Coke is hard to addict yourself to because the ratio of “good time” to “feeling like shit” is very low, heroin fucks you up but it fucks you up long enough to be worth it if that’s the sort of lifestyle you’re living. Coke meanwhile is just something you end up taking or leaving unless you have the funds to be constantly on it. I honestly find it kind of funny when these studies turn up written by people who are mostly or entirely clean because it’s something you could find out in half an hour in the smoking section of your local dive bar.

For most of my life I was under the impression that coke was basically on the same level as heroin, just under meth in the dangerous narcotics pyramid. Then at some point I realized that the world basically ran on coke for a while. Shows what DARE can do to a kid. Still haven't tried it, both for lack of opportunity and interest (not a big fan of stimulants).

> Couldn't find a direct answer to "what percent of people who try cocaine get addicted" though. "The cumulative probability estimate of transition to dependence was 67.5% for nicotine users, 22.7% for alcohol users, 20.9% for cocaine users, and 8.9% for cannabis users." (Lopez-Quintero et al, 2011) Note that this is based on self-report, so it's probably signficantly underreporting the numbers, and making time to dependence seem significantly longer than it actually is -- especially for cocaine users, who are notoriously resistant to identifying as dependent, even as addicts go. The other difficulty which leads to under-reporting the severity of cocaine abuse is that it typically does not follow the pattern of use that we often imagine for drug dependence, and which is used in models of drug dependence for other drugs of abuse. Even severe cocaine abuse typically follows a binge-and-abstinence cycle stretched out over several days, and so clinicians not used to the specifics of this population may misdiagnosis a severe dependence as intermittent use.