It's Britain's favourite class A drug.
There's loads of nicknames for it, chang, bugle.
Sniff, coke or snow. Chop, charge.
Flake, blow.
Cocaine, once a drug exclusively for the rich and famous,
has never been more popular.
I'm feelin' buzzin', mate. Buzzin'!
In 2009, it was taken by around 1.2 million people in the UK alone.
This is nice, proper - boom!
But for some people, a few lines of coke became a life-changing event.
No matter how long I chased that first high I never got close to it,
never again.
This is the inside story of how cocaine works.
There's euphoria, confidence, talkativeness.
Oh, go on, rack us one up, then.
Go on, then.
We follow three users on nights out on coke
and journey inside their bodies and brains
to find out how the drug creates its highs...
..and lows.
We'll access Britain's leading experts to find out the truth
behind cocaine's controversial reputation.
In the first hour after taking cocaine,
the risk of having a heart attack increases by twenty-fold.
I have seen patients where the whole middle of the nose has gone, effectively,
and you just have one nasal cavity
and everything just collapses inwards.
We'll find out how cocaine has changed some people permanently...
I didn't realise the effect it would have on people
until you are there in... Well, you could say a death bed.
..and investigate just how widespread
the drug has really become.
It literally is everywhere.
Cocaine - the perfect pick-me-up or a class A killer?
Possession of even a small amount of cocaine can get you seven years in prison.
Despite this, more than 120 tonnes were snorted in Britain in 2009
enough to make 2.4 billion lines,
stretching nearly three times round the world.
Cocaine is most popular amongst 16 to 29-years-olds,
with one in 20 estimated to have taken it last year.
Josie and Damian have both been occasional cocaine users
since they were teenagers.
They became friends after meeting at a house party in Bristol,
where they both live.
Damian is a 29-year-old entrepreneur.
Im interested in horticulture, tropical palm trees, hoping to import
some from countries where they are cheap and we can distribute them
in England and make maximum profit.
(INAUDIBLE) ..in a couple of weeks.
I'm doing a fire show there, but I've got to do it before I get too drunk.
Josie is 21 and works at music festivals in the summer.
I don't take coke that often I don't really, like,
spend lots of money on it, but if it's there I'll do it, like.
Josie is having a house party tonight
and Damian is planning to get some cocaine in for the event.
They both take it a couple of times a month on average.
Right. We need to sort this party out.
Top of the agenda is to order the coke in.
First time I took coke I literally just took it, smoked a cigarette,
puked everywhere, then straight after I puked I just felt bloody amazing,
just like absolutely amazing.
It just felt like all my worries had been lifted up from my shoulders,
er, just felt really confident.
Drink of cider, little line, gets you ready for the night, innit?
With the supplies arranged, Josie sets about decorating the house.
She's also organised a sound system.
Come on, boys, let's get these speakers inside!
CAR BEEPS HORN
For Damian, cocaine is a drug best taken amongst friends at home.
I enjoy it more when I come back from a club when
I'm feeling a bit like
worse for wear and then get it up your nose
and then you've got a good house party.
I think coke's quite a private thing, anyway.
I prefer it to be at home.
House decorated and sound system built, Josie and Damian
start their Saturday night as they mean to go on.
You just chop it up,
with a card, you get your snorty-worty.
As Damian snorts his line, it flies up into his nose at up to 100 mph.
The fine powder rips through his nostrils,
coating the mucous membranes lining his sinuses.
Up to 60% of the powder gets absorbed through the nasal membranes
straight into his bloodstream via small capillaries,
beginning a journey through his body.
These capillaries feed into bigger veins
leading eventually to Damian's heart.
The cocaine is then pumped on to his lungs,
where the blood absorbs oxygen...
..before shooting back up to his heart,
which is starting to beat faster as the cocaine takes effect.
The cocaine payload is carried on to the major organs in his body.
Much of it to Damian's brain.
Here the cocaine molecules can leech up through the blood vessels.
Soon they reach the billions of nerve cells
that Damian's brain is made of -
the cells that control every aspect of how he behaves.
Beautiful. All right!
It was pretty ... awesome.
Yeah. Good, good.
A United Nations report estimated 16 million people
round the world took coke in 2008 alone.
This global appetite has created an industry
with a turnover of around £55 billion a year -
more than Google, McDonalds and Coca Cola put together.
Cocaine is produced from the leaves of the coca plant in South America.
In makeshift laboratories, deep in the heart of the rainforest,
coca leaves are transformed from a naturally occurring mild stimulant
to a powerful drug capable of changing the way we think and feel.
The production uses an array of potent and often poisonous substances
including sulphuric acid and kerosene.
The result, a pure white crystal,
is worth just a £100 a kilo where it is made,
but £50,000 a kilo by the time it reaches the UK.
