The Connection Between Cocaine and Eating Disorders

Cocaine: A Keynote or Footnote for Eating Disorders?

The scenario above might sound grim or even unlikely, but the issue of eating disorders and cocaine addiction has been a central focus for substance abuse treatment over the last three decades. Back in 1990, the Orlando Sentinel published an article revealing a new and viral trend for women attempting to lose weight: cocaine use. Journalists began reaching out to various doctors across the nation to see how prevalent this trend was. Eating disorder units reported that as many as 40 percent of their patients had an established history of cocaine abuse. In response, multiple hospitals across the country began modifying their treatment in order to address eating disorders and drug abuse simultaneously. 

While this trend was identified towards the last part of the 20th century, statistics show that the trend of cocaine use since then has steadily increased. This includes both cocaine powder as well as its more potent form, crack cocaine. Although there was a gradual decrease in use in the early 2000s, this seems to account for the rise in the popularity of opioids and methamphetamines. Sadly, the death and overdose rate of cocaine has significantly increased because of dealers cutting it with other substances to maximize profits, as well as users mixing cocaine with opioids and methamphetamines. 

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that cocaine use or overdose numbers are expected to decrease in the near future. Because of this, we should ask exactly how cocaine addiction relates to eating disorders.

How Cocaine Affects the Appetite

Studies of how the brain works with addiction focus on the release of dopamine as a way to understand how it interacts and responds to the environment it is in. A recent study of the brain’s reward systems revealed that substance use disorders are directly connected to how the brain processes motivation and rewards. When drugs such as cocaine are used, receptor neurons in the brain that are central to this reward system are targeted, meaning that the motivational urge to eat is restricted. In essence, cocaine tricks the body’s central nervous system by suppressing these urges and signals that are part of the brain’s normal function. This explains why cocaine addiction commonly includes eating disorders as well as mental health disorders including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD. 

When dopamine receptors are suppressed, the brain can no longer stimulate hunger, and communication with the gastrointestinal system is disrupted. Cocaine use prevents dopamine from being reabsorbed back into the cells, leaving large amounts of the neurotransmitter to act on the nerve cells and halt normal communication, including when the body needs or craves food. This ongoing pattern results in severe consequences to one’s relationship with nutrition and can easily lead to common eating disorders, including bulimia, anorexia, and binge-eating disorder. 

Substances Abuse versus Sustenance?

It’s easy to assume that drug abuse and nutrition are separate issues, but research shows that there’s an undeniable connection. Substance abuse is not only an issue of introducing harmful toxins into the body. Substance abuse also confuses the body to desire harmful things, while growing indifferent to what it needs for staying healthy. Because of this, the effects of cocaine should not only include what it does to the body, but what it prohibits the body from otherwise doing naturally. 

This is why an important part of recovery is the normalization of neurotransmitter levels such as dopamine that have been badly damaged from cocaine addiction. And while this rebuilding can be done in part by proper nutrition, cocaine abuse is a serious disorder that requires comprehensive treatment.