Here’s the science behind how crack cocaine affects your brain

Okay, so Toronto mayor Rob Ford has become kind of an inadvertent public service message for why you shouldn't smoke crack cocaine, but exactly what is crack, how does affect our brains and how addictive is it?

It was back in May that news first surfaced about an alleged video up for sale that showed Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine at a party. We heard months of denials about this, but finally, on November 5th, Ford actually admitted to it, saying that he tried it while in "a drunken stupor." Since it's been a popular topic of conversation since then, even catching repeated air-time on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, let's go into a bit about what the deal is with crack, and some of the science behind it.

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This great video was created by Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown of AsapSCIENCE, which gives a perfect short overview of where the drug comes from, how it's made, how it affects our brain and why it's really a bad idea to use it:

Exactly how addictive is crack cocaine? Well, that depends. One person can try it and never pick up a pipe ever again, while the next person might become addicted after just one 'hit'. The problem is, no one can really tell beforehand exactly which of the two they'll be.

One factor is the extremely fast 'high' that you get from crack — on the order of 8 seconds, compared to the 10 minutes before plain-old regular cocaine takes full effect. The length of time that high lasts is another. The high from cocaine can last for up to 30 minutes. For crack, it's down to a third of that, at the most. So, to keep the high for the same amount of time, it takes at least three times as many hits of crack, and that's at least three times as many hits to your crashing dopamine levels, which is going to make addiction more likely.

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While the drug's addictiveness may be overly-hyped, as neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart of Columbia University told CBC's Day 6 back in September, it's doubtful you'll find any 'casual' users. According to what Robin Haslam of Addiction Canada told CBC News, and what a former crack addict interviewed by Angela Hennessy of Vice.com said, they've never met one, so it's likely they agree.

Here in Canada, the statistics on crack cocaine use show that, although it's apparently very easy to get ahold of, only about one per cent of people aged 15 or over admitted to using crack in a 2012 national survey. That's down from 1.9 per cent reported in 2006, so hopefully that's a good sign.

(Photo courtesy: The Canadian Press)

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