Between 2008 and 2009, the number of people taking cocaine regularly
in the UK rose by around 200,000.
As supplies have grown to satisfy the increasing demand,
prices have plummeted.
A line can now cost as little as £2,
and the low price has made cocaine more accessible than ever.
Liam has just left the army and moved back to his home town
to be close to his family and friends.
'When I'm with my mates, we like to go the local pubs,
'we go down town a lot,'
we have a laugh, we socialise a lot. Round here, everyone knows everyone.
He's looking for a new career in the construction industry.
In an effort to limit the documentary's impact on his future,
he's decided not to use his real name.
It's good when you're having a drink and socialising, I think.
You have a few, like a little cheeky one, a little perker and, you know,
puts you in the mood, man.
Last time we were sniffing lines like that.
Madness, swear to God.
The first time you feel it, nothing'll compare to that.
Although money is tight,
Liam enjoys a coke session every couple of months.
'When you're racking up and you're like, you, you do your line,'
you're buzzing a bit, you get a little buzz.
Yeah!
You get a buzz racking it up and then you're buzzing when you're at it.
Liam's got some cocaine in today,
but he doesn't want to wait until the evening to get started.
The effect of the cocaine is dramatic.
This is nice, proper - boom!
It was tasty and all.
THEY SHOUT AND LAUGH
'If you have a fat line, it's a rush, man. Say you have
'an energy drink and you feel a bit better,'
that's like 50 times that.
It's like - whoosh! It's straight in your bloodstream.
And you feel the...
Ryan's sudden high and burst of energy come from
the huge changes that have just happened in his brain.
Our brains are composed of networks of billions of tiny nerve cells.
Signals race around these networks,
crossing the gaps between the nerve cells using chemical messengers.
One network is dedicated to making us feel good
when we do something that is essential to survival
such as eat, drink or have sex.
Normally, when this network is activated,
the nerve cells in it
release the feel-good chemical messenger dopamine.
Dopamine travels across the gap from one nerve cell
to receptors on its neighbour,
triggering a chain reaction which makes you feel good.
This dopamine then returns to the nerve cell that released it
for further use.
Cocaine hijacks the feel-good network in the brain.
It causes huge increases in the amount of dopamine
throughout the network,
flooding the brain with feel-good chemicals.
And it also stops the dopamine returning to the nerve cells
that have released it,
meaning more and more builds up.
Cocaine blocks something called the dopamine transporter,
and what that does is it mops up dopamine
that sits in the space in between two cells.
And if that re-uptake is blocked,
what you get is an awful lot of dopamine floating around this space.
The flood of dopamine sends the feel-good network
in the brain into overdrive,
producing a sense of euphoria and self-assurance
making the user more animated and talkative.
Hey hey! No way!
Since filming, we've had to conceal the identity of Liam's friend
for legal reasons.
Its not like energy. That's what amphetamine is. That's energy.
Cocaine's more of a, like...
A clean, I swear. It makes you feel fresher.
Its all about how you're feeling on the day.
And who you're with.
Cocaine's main effects are emotional.
The user quite rapidly feels more confident, talkative, assertive,
sometimes quite garrulous, even aggressive,
and all of those effects relate to the amount of cocaine that's taken.
Back in Bristol, Damian and Josie are getting in a second line
before the guests start to arrive.
The second one. You've got to have one after another,
especially the first one, just to get you super-high, innit, Jos?
Oh, go on, rack us up one, then. Go on, then.
What am I supposed to do? Stand here and watch him snorting it?
I think we can make it bigger than that.
Come on, Jos.
Get that down you, Josie.
All right!
'You feel like you gotta do stuff, you gotta do something,
'you gotta run around, climb the walls, like, dance,'
you gotta, you know, go on a rampage.
Transform...!
Pow, pow!
Bagpuss in the house.
I'm feeling buzzing', mate. Buzzin'!
Innit, Alfina? She knows. I mean, look at the size of her nose.
'Definitely cocaine makes you want to dance.'
Makes you feel horny as well so, erm,
you, er, generally want to dance next to really good-looking girls.
Feelings of excitement and sexual desire are caused by the release of
dopamine and noradrenaline, another chemical messenger in the brain.
It floods into the feel-good network and also the emotional centre.
Noradrenaline is normally released when you're in danger.
It makes you more alert and ready for action.
Cocaine also suppresses the area of the brain
involved in decision-making. This makes people more impulsive.
LIAM: It does definitely make you feel horny.
It's a horny drug.
Say you're having sex with a bird, man, if she's on it as well,
I'm going to have a good night then.
It does help, man, I swear. It's like a Viagra-type thing.
Coke definitely changes your sex drive,
you just want to have sex all night.
