Health - Can cocaine permanently enlarge your adrenal glands?

[xstalkrx]

someone stopped using cocaine about 3 months ago. someone stopped because he was having panic attacks. Since stopping, he has had anxiety but it has slowly gotten better.

Is it possible that cocaine could enlarge your adrenal glands and cause excess adrenalin to be chronically introduced into your blood stream causing anxiety..panic attacks..etc? Could this happen over a period of days...weeks..months...etc even after cocaine has been stopped for many months?

[Ontherooftops]

Lars -M. Gunne1 and John Jonsson1
(1) Department of Physiology and the Department of Alcohol Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 60, Sweden
Received: 26 January 1964
Summary A single acute injection and 14 daily injections of 100 mg/kg of cocaine did not alter the brain content of noradrenaline or the adrenal gland content of adrenaline and noradrenaline in rats. The urinary adrenaline and noradrenaline was greatly increased, however, during 14 days of cocaine administration. On the 14th day of treatment the sum of adrenaline and noradrenaline in the urine was five times the normal level. After withdrawal there was a slow return, especially of the urinary noradrenaline which was not quite normal 17 days after withdrawal. The findings are discussed in relation to the known dependence-producing properties of cocaine and compared with those of morphine.

Swim thinks anxiety is definately a result of long term cocaine use, no matter what the physical cause. Most ex cocaine/crack users he knows are a little more jumpy than the average lab rat. In general, anxiety is a common symptom of any drug withdrawl and recovery.

One rat told him that stretching regularly helps a great deal with cocaine withdrawl.

Physical excersize will DEFINATELY help ease the anxiety associated with any drug withdrawl (and in life in general).

[sylenth]

do'nt know about the adrenal glands swelling? swim suffers from these symptons 2. drug of choice has been coke for years. swim has never been big in 2 weed but lately swim has been forcing himself 2 smoke lots of weed to try numb these disorders. swim finds it helps abit. hope this helps cos anxiety sucks, luckily swim does'nt suffer from paranoia like swims partner... : )

[xstalkrx]

swim hasnt even smoked a cig in months...and has consumed maybe 10 alcoholic beverages in the last 6 months. along with a exercise regimen including lots of cardio, swim has gotten so much better. but a slight bit of anxiety remains. hes hopeful that he will be 100 percent after another 6 months to a year of staying 100 percent clean from ANY drug.

xstalkrx added 620 Minutes and 48 Seconds later...

swim notices that his anxiety is temporarily elevated slightly after working out at the gym...lifting weights...running long distances. one reason he is thinking his adrenaline might be out of whack? or maybe its just part of the anxiety.....

[yourimaginaryfriend]

swim agrees about the exercise. getting in shape and doing loads of cardio is a great way to quit coke, if swiy get to that point where you have to. it gives swiy something to focus on and strive toward, aside from getting high. i have noticed a lot of ex-cokeheads are into some kind of extreme activity like intense exercise or skydiving or mountain biking etc. the brain is addicted to the intense overstimulation and still craves it, but in safer ways.

[Lobsang]

Is it possible that cocaine could enlarge your adrenal glands and cause excess adrenalin to be chronically introduced into your blood stream causing anxiety..panic attacks..etc? Could this happen over a period of days...weeks..months...etc even after cocaine has been stopped for many months?

No. Actually cocaine use can possibley result in adrenal fatigue however. Making a person tired all the time and depressed. Remember the words to this song about cocaine.

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...tid=61&lpage=3