Cocaine Changes

Dan Waldorf is a Research Sociologist and Project Director at the Institute for Scientific Analysis.

"In an arena of public policy where misinformation and disinformation reigns, ... facts are desperately needed, and Cocaine Changes gives us a bucketful of them. Anyone who values rationality and is concerned about the harmful efforts of our misbegotten drug policy should read this book."-Ira Glasser, Executive Director, ACLU "I know of no other book that offers so much information on the subject so clearly and calmly presented. For anyone interested in the natural history of cocaine use in America now, Cocaine Changes provides the best, most comprehensive available resource."-Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Harvard Medical School "This book puts the cocaine scare of the 1980s to the test and places cocaine in a more realistic perspective. By examining the lives of hundreds of heavy users, it discovers that even among this group, cocaine use is not always cocaine abuse."-Kevin B. Zeese, Drug Policy Foundation

• Acknowledgments 1. Changing Perspectives on Cocaine: An Introduction Part I: Using Cocaine 2. Getting into Coke: Initiation and Styles of Use 3. Things Go Better with Coke: The Uses of Cocaine 4. Cocaine at Work: A Case Study of "The Company" 5. Selling Cocaine: Drifting into Dealing 6. The Call of the Pipe: Crack Use and Freebasing 7. Controlled Users Part II: Having Trouble with Cocaine 8. Cocaine-Related Problems Part III: Quitting Cocaine 9. Quitting Cocaine: Motives, Strategies, and Actions 10. Making Sense of Cessation: A Synthesis Part IV: Conclusions 11. Ten Years After: Long-Term Impacts of Cocaine on a Small Network of Users 12. Coke and Culture Appendix: Study Background, Methods, and Sampling Notes References Index