Or all day, whenever you take coke.
'Er, I would say sex is better on coke, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
'As much as it numbs you, er,'
it accentuates everything so you can do a lot of things for longer,
erm, which is a good thing.
This is because cocaine makes the body produce a chemical which increases blood flow to the penis.
stimulating an erection, just like Viagra. The chemical also delays ejaculation.
But it can cause problems - if users take cocaine regularly, or take a lot
in one session, it can produce too much noradrenaline in an area of the brain called the hippocampus.
This can stop male users getting an erection.
Sometimes you can't get a hard-on if you've had too much, like. Nothing there.
People have always been drawn to the stimulating powers of the coca plant.
Indigenous tribes have been chewing the unrefined leaves for at least eight thousand years.
But it wasn't until 1860 that a German chemist finally cracked
how to get the active ingredient from the leaves, and cocaine was born.
Soon it was discovered that cocaine was an anaesthetic,
the first ever found, and it revolutionised medicine.
I have the grandest headache medicine in the world - try it.
There was an explosion in legal highs. You could find cocaine
in everything from tooth drops to haemorrhoid plasters.
It's reported even Coca Cola used to pack 60mg of cocaine into every serving.
But by the turn of the 20th century, cocaine was becoming too popular.
The dangers of addiction were realised and it was outlawed round the world.
It looked like cocaine was set to become a part of history.
But it didn't work out how the lawmakers hoped.
Today, cocaine is more widespread than ever and presents a massive problem for the police.
Five thousand people are sentenced for possessing or selling cocaine every year in the UK.
But it is estimated that the police only seize about 1.3 per cent
of the cocaine distributed in Britain.
Stay still.
PC Adrian Parsons, the Drugs Liaison Officer for Kent Police, is fighting back.
He uses cutting-edge technology to prove that drug dealers' money
has come from selling cocaine so that it can be confiscated from them.
This is an ion track itemiser. It's a drug detection machine.
It's looking for traces of drugs rather than bulk amounts.
It's looking for stuff that you can't see.
The whole banking system has been contaminated with cocaine from drug dealers' and users' money.
Using the most sophisticated system to do this, if you took ten notes off the street,
the likelihood is that at least nine of them will be contaminated with cocaine.
It contaminates everything, it literally is everywhere.
But most notes in circulation only have tiny amounts of cocaine on them.
So It is the abnormally high readings that PC Parsons looks for.
And it isn't just bank notes that he is interested in testing.
The police squad visit randomly selected pubs and clubs...
with the full support of the licensees...
to do spot checks with a mobile cocaine scanner
that can detect tiny amounts of the drug on someone's hand.
Anyone that wants to stay in the pub has to agree to be tested.
And those that test positive get questioned and searched.
There are two bags on the floor and very high traces of cocaine on your hands.
I wouldn't drink too much more of that, mate.
'In relation to what has happened in here now, we walked in the door
'and naturally when I walk in if there are people playing pool look at the pool table,
'look at them, have a quick scan around'
and there was nothing on the floor.
I have gone to the bar, to turn round and watch these two
and they have walked around the back here and they have bent down
as if to load the table
and other officers looked and there are two bags of cocaine.
The chap, I have scanned his hand with mobile trace.
He has come up with significant reading of cocaine on his hands.
I have come round here and on the floor is what I believe to be a wrap of cocaine.
I would say it's half a gram of cocaine, probably around £20, £25 worth.
The incredible growth of cocaine into all sections of society began in the 1960s.
It was catapulted into infamy when the drug took a starring role in the Hollywood blockbuster Easy Rider.
It became the drug of the moment and there was an explosion in demand,
which was met by an explosion in supply from South America.
An international supply chain sprang up and drug smugglers
became household names.
The biggest drug lord of them all,
Pablo Escobar, was said to be one of the richest men in the world, making millions of dollars every day.
But the cocaine business has expanded its product range since Escobar's day.
Now there is cocaine for every budget.
This stuff here is like £40 a gram.
You can tell the difference because
this is more powdery, whereas this stuff here which is £80 a gram,
the good stuff is really rocky, and you can see a little shine in it.
Just chop it up.
That's the good stuff, you can taste the difference.
That cheap stuff, it kind of hurts your nose.
This stuff doesn't at all, it just goes up there nice and smoothly.
Snorting too much of any type of coke can harm the nose.
As it hits the delicate lining inside the nostril,
it causes the blood vessels to constrict and shut down,
depriving the tissue of blood and oxygen.
Eventually, the tissue weakens and dies.
This can cause a hole or perforation to develop in the nose.
An operation is often required to repair this damage.
Consultant surgeon Sandeep Paun
is a leading specialist in nose reconstruction.
His patient today made a hole in his nose through regular cocaine use.
