How Long Does Crack Cocaine Stay in Your System?

How Long Does Crack Cocaine Stay in Your Urine?

Crack cocaine drug tests look for evidence that the body has recently metabolized (indicating the ingestion of) crack rather than the substance itself. While benzoylecgonine, a byproduct of the body’s metabolism of crack cocaine, takes 6–24 hours to exit the body, it can still be detectable up to five days after the last use. After metabolizing a particularly hazardous drug, our bodies produce molecules known as metabolites. How long does cocaine last in urine? Depending on an individual’s height, weight, and rate of metabolism, the time it takes for crack cocaine to be metabolized ranges from six to twenty-four hours.

How long does crack cocaine stay in your urine? A urine test on crack cocaine is the most common one and is usually performed as a routine test in a company. Its non-invasiveness and ease of administration have made it an industry standard regarding company-wide scheduled drug testing. It is accurate, with most crack cocaine urine tests detecting levels of 300ng/l (nanogram per liter). Finding out “how long does crack cocain stay in your urine?” or “how long does crack cocaine stay in system?” The usual answer is that crack cocaine in urine tests will usually give positive results if the person being tested has ingested crack cocaine 2-5 days before giving a urine sample.

How Long Does Crack Cocaine Stay in Your Blood?

Crack cocaine, also known as freebase, can be detected in blood samples for up to 48 hours after your last use. A positive result for crack cocaine use may be a sign of drug abuse or addiction. It is an illicit drug that can be detected by screening samples of blood collected in a clinical setting.

How long does crack cocaine stay in your blood? Blood tests can detect crack use in a short amount of time. A healthcare provider, legal entity, or employer may order this drug test for various reasons.

Common reasons for performing a drug test include:

• Pre-employment drug testing
• Drug-free workplace programs
• Prescription drug monitoring
• Court-mandated drug testing
• Suspicion of illicit drug use

A doctor may order a blood drug test if you have a history of substance abuse and are showing signs of cocaine use.

How Long Does a Crack Cocaine High Last?

The onset and duration of cocaine vary and depend solely on how the drug is ingested.  Let’s look at how cocaine is ingested and how long the high lasts.

• Injecting Cocaine – the onset of injecting cocaine is ten to fifteen seconds, and the high lasts from 5 to 15 minutes.
• Snorting Cocaine – the onset of snorting cocaine is one to three minutes and the high lasts from 15 to 30 minutes.
• Gumming Cocaine – gumming cocaine is eating it or rubbing it on your gums. The onset of gumming cocaine is 1 to 3 minutes, and the high lasts for 15 to 30 minutes.
• Smoking Crack Cocaine – the onset of smoking crack cocaine is 10 to 15 seconds, and the crack cocaine high lasts for 5 to 15 minutes.

The methods that get cocaine into your system or bloodstream faster allow the drug to wear off faster. The high euphoria one gets from smoking crack cocaine comes on very hard and fast, making it one of the most psychologically addicting drugs. Once the high wears off, the drug leaves you craving more and more of it. You will often hear people say that they continue to smoke crack cocaine, trying to achieve that initial crack cocaine high and euphoria that they got when they took that first hit, and they are never able to obtain it.

 

Side effects of Crack Cocaine

Crack cocaine side effects target the brain’s dopamine cell receptors, releasing large quantities of dopamine into the central nervous system. The resulting feelings of mental alertness, “euphoria”, and increased energy create reinforcing effects on the mind and the body. Crack cocaine produces a short-term high ranging from a few minutes to an hour. This short duration time, combined with ongoing cocaine side effects, makes crack cocaine addiction all the more likely.

While each person’s body may react differently, the most common crack cocaine side effects to consider include the following:

Physical Changes

As a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant drug, crack cocaine speeds up almost every process in your system. Physical changes occur as soon as crack cocaine enters the system, some of which may include:

• Increased heart rate
• Dilated pupils
• Increased blood pressure
• Body temperature rises
• Blood smalls constrict

Adverse Reactions

Some individuals experience adverse cocaine side effects as of the first dose. Adverse reactions include:

• Vertigo
• Muscle twitches
• Tremors

Violent Behavior

As crack cocaine users often try to intensify crack’s “high” effects, large amounts are often consumed in short periods of time. Violent, erratic, and oftentimes bizarre behavior can result from ingesting large doses.

Neurological Effects

Any dose of crack cocaine can cause adverse neurological effects, such as strokes, headaches, seizures, and even coma.

Digestive Problems

Crack cocaine’s stimulant effects on the digestive system can bring on nausea as well as severe abdominal cramping.

