The habit was first generally spread through the medium of catarrh-cures. Cocaine contracts and deadens the tissue with which it comes in contact, and thus, as in the case of catarrh, relieves the patient from discomfort, making him feel, indeed, as if there were no nose on his face. Its effect, however, lasts only from twenty to thirty minutes.
This is one of the reasons why the cocaine habit is so easily formed. A man taking any powerful stimulant is sure to feel a corresponding depression when the effect of that stimulant has died away, and it then becomes necessary for him to take more of the drug in order to buoy himself up and restore himself to the point of normality. It is among cocaine-users, therefore, not a yearning for any abnormally pleasurable sensation which sends them back again and again to their dosage, but merely their desire to be measurably restored to the comfort which is natural to the normal state. It must be apparent, however, that as soon as it has become necessary for any one to resort to the use of a drug in order to rise to the normal there has been a marked depreciation, physical or mental, and probably both. This explains the fact that many criminals are found to be cocaine-users. No drug so quickly brings about a mental and physical deterioration. It is virtually certain to be a short cut to one of two public institutions, the prison or the madhouse. It will send the average person to the prison first because it is an expensive drug, and the craving for it is more than likely to exhaust his financial resources and then drive him to theft. It is the most expensive of all drug habits. I have known victims who habitually used one hundred and twenty grains a day, at a cost of about seventy dollars a week. This undoubtedly explains the great number who have been made criminals by using cocaine. One who uses it thereby diminishes his earning capacity; while, on the other hand, one who must have it must have money, and much of it.
It may be that this matter of cost explains why the under-world has suddenly taken up heroin instead of cocaine. The former is much cheaper.
While I have only touched upon the opium group and cocaine, I wish to put myself on record now as saying that there is no class of drugs so sure in the end to bring about a deterioration of the physical being as the frequent use of the hypnotic group, or coal-tar products, the sleep-producers. I have never seen more pitiable cases than those who have come to me after they had been taking regularly, during a considerable period, some cure for sleeplessness. This habit not only produces an extreme neurotic condition, but changes the entire temperament of a person. It will turn the most beautiful character into an extreme case of moral degeneracy.