COCAINISM. — An irresistible tendency to take cocaine for pleasure, by injection or, more often, snorted in powder form through the nose; among the most serious forms of intoxication, it is a vice extremely common in large cities, particularly on the fringes of prostitution. The immediate motive, on the basis of a congenital weakness of the will and an abnormal tendency to abuse stimulant substances, is represented by the desire to avoid physical pain, or by the search for oblivion from sorrows, or by
the craving for pleasure, prompted by the hope of aphrodisiac effects and of strange, new sensations.
Cocaine, through its dual property, narcotic and stupefying (the essential one), produces in the subject a state of vague well-being, of intoxication with sensory hallucinations in which the images of the subconscious, particularly those with erotic content, merge into a kind of pleasant, transitory madness, sustained by the state of narcosis that anesthetizes and silences every unpleasant physical and moral sensation that may be present.
Chronic use leads to progressive severe physical deterioration (up to cachexia) and mental deterioration, with disorders of sensation, alterations in motility (weakness, convulsions), decline of intelligence, of the affective tone (hypochondria), and of the will.