Cocaine In A Long Way Gone

“No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through their own withdrawal stages in different ways”(Beah 169). Ishamael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, shares his experience as a boy soldier using cocaine in the Sierra Leone War. As young soldiers, the boys were introduced to many different drugs and stimulants which quickly turned into their heavy dependence on them to be strong soldiers. Among these drugs were cocaine, “a stimulant drug that is derived from the South American coca plant”(Miller). Cocaine affects your dopamine levels, causing feelings of euphoria and bursts of energy. Once this drug is abruptly stopped, the brain slows dopamine production resulting in undesirable side effects while the chemical slowly regulates

When small amounts of cocaine are used they “make the user feel euphoric, energetic, talkative, mentally alert, and hypersensitive to sight, sound, and touch”(NIDA). With these symptoms it would make sense to give the young soldiers cocaine so their performance was at peak ability. Ishmael even states, “…these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce”(Beah 149). Ishmael and the boys’ introduction to cocaine desensitized their minds to such rash behavior so their young minds could endure being soldiers as well as killers. As the drug is further used in larger amounts, it may “…intensify the user’s high but can also lead to bizarre, erratic, and violent behavior”(NIDA). The continual use of cocaine leads to extreme effects on the mind and body expressed when the boys show violence that no sane or young person should display. Ishmael’s behavior is erratic as UNICEF comes to save the young soldiers; he hides a bayonet and grenade in his pocket and tells a soldier “that if he touched me I would kill him”(Beah 158). Ismael actually threatens a man’s life because they were to take him away from the war, showing exactly how much the use of the drug has affected his behavior. Cocaine’s intense effect changes Ishmael’s behavior from his first use until his dependence on it, showing how severe its

The user’s behavior during withdrawal is influenced by “physiological effects of cocaine withdrawal including aggression, violence, and paranoia”(“Cocaine Withdrawal”). As the user is coming off of their high, their behavior has to try to return to its normal and can be a shock to the body. The boys in A Long Way Gone “began to fight each other day and night” and would “fight for hours between meals, for no reason at all” when they were going through the first stages of withdrawal(Beah 168). Their aggressive and violent behavior is due to the ‘culture shock’ the body has to endure while it learns how to wean off its dependence on cocaine. After the initial rash behavior from withdrawal subsides, the brain suffers from the detox that ensues vivid nightmares as “a side effect of the brain’s detoxing itself from cocaine’s interference with neurotransmitter activity”(“10 Common”). Due to the change in brain chemistry during cocaine usage, it has to reprogram itself to a normal state again. Ishmael experiences this himself, expressing, “I couldn’t face the nightmares I knew would come”(Beah 194). His previous dependence on cocaine leads to his suffering psychological problems that cannot be easily fixed. The withdrawal from cocaine usage has strong psychological effects shown through the symptoms Ishmael faces as he comes off of the