Cocaine is an Adaptogen

"Cocaine is an Adaptogen" means that Cocaine normalizes and stabilizes the body, bringing it into homeostasis.


Article: Why Plants Are (Usually) Better Than Drugs


My response to that article:

Cocaine is a naturally-forming component of the Coca plant, and is the highest-present alkaloid within the plant.

In this case, the drug is not different than the plant: The Cocaine that is extracted to a white powder is the same Cocaine that resides within the plant - hence Cocaine is extracted rather than synthesized (although it is also possible to be produced by synthesis). The Coca plant leaves are also consumed without Cocaine's separate extraction by chewing, or as a tea, or by making it into a butter used for baking, and whatever else.

Although the article author frames his point as plants being superior to their refined derivatives, the positives which the author presses about Coca are exclusively due to the Cocaine molecule, and act where the isolated molecule is administered.




"For Andean Indians, whole coca leaf is the number one medicinal plant. They use it to treat gastrointestinal disturbances; specifically, for both diarrhea and constipation. From the perspective of Western pharmacology, this makes no sense. Cocaine stimulates the gut, it increases bowel activity, so obviously it would be a good treatment for constipation, but what could it do for diarrhea except make it worse?"


This effect is present in the isolated Cocaine molecule, and I give a suggested explanation at the end of this post.

Since Cocaine is the most prevalent alkaloid of the plant and provides the dominant influence upon ingestion of the leaf, if it simply stimulated the bowels (an Adrenaline increase will spur stimulation of metabolism, and Adrenaline is reciprocal to Dopamine), then it will also try to do so when the plant leaf is ingested - and if Cocaine was antithetical to competing reactions, then it would counter-act those competing reactions and create new stresses, rather than become an invisible influence in the body. Yet, with ingestion of the leaf just as with otherwise ingestion, characteristic Cocaine remains the prevalent influence and experience.




"However, if you look carefully at the coca leaf's molecular array, you find 14 bioactive alkaloids, with cocaine in the greatest amount. While cocaine acts as a gut stimulant, other coca alkaloids can have precisely the opposite action, they inhibit gut activity."


Here there isn't named any other alkaloid as plausibly being responsible, just a sentiment expressed, presumptively, that other alkaloids must be responsible.




"Examples include schisandra, reishi mushroom, eleutherococcus and ginseng. Asian ginseng, for example, has an array of active constituents known as ginsenosides. One of them, Rg1, can stimulate the nervous system, while another, Rb1, has been found to calm it. But even this is an oversimplification."


In the article's example of Adaptogenetic behaviour, the author describes two actions - calming and agitating the nervous system. Applied to Cocaine, both are accomplishable through the relational dependencies between Dopamine and Adrenaline, but they really all come down to Dopamine, alone:

Dopamine transmits a brain's information across its neurons, and when there is insufficient Dopamine then the transmission of information suffers, which means the systems of the body function poorly, and aberrations and inconsistencies arise. Because Dopamine increases mental process handling capability while Adrenaline increases the workload, high Adrenaline rates (epinephrine / norepinephrine) will lock unhealthy mental processes into place, while proficiently increasing the Dopamine : Adrenaline ratio within a brain in favour of Dopamine will flush out much miscommunication along those neural pathways and normalize the systems in the human body.



Related postings:

1995 World Health Organization Cocaine Report
All Mental Stress Ailment is Best Treated Using Cocaine
Substantiation of Truth
Dopamine and Adrenaline are Operational Antitheses
A Dopamine Molecule is a Quantum of Work-Potential
A Note on Dopaminergic Treatment of Ailments
Considering Re-Wires the Brain According to How a Person Considers
Article: Worrying / Anxiety - Intelligence Correlation



Reason states that for all things there will be a correction before normalization. And with a continual high elevated Dopamine : Adrenaline ratio correction, while restraining Adrenaline from increase as much as possible, harmful processes pathway infrastructures created by stress-maligned considerings, caused by dopamine deficiencies, can all correct.

Shrapnel