He's asked to be kept anonymous.
As you know, we are going to be sorting out your nasal septum perforation today.
When was the last time you used it regularly?
Regularly, six months previous.
OK. There are certainly no guarantees we can close the perforation completely.
Certainly after cocaine use, closure of septal perforations is difficult.
I only found out about the hole
when I went to the doctor's and he pulled a scab out of the nose,
which covered the hole, which then became really scary.
When you look at Danniella Westbrook, once you see what happened to her,
her nose actually collapsed
and the scariest thing is that you think its going to happen to you.
The operation requires the patient's nose to be cut open and split in two.
The images can be very graphic.
We're just going to look in this gentleman's nose now.
We're going through the nostrils, having a look inside.
What we can see at the front of the septum is the hole.
It's actually relatively small for a patient who has had cocaine abuse.
You would expect to see it much larger than this.
Often these perforations can progress way beyond the size we see here.
Knife, please.
Sometimes doing it you would take a line and you would have
a real bad burning sensation from the start of your nose right the way through to the back of your throat,
really painful.
The next day when you wake up you have scabs
and there's parts of your nose you are actually blowing out.
With chronic cocaine abuse,
as the perforation gets bigger and bigger,
the cartilage gets weaker and weaker because there
is not enough support
and as the top of the nose begins to collapse, one can end up with a boxer-type appearance.
Scissors please.
I have seen patients where the whole middle of the nose has gone
and you just have one nasal cavity and everything just collapses inwards.
I was doing it every day of the week. It doesn't worry you at the time when
you are doing it obviously, but afterwards, your nose is sore as hell,
times when you nose is bleeding it makes you have regrets doing it in the first place.
OK, so what we see here, inside the nose, is the lining on one side, you can see
the hole through the lining, so initially cocaine would have created
a hole in the lining but not through the cartilage,
but eventually it will have worked its way through the cartilage and eventually through the other side.
The fact that cocaine is mixed with all sorts of contaminants including
baking soda, glucose and in the worst case scenario even talcum powder,
can cause an intense inflammatory response.
This inflammation can cause the flesh in the nose to die even more rapidly
Ironically, Mr Paun actually administers cocaine to the patient to stop bleeding.
Patients don't snort it up beforehand or anything, but we give them a small amount
in liquid form.
I'm just taking out a little bead of cartilage, from the back end
of the nasal septum which we are then going to replace the front end with.
The bit of cartilage is going to close off the hole.
So you can see on one side here, the lining has been completely closed
where there was a hole before.
As we look on the other side,
similarly there is no hole there now.
I run a fairly specialist nasal practice in the city of London
where there is a lot of money floating around.
I must see a patient every few weeks with nasal problems related to cocaine exposure.
City high fliers and cocaine have been synonymous for decades.
The drug became the ultimate status symbol in the booming '80s
when greed was good and bankers were heroes.
It was the champagne drug, a sophisticated show of extravagance.
But in the middle of this cocaine honeymoon a new form of the drug appeared - crack.
See this cute little vial here - it's crack. Rock cocaine.
The most addictive form.
You think it's the glamour drug of the '80s?
That's the point of this little reminder.
It can kill you. And if you've got to die for something, this sure as hell ain't it.
Crack is simply another form of cocaine that is smoked rather than snorted.
Because the surface area of the lungs is much bigger
than that of the membranes in the nose, the drug is absorbed
much more quickly, making the hit faster and more intense.
The speed and intensity of the hit makes it much more addictive.
The press and politicians warned of an epidemic.
Crack became the number one public enemy.
The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, has described the cocaine-based drug, crack,
as "a spectre hanging over Europe."
The high from crack is so powerful, its users can become totally consumed by the drug.
It becomes more important than eating or washing,
and this leads to a rapid deterioration in addicts' health and appearance.
Dramatic drug awareness campaigns showed the damage it could do.
Crack became associated with drug addicts and poverty.
But this didn't dent the unassailable glamorous image of powder cocaine,
which remained in massive demand.
This led to trafficking on a vast scale and the price to fall from £150 to £50 a gram.
As the amount of cocaine imported into Britain has soared,
the purity on the street has fallen dramatically.
No-one knows this better than the Forensic Science Service.
They analyse the purity of cocaine seized by customs and the police
to gather vital intelligence about the supply chain.
The purer the seizure, the closer its source will be to the importer.
We're in the main storage area of the drugs laboratory.
This is where the main seizures are stored while they are being examined.
Approximately 80% of the drugs in this room are cocaine.
On a typical day this lab, one of seven across Britain,
will examine 100 kg of cocaine worth £50 million pounds.
Just a small fraction of the three tonnes,
worth 1.5 billion pounds, that was seized in the UK between 2008 and 2009.
