Effects - The visibility of coca intoxication to an external observer

[helikophis]

I met a Western Taoist of sorts, and we got to talking. I told him about my interest in drug use, and he told me that he is an occasional user of buccal coca. His technique is standard, baking soda and coca in tea bags, held in the mouth. He reported something interesting, so I thought I would share. This is a paraphrase of what he told me:

I've been using coca on and off for a while now, and as the effects are relatively subtle, I didn't think that it was something that other people would really notice. I've done it in public and around friends many times, and no-one has ever commented on anything strange (except when my mouth was full of green goo!). Recently, I was doing some writing and I thought it might be useful to chew a bit of coca. I did two tea bags over about three hours, each containing approximately one teaspoon of coca and a quarter teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate.

A couple of hours later, I headed to a class in bagua/hsingyi, a mixed system of Chinese internal martial art. Personally, I did not notice a difference in my performance, but my instructor definitely did. After observing me for a few minutes, he commented "you seem a bit distracted tonight, is everything alright?" Now, I put this down to co-incidence. Perhaps I was a bit distracted.

A few weeks later, having forgotten about this incident, I again chewed a couple of bags of coca before going to class. Once again, the instructor commented on a subtle difference in my performance, in a similar way. This time I did not put it down to co-incidence: I believe the coca was definitely effecting my performance or at least my "energy" (attentional state, the quality of my movements, etc.).

I still believe that this is too subtle to be noticed under ordinary circumstances, after all, it is part of the instructor's job to be paying attention to very subtle shifts in the student's physical and mental attitude. The particular instructor involved has been found to be an extraordinarily perceptive individual in this respect, so it is not entirely surprising that he would notice the effects of a drug, even a mild one, in his students. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that coca seems definitely to produce perceptible changes in the behaviour of the user.

I thought you guys might find this interesting; I did. Comments welcome.

Reputation Comments on this post:

interesting information well written and clearly presented