was "watered up", the line would be there, but it would be extremely faint. and then it depends on the intake level. if you took some real cocaine, that was pretty pure and you did a good eightball, there is not enough water on earth to diludte the test sample.

4) the cutoff is not automatically 3 days, it varies on if you are a regular user, how good of shape you are in, how much you exericse, how much you used and the qualitiy that you have used. I've had coke stay in my system for over a week.. i used only the best baby.

5) someone who uses will not take a drug test. under no circumstances. becuase at the time when you are sprung with one like that, you dont' think about all this logically. you think "i've been using, i'm going to get caught".


LIke i said.. over reacted. don't make the poor girl out to be something she isn't.