Cocaine seized as it is being smuggled into Britain is relatively pure.
This is a bag of approximately 1kg of cocaine powder,
It contains 79% cocaine and is good importation quality.
But when the FSS test cocaine from the street,
seized from dealers and users, they find it is much less pure.
The typical street range of cocaine is perhaps 3 to 30%, commonly 10 to 20%.
We have seen cocaine powders containing perhaps only 1% cocaine.
Dealers cut cocaine with bulking agents to increase their profit margin.
Most of the white powder sold as cocaine is actually made up of something else that looks like it -
sugars such as lactose or glucose, or anaesthetics such as benzocaine or lignocaine.
The benzocaine and lignocaine will mimic the effects of cocaine
in terms of, if you test it,
cocaine will give you a numbing effect, benzocaine and lignocaine will do likewise.
Just by sight, you are not going to know what the quality of the cocaine is,
and you may not know what is present in the powder before you buy it.
As the night progresses, the Bristol house party is in full flow.
The high from even relatively pure cocaine only lasts for 30 or 40 minutes,
so Damian has been working his way through his supplies.
Must be about 11 o'clock now. Yeah, I've done about four or five lines.
It's very more-ish. You just want to do more and more, cos the effect wears away quite quickly,
so you have another line and another line.
As the cocaine travels around the body in the blood,
it passes through the liver, which begins to process and break down the drug.
After 30 minutes, half the cocaine has been broken down, and the high is over.
This process happens much more quickly with cocaine than with other drugs, such as cannabis or ecstasy.
To keep feeling good on coke, people have to keep doing more lines.
This can lead to people bingeing on it, with serious consequences.
'The most coke I've done was in a club in Bristol.'
We had literally done about an eighth between the three of us before,
and then I had a gram left, and I just thought I might as well, the coke wasn't that good.
So I snuck into the bathroom, took a line of coke that big,
it was a gram.
If it was good coke, I would probably have died,
but as soon as I took it, my heart raced, I started to sweat so much,
and, literally, I couldn't stand up any more.
I had to lie down for at least half an hour.
Damian's heart was racing after his huge line
because it is not just the brain where cocaine has an effect.
The drug also directly stimulates nerve cells in the heart to produce noradrenaline,
from their tips straight into the muscle fibres.
This normally happens when you're in danger, to make your heart beat faster,
so that you can fight or get away from trouble.
It also causes blood vessels to squeeze and constrict.
Blood pressure starts to rise.
Cocaine increases your pulse rate and your blood pressure
and it makes your heart beat more quickly.
All of those things mean that your heart needs an increased blood supply.
It needs more oxygen to beat more quickly and beat more strongly.
Unfortunately, what cocaine does is, it also causes constriction
of those blood vessels that supply blood to the heart.
It's like putting your foot on the accelerator and pinching the fuel line.
The heart is starved of the oxygen it desperately needs to beat faster,
putting it under enormous strain.
This can cause a heart attack.
In the first hour after taking cocaine,
the risk of having a heart increases by 20 fold.
Cocaine also causes the build up of plaque in blood vessels over long periods, just like fatty foods.
This plaque can tear, causing a blood clot to form,
blocking the artery, causing a heart attack at any time.
About a quarter of heart attacks among people under 45 years of age are cocaine related.
It doesn't take much cocaine to affect the heart's function -
a couple of lines can have a massive impact.
Even occasional users can have problems, taking them by surprise.
Tom is a 19-year-old musician who lives in Portsmouth.
He started taking cocaine a couple of years ago.
I was just at a party and, literally, someone was doing it and they just said,
"Do you want that one?" And I just went, "Yeah, OK."
I was just really chatting and just full of energy.
And just like, "Whoa!" Do you know what I mean?
From that party,
it became a thing where I would do it a few times a week, mostly at the weekends.
I was probably taking about a gram over the course of a weekend.
Tom started to get occasional chest pains,
so he went to a doctor, who told him it was indigestion.
A few weeks later, I was having a gathering with my friends, got some coke, took it, thought nothing of it.
The next day, Tom visited London with his family
I'd had this pain in my arm all day, but I didn't take notice of it. Then, all of a sudden,
pain shot up my arm and my chest started going tight
and then I lost my breath. I tapped my mum on the shoulder to try to get her attention.
I couldn't hear or feel nothing. It was like everything was on mute
and I was just looking at life, but without being in it.
And then I just had this breath come up and I went, "I need to go to hospital."
Then it was straight through to the emergency rooms,
in a bed with your oxygen mask, with your heart wired up,
with needle in your arm, fluids going in.
Everything they had to keep me going was on.
Absolutely terrified. It was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me
The cocaine that Tom had taken caused a clot to form, blocking blood getting to his heart.
