Cocaine & Athletes

When you hear about an athlete dying suddenly and the autopsy reports that he had a heart attack with multiple dead areas in the heart and dilated cardiomyopathy, think of cocaine. Normally, I advocate for at least trying cocaine. But cocaine and athletics are not to be mixed.

Many top athletes take cocaine because they think that it improves their game. In 1884, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychiatry, showed that within minutes of snorting cocaine, a person can contract his muscles with more force and react faster to external stimuli. For example, a basketball player can dribble around an opponent and respond faster to moves to block him. Cocaine is a potent stimulant that makes an athlete more alert. It makes him feel that he can accomplish more and makes him willing to suffer more. A basketball player on cocaine may attempt to take shots further out from the basket than he usually does. A football player may play until he loses consciousness. These effects can last up to 3 hours.

A recent study in the International Journal of Cardiology shows that exercising after taking cocaine markedly increases a person's chances of developing irregular heart beats and dying. Cocaine is a potent stimulant that makes your heart beat faster. Low doses of cocaine usually do not cause significant irregular heart beats, while higher doses often do. This study shows that a low dose of cocaine that is safe at rest can cause irregular heart beats during exercise. Cocaine augments the effects of the tremendous amounts of the body's own natural stimulants called epinephrine and norepinephrine which raise blood pressure and makes the heart beat faster, stronger and more irregularly.

Sources for this article: drmirkin.com