Mighty Coca

 

It has never occurred to me that I have been an addict of cocaine.

The leave used for the coca tea which I had been drinking so frequently throughout my trip in Peru and Bolivia is where cocaine is extracted from. The tea is often highly praised and recommended by contributors on the Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree website to threat mountain sickness. Though I had no serious attack of mountain sickness (or perhaps it was the preventive dosage that subdued the full effect), the occasional light headache and tightness feeling were enough to scare me to heed the advice and drink the tea frequently.

The potentially deadly leave looks so ordinary and innocent just like any other kind of leave. Just take some, either fresh or dried, add boiling water and you get a cup of refreshing tea with nice fragrant . It has now even been packaged nicely in convenient tea-bag from. It is cheaply and readily available in any household or ordered from any restaurant menu. Another way of consumption is to chew it slowly in your mouth. The locals often buy a packet of the leaves and casually chewing and sucking it during the long bus ride in the Andes mountains.

The Indian herb has long been used as a magic potion to relieve pain, hunger and thirst and fatigue. Travellers to the Andes highland use it as a magic potion to counteract soroche or mountain sickness easing headache, fever and vomiting. Labourers chew the leave to boost their energy level. When my wife fell ill in Puno with a headache, fever and diarrhoea, what the family of the guesthouse prescribed were cups of hot coca tea and wrapping herself up with thick blankets. They aren't poor and modern pharmacy drug stores are everywhere yet they subscribe to the traditional coca leave. And it works! But I have to admit that I administered her together with some western medicine.

The shrub is found abundantly in South America, grows easily on the highland at elevation between 300m to 2000m. It can be harvested several times a year. While some are grown and processed legally mainly for medical purpose, most are abused by the drug syndicate. The money that the leave brings is just too much for the farmers, syndicates and traffickers to stay on the lawful side. And addicts pay a dear price too, sometimes even with their own lives, to sniff, smoke or inject the drug for the ultimate pleasure.

Is oral consumption, by chewing and drinking coca tea, equivalently harmful and addictive as sniffing cocaine? Definitely small minute amount of cocaine sure must have been absorbed into your body through your digestive system to give you the boost and numb your sensory to headache, hunger and thirst. However, research seems to show negative result and neither have I developed any addiction to the tea.

The drug has it own medical usage and merits. Cocaine blocks conduction of nerve signal, causing numbness, thus used for local anaesthetic. It also has the power to constrict blood vessels, stopping messy blood flow during operations.

Indeed, I find the coca leave really effective in treating the symptoms mountain sickness. I had tried Panadol (similar to Aspirin), which is a popular and effective pill for common headache, during my fist attempt on high mountains at Mt Kinabalu and it didn't work. However masking the signs may be a deadly threat for mountaineers attempting to summit higher. It only numbs the senses of pain but not getting your body to adapt to the biological and physical changes resulted from the high altitude. But for most casual travellers, the attack is usually headache and may not be so deadly. Coca leave is good in easing the headache and has no known side effect of nausea, giddiness or vomiting like Diamox (Acetazolamide), a popular drug for preventive mountain sickness. I had actually wanted to bring some packets of leave home for future travels to the high mountains. It slipped my mind and I forgot. This is a blessing or else I could be caught trafficking drugs - its link to cocaine had not yet occurred to me then.

Ever wonder how the name Coca-Cola comes about? Is Coke in any way related to Coca? Well, it was believed that cocaine was used in the beginning to give consumers the kick and addiction. Whatever the truth may be, Coke is It - the softdrink, so loved by millions all over the world, is actually flavoured by non-narcotic coca leave extract.

 

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