It slowed to just 28 beats per minute and he had a heart attack.
What have I done? That was my exact question to myself.
What have I done?
I didn't realise the effect that anything would have on people
until you're there in... what you could say a death-bed, basically...
It could have been your death bed.
..with family next to you, in tears.
The scariest thing ever.
There's nothing worse than thinking that you could be dead,
cos that's the end. Once you're gone, you're gone.
The damage to Tom's heart meant that, at just 17 years old,
he would need a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat.
That's the battery.
Then the wire, um, actually comes up here
and then it goes round and then it goes into your heart
and into the chambers that aren't working,
and it gives that, um, electrical shock
that it needs to work properly.
It's in there for ever.
Without that, I'm not...
I'm not here.
Although still rare, the number of cocaine-related deaths in Britain
has increased five times in the last decade, as cocaine use has become more common.
But cocaine maintains its appeal
and users take even greater risks by mixing it with other substances, like alcohol.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
For Liam, drinking and cocaine go hand in hand.
He and his friends are at their local for a session.
'I don't have it unless I've been drinking as well.'
I couldn't just sniff coke ever, no chance. I wouldn't do it.
'You always want a beer after, or you want to be drunk before you have some.'
Drinking, it's a must for me. And for most people.
Many share Liam's view. 61% of people that take cocaine drink at the same time.
One of the side effects of cocaine is that people can feel a bit anxious,
a little bit too jittery, and consuming alcohol kind of turns the volume down on that.
So it can reduce that anxiety and that twitchiness.
Ryan does a line.
< How does it feel?
That feels good, man.
< On top of the world!
Say if you've been drinking all day and you have a line, it helps you out, you know?
I think it feels better.
When users drink and take coke at the same time, their liver forms a chemical called cocaethylene.
This cocaethylene is pumped through the blood up to the brain, where, like cocaine,
it also causes the release of dopamine, making users high.
The effects are quite similar to cocaine - there's euphoria,
confidence, talkativeness, but the effects last a lot longer.
The high from cocaethylene can make people feel less anxious than just cocaine...
..but it also stimulates nerve cells in the heart
to produce lots of noradrenaline, making it beat three times faster than cocaine alone.
The blood vessels get even tighter, and blood pressure shoots up,
making users much more likely to die from a heart attack than taking cocaine on its own.
The risks from mixing coke and booze are all the worse
because cocaine allows users to drink far more than they normally would.
Half of regular users drank for more than 12 hours on their last night out on cocaine,
and a third for more than 24 hours.
If you've been sniffing, you can drink loads. You're not pissed. You're up,
You're on a stimulant. Beer is a bit more of a downer.
These prolonged sessions not only put the heart under strain,
the quantity of alcohol consumed can also harm the rest of the body.
You can drink all night. I suppose it's bad. If you don't realise what you're drinking, then...
THEY CHATTER
For many, coke has become nothing more than a pick-me-up with their pint,
but it could get them arrested.
Back in Kent, the police drug squad are moving onto a nightclub
and are set to be busy, because it's night-time when the cocaine detector gets the most hits.
'Cocaine is everywhere. It's seen as a recreational drug, so to speak, and people use it quite openly.'
I think cocaine is so popular because it is so easy to get hold of.
It's probably even easier than cannabis to get hold of.
Can I check your hands, please?
Just give me your hand.
Ever used drugs?
People that want to come into the club this evening have to agree to a hand scan.
When we do these operations, we would normally test between 200 and 300 people a night.
Out of those 200 or 300, probably 30-ish would come up with significant traces of cocaine on their hands,
and following on from that,
probably anywhere between two and seven or eight of those 30 would have cocaine on them.
83% of clubbers surveyed across the country said they had used cocaine in the last year.
When did you last use cocaine? Yesterday.
Thanks for being honest. Makes it easier.
Have you used cocaine? Yesterday night was the last time. Yesterday night?
You sure? Yes. I'm going to give you a search, OK?
What's your name? Joe.
Many more people test positive for cocaine than are found in possession of the drug.
You've got exceptionally high traces of cocaine...
The people that trigger high readings on the scanner
but don't have any cocaine on them haven't broken the law,
but they are refused entry to the club and ordered to go home for the night.
As the evening wears on, the scanner keeps getting hit after hit, and the searches continue.
Do you understand the reason why I'm searching you? For drugs.
Have you got any drugs on you? No, Officer.
The stakes are high.
People that are found with cocaine on them could face jail.
What is this, then? That's a bit of powder, mate. Tell me what it is. Cocaine.
Have you got any more on you? No... Eh?
What's that, then?
Put your hand out. Keep your hand out.
Are you arresting me?
POLICEMAN READS RIGHTS That's fine.
Do you understand the reason why you've been arrested?
