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For years treatment professionals told us cocaine was not physically addictive (some still do). Cocaine addicts were offered little support and frequently accused of being ‘weak willed' or of imagining withdrawal symptoms. Unlike heroin, alcohol or tranquillisers that have a dramatic withdrawal syndrome, inducing obvious physical symptoms, the physical addiction to cocaine takes place in the brain. Effectively over time with repeated use, your brain becomes addicted to cocaine. Cocaine attaches its self to the receptor sites in your brain where the pleasurable neurochemicals (dopamine especially) are stored, they then wash around in your system for a while making you feel high, before being excreted from your body and lost. The net result is that you are left with a shortage of dopamine, without enough dopamine you feel miserable and irritable and in extreme cases can experience what psychologist call adhenia where it is pretty much impossible to feel good about anything. Combine the crash we all feel when we come down with the knowledge that all can be instantly cured by another line and you have an extremely psychologically and physiologically addictive substance.