Rising Tolerance Level

Tolerance levels continue to rise as long as a person uses cocaine. This side effect in particular, poses the greatest risk for addiction.

Psychosis

As brain functions deteriorate from ongoing crack cocaine use, a person may develop psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and losing touch with reality.

Depression

After so many weeks or months of use, brain chemical levels remain imbalanced. Feelings of depression persist no matter how much crack cocaine a person consumes.

Binge Patterns

Crack cocaine’s short-term “high” effect can easily drive users to take multiple doses to prolong the drug’s effect. As tolerance levels tend to rise quickly, each successive dosage amount grows larger and larger.

Crashing

At the end of a cocaine binge or when a person tries to stop using, users “crash,” which usually entails a long period of sleep that lasts a day or more.

Factors That Determine How Long Crack Cocaine Stays in the System

Many factors, such as the length of your drug addiction, can affect how long cocaine stays in your system. Frequency of use and amount of use are two of the biggest factors that determine how long a drug screening can detect cocaine. But there are others to consider.

Body Fat Composition

One of the crack cocaine metabolites is benzoylecgonine, which generally is stored in fat. So, the more fat tissue a person has, the more storage room, as it were, there is for benzoylecgonine.

Method Of Administration

The method of crack cocaine drug use can determine the effects of crack cocaine on your brain. In other words, the faster it gets to your brain (like when you smoke or inject it as opposed to snorting it), the faster you feel the high or rush of the drug. But the manner of ingestion also affects the time it remains in your body. The quicker it gets into your system, the quicker it leaves. Some methods of crack cocaine use can shorten the window of detection.

Cocaine Metabolites

Crack cocaine metabolites are the compounds that result from cocaine being metabolized into the bloodstream. The metabolites eventually work their way into the urine. A few things can slow the exit of metabolites through your urine. One is dehydration. The more dehydrated you are, the longer crack cocaine will stay in your system. The second is drinking alcohol or caffeine while using crack cocaine. If you take either of these things with crack cocaine, they can slow the metabolization of cocaine.

Treatment for Cocaine Addiction

The best way to pass a cocaine drug test is to stop using it immediately and let the body flush out the toxins naturally. Do not drink alcohol under any circumstance; mixing cocaine with alcohol causes the body to produce a metabolite called cocaethylene, which takes even longer to get out of the system. One should also quit drinking alcohol altogether as mixing cocaine and alcohol causes the creation of cocaethylene in the liver. This substance takes up to 50% longer to metabolize than benzoylecgonine and will also be detected by a cocaine drug test.

Cocaine addiction treatment typically involves cocaine detox and therapy in an inpatient drug rehabilitation program. These programs greatly increase your chances of a successful recovery, even though psychological dependence on cocaine is a severe condition that is difficult to overcome. Suppose you are suffering from cocaine side effects and considering treatment for cocaine addiction. In that case, seeking a substance abuse evaluation from an addiction professional helps determine the right type of support.

Answering the question, ” how long does crack cocaine stay in your system?” may help you decide to find treatment for cocaine addiction. It is the first step toward recovery. It is also the most important step. Once you admit that you’re struggling with cocaine addiction, the only way to go is forward. The brain does not simply go back to normal when the drug use stops. It could take several supports, therapy, counseling, and treatment methods to help you effectively overcome the disease. Not everyone needs cocaine addiction treatment, but such help benefits those who have suffered adverse reactions to their sustained drug use, including cocaine overdose. 

Crack Cocaine Addiction Treatment Recovery Story To Sobriety

Lorraine shares her personal Crack Cocaine Addiction Treatment Recovery Testimonial Video.

Lorraine talks candidly on video about her crack cocaine treatment success and her personal road to recovery.

“If I didn’t change, I was just going to keep going back to jail. I’m Lorraine and I’ve been sober for six years. I’m a recovering alcoholic, heroin addict, and crack cocaine addict.

I was homeless for several years. I called the one person that never gave up on me and that was my mom and within an hour she was at the motel that I was staying at. And I said yes because I didn’t know what I was doing with my life and it was the best phone call I ever made.

After getting out of treatment I did everything that they told me to do. I got a sponsor. She’s still my sponsor. She’s taken me through the steps several times. I went back to school and now I’m one semester away from finishing my Bachelor’s in social work. And then I will start my Master’s in hopes to be a therapist so I can be there for other people.

Being sober is the only reason that I can work towards that.”

Does Crack Cocaine Addiction Treatment Work?

The good news is that no matter how painful the problem of your addiction may be, most people with a substance use disorder can benefit from some form of professional treatment. After finishing drug and alcohol rehab, around 80% of patients say that their quality of life and health have improved.