Cocaine Addiction

If cocaine is damaging your relationships, work, money situation or health, you can get help to stop on the lyfsmile. You do not have to be taking cocaine, or crack cocaine, every day to be addicted to it. A sign of addiction is that you've tried to cut down or stop but are unable to. There are effective treatments available to help you stop. Which treatments work for cocaine addiction?

Treatments that are known to be effective for cocaine addiction include:

Talking therapies - therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) help you to understand your addiction and to change your thoughts and behaviour. This will either be as part of a group or one to one with a specialist drugs counsellor or therapist.

Couples therapy - you may be offered this if you have a partner who does not use cocaine.

Incentives - you may be offered rewards, such as vouchers, for sticking with your treatment and for staying off cocaine when it finishes.

Unlike treatment for heroin, there are no medicines that work as substitutes for powder cocaine, crack cocaine and other stimulants. However, you may be offered medicines to help with related symptoms, such as sleep problems. These are often used on a short-term basis because long-term use of medicines that can help you sleep can also be addictive in itself. If you're addicted to alcohol as well as cocaine, you may be prescribed Antabuse (disulfiram).