Yes, I do, Officer. Is there anything you want to say? So much for a decent birthday, eh?
This man later pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine.
Because he had a relatively small amount and it was his first offence, he avoided a custodial sentence.
Cocaine use has gone up, without a shadow of a doubt, over the last ten years, quite a lot.
'Out of rehab and straight into serious trouble,
'Lindsay Lohan seems to be out of control.'
We also found a small amount of cocaine in her pocket.
Despite becoming widespread, cocaine remains a newsworthy story.
'Singer Pete Doherty has pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine.
'Magistrates were told the drugs were found in his car.'
Every time a famous person gets caught snorting a line or in possession,
it's guaranteed to make headlines.
A UN report blamed celebrity cocaine culture for making the drug socially acceptable in Britain.
In the UK, we take more than people in America,
or anywhere else in Europe.
As the number of people that take coke have gone up, rates of addiction have soared.
Sometimes when it starts to wear off, you feel like you want another line,
but that depends on the person.
Some people have addictive personalities. I don't.
When you first start doing coke it's very addictive. You annihilate it and take it to the extremes.
These days, I don't take coke that often.
But last year I was taking it pretty much every day.
Now it would be special occasions going out.
When I did take it, often you're just chasing that high all the time.
It was difficult to stop doing it because you're doing it all the time but now I enjoy it more
because it's much more sporadic.
One of the unusual things about cocaine is, I think it does tend to creep up on people.
People can use cocaine intranasally, snorting it, for many months and years
within what they would consider quite a functional social setting.
Gradually, the amount and frequency and the consequences of use build up.
Cocaine is powerfully addictive, but the need to use is psychological, not physical.
Addicts become obsessed with the cocaine high.
There's a sense that being addicted to cocaine is a disorder of memory.
The world becomes a place in which people, places, objects, even smells
have become quite strongly associated with using cocaine.
And they become very powerful triggers to make the person use.
About 1 person in 20 who takes the drug for the first time becomes addicted in the first year.
And about a fifth of users become addicted in their lifetime.
Soon after getting a job in the city as a money broker,
Jonathan developed a serious addiction to cocaine.
My first line ever, it just blew me away.
I was strutting round thinking I'm Billy Big-bollocks, thinking I own the place.
It made me feel like I was the most important person in the room.
And it very quickly progressed from half a gram every couple of weeks,
to a gram every week, to two grams three times a week,
then suddenly I might be going out every night of the week
and I would come into work on a Monday saying, "Oh, heavy weekend - might have a light one tonight"
and it gets to five o'clock and someone says, "Jon, you coming for a quick one?"
I say, "Yeah, just a quick one, that's not a problem."
Go to bar, have a quick one. Quick one turns into four. There's a guy on his way
because the phones have come out and there's a bit of powder going round.
We go from pub to bar, then from bar to club there's a guy on his way with some more stuff.
Then back to the office, we would be in the smoking room, on the dealing-room floor,
doing line after line off the table.
Well, I'D be doing line after line, that's the thing.
When I'm using, I think everyone else is behaving like me.
Truth is, when I look back, I am, far and away, the worst.
Get to 5:00 or 6:00am, people start coming into work and it's like...
I've got to go and sit at my desk.
And I've got to try and stay awake and do my job.
I struggle through it, thinking all day, "I've got to go home tonight.
"I got to get some sleep."
Some weeks maybe I wouldn't go home between Monday and Friday.
It would be three, four grams every night I could get it -
six or seven nights a week.
I would take as much as I could afford to buy on any one night.
The repeated exposure to cocaine that an addict's brain is subjected to causes it to physically change.
To regulate the constant triggering of the feel-good network,
the brain kills off some of the receptors on the nerve cells.
With fewer receptors on each nerve cell, it takes much more dopamine to trigger happy feelings...
more than is released by normal sources, such as food or sex.
Only cocaine can release enough dopamine to trigger their feel-good network.
After a while, addicts crave a line not to feel high, but to feel less bad...
more normal.
I did get pleasure from it still, occasionally, but less as time went on,
less each time I did it.
It very quickly fell away.
Until, eventually, I was just doing it because I needed it.
It wasn't making me feel good any more.
Eventually, because I am so petrified every time I am at work that I am going to cock up,
do something wrong, that people don't like me, people think I am an idiot...
I am so petrified that, eventually, I am shaking, having panic attacks,
I've got mad paranoia and I phone in one day and say, "I can't go to work,
"I think I'm having a nervous breakdown."
Signed off work by his doctor on full pay, Jonathan's addiction spiralled out of control.
I isolated more and more and more.
But I keep doing it because it's all I know how to do...
..so it carries on.
And, er,
some stuff went on, my granddad died
and I couldn't go to be by his bedside because I had to go and use.
