I never really did a lot of drugs besides smoking pot a few times but I tried crack once at a party in college and I felt pretty ashamed of myself immediately after despite high. I didn’t try it again and am actually a sober adult now, not because I had a drug problem but I just grew out of wanting to try them and never liked to drink alcohol.

I never met anyone else who would ever admit to trying it though or even cocaine despite statistically knowing many people have haha. Any crack smokers on lemmy?

      • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
        0·
        4 months ago

        thats just how you remove impurities from the traditionally cut to shit cocaine, black people would more often recieve cut cocaine and need to purify it, as such is why its sentenced more harshly; racism.

        • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
          0·
          4 months ago

          It’s chemically different

          “Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3, common baking soda) is a base used in the preparation of crack, although other weak bases may substitute for it.[7][8] The net reaction when using sodium bicarbonate is Coc-H+Cl− + NaHCO3 → Coc + H2O + CO2 + NaCl With ammonium bicarbonate: Coc-H+Cl− + NH4HCO3 → Coc + NH4Cl + CO2 + H2O With ammonium carbonate: 2(Coc-H+Cl−) + (NH4)2CO3 → 2 Coc + 2 NH4Cl + CO2 + H2O”

          You’re removing a Hydrogen and a Chlorine ion respectively. I’m not a chemist but I’d guess that makes the base cocaine molecule more bioavailable. I think the confusion stems from the fact that conventional cocaine is not true-cocaine (it’s Cocaine Hydrochloride) in the sense that crack is. An alternative commonly used name for crack is “freebase cocaine” which would suggests it’s more exact nature.