A week after that, I manufacture an argument with my family and I end up
fighting my little old mum for money for coke.
I don't want to be doing this but I have to because I have to have it.
They end up pinning me down and phoning the police.
The police are marching me out of my Mum and Dad's house
and we're going down the stairs and I just can't do this any more.
I see a knife in the kitchen, so I slip the guy's grip,
run into the kitchen, grab the knife and slash my wrists up
and the ambulance turns up and they take me to the hospital.
Having reached rock bottom, Jonathan sought help from a support group for cocaine addicts.
I had nowhere else to go.
For me, that's the reality of my addiction. I have to be broken.
I have to know that I can't do it myself.
I have to have that illusion of control shattered.
He has managed to stay clean for three years
and now helps other people working to beat their addictions.
Truth is, I never, ever want to go back to it. Never.
Because no matter how long I chased that first high I never got close to it, never got close to it again.
Quick, cover. Oh, I'm dead. I'm dead.
It's 1:00 am and Liam is at a friend's house for a session on the Xbox.
He's been doing coke for several hours now.
Best one, that was, for me. Been trying to chill out all afternoon.
Had that now, so feel sound, like.
Look at him! Watch this - bang!
And look - get him out the fence, man!
But pretty soon, a day of drinking and doing lines begins to take its toll on Liam.
Can't chill out, man. Really agitated, had a few lines. Just creeps up on you, as well.
I've been drinking most of the day
Cocaine causes the adrenal glands to produce cortisol -
the stress hormone.
This normally happens when we're in threatening situations, to prepare us for physical action.
Elevated levels of the hormone also make people feel anxious and restless.
The longer a cocaine session lasts the more these unpleasant feelings can be felt
as the level of cortisol rises.
Mate, this is dead hard.
Feel really spaced out now, just want to go home and lie on my bed.
Going to be tossing and turning, doing my head in, like.
Meanwhile, over in Bristol, Damian's supplies of cocaine have run out
and the party is starting to wind down.
Evening's been cool, enjoyed myself,
but the coke's worn down now.
Just need some more, ha!
Kind of winding down, yeah, yeah.
By 11:00am the next morning, everyone is suffering the full effects of a big night.
Damian has disappeared altogether and Josie has only just gone to bed,
surrounded by the aftermath of the party.
Have you seen it, the state of the place?
What time is it?
Have you been to bed?
What do you think? It's bed time now.
That's all I've got to say on the matter.
Cocaine can cause people to feel down the next day, just like alcohol.
Liam is hoping that a fry-up might make the world seem a better place.
His friend's identity is concealed for legal reasons.
I'll have a large breakfast. Two breakfasts.
I feel quite intoxicated, I do. You know when you're just like...
Feel like shite. Feel poisoned.
I feel a bit drained, to be fair.
Takes it out of you. Never again.
It makes you feel bad after a blow out, the day after.
When I have been on a session I get a bit cranky, mardy,
I supposed I've had no sleep or been trying to get to sleep.
The cocaine hangover is down to the way in which the drug makes users feel high.
The euphoria of cocaine comes from the release of
large amounts of the feel-good chemical messenger dopamine.
Because the drug blocks the dopamine from being re-cycled, it stays in the gap between nerve cells.
Eventually, it breaks down and disappears.
It takes several days for nerve cells to replenish the stocks of dopamine.
After a cocaine binge, the shortage of dopamine stops the feel-good network functioning properly,
making users feel down.
The cocaine comedown is really about feeling depressed and fed up.
And that is because the brain's dopamine system -
this pleasure chemical - is struggling to get back to normal.
But Liam's hangover is all the worse because the cocaine he took allowed him to drink so much.
It creeps up on you. Don't realise how much you're drinking then it hits you.
But, despite the hangover, it looks like Liam will be heading out again very soon.
Are you getting any more?
I've still got some left.
For Liam, the cocaine hangover is just the price you pay for a big night out
and the drug is part of normal life.
It's everywhere now. I don't know many people that don't have something to do with it.
A lot of people have it.
It's hard to get away from.
But for Tom, using cocaine changed him irreversibly.
Imagine being told that part of your body's not working, and it's your fault because you took cocaine.
Josie and Damian are split on whether they'll give up coke.
I ain't going to give up coke I ain't got no reason to.
I'm going to knock coke on the head quite soon. I'm 29 now, coming into my 30's.
I want to get really on top of my entrepreneurial activities
and I don't think coke has got a part in that at all.
Despite the risks, cocaine maintains its appeal to many.
With its price at an all-time low, it has never been more accessible
and the drug looks set to become a part of more people's lives.
Cocaine has been a remarkably popular drug, globally, for the last 100, 150 years.
I don't think its appeal is going to diminish any time soon.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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