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Palpitations triggered by cocaine

Posted by daxrrr @daxrrr, Aug 10, 2018

Hi to all, I explain my problem. I’m a 24 year old male and I had a very occasional use of cocaine for the past two years (I used it every 4-6 months). But the last time I used it (a month ago) I had chest pain and a sensation of tingling/electric shock in the arms. From that episode I already performed 3 EKGs that resulted normal but I started suffering of heart palpitations: now I can feel my pulse in parts of my body where I didn’t feel it before. For example if I join my thumb and my index, I can feel the pulse between the two fingers, or I can feel it in the fingers if I cross my hands, or I can feel it between my feet if I touch them with each other. Obviously I don’t want to touch that stuff again! I just wanna know if I will have these sensations for the rest of my life or if they will go away sooner or later. Does anybody had a similar experience? Thanks in advance for your replies and sorry for my bad english.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Heart Rhythm Conditions group.

Deanna Constans | @deannaconstans | Apr 24, 2020
In reply to @caden "of course, and i unknowingly left out the the part that i did actually talk to..." + (show)
@caden

of course, and i unknowingly left out the the part that i did actually talk to my mom about going to the doctor, but being literally so frightened to tell her it was resulted from cocaine, i just told her i woke up in my sleep having heart palpitations and problems, but 2 days after the incident actually happened i went to the ER, and they gave me an EKG and said everything was fine, a day later i had a bunch of symptoms again and went back and they put me on an EKG for longer but unfortunately i had no palpitation attacks during any of the EKG’s they gave me. they told me it was most likely just me having anxiety attacks, which i am 99 percent sure it wasn’t because i never really get anxiety for my health, and the attacks would just happen randomly, when i was sleeping, or just watching TV. anyways, about a month later i went to a cardiologist because everything was still just as bad then, and they gave me an EKG which turned out fine, gave my heart an X-ray, basically did some basic tests and determined my heart was okay from those, but they said to be sure, they gave me this heart monitor to wear on my chest for a month to detect any attacks, i would wear the monitor at times, and i did actually press the buttons on it when i had a few attacks, and they never called back saying they saw anything unusual (the device gave them feedback immediately). which really got me confused about the situation at hand for me, there was some faults i had for this, and one being that i might have not worn the monitor enough, and another being that i haven’t told a single person that’s able to aid me that the cause of my problems is cocaine, i’ve been trying to build up enough confidence to tell my mom, i honestly am not scared about her getting mad or disappointed, because my older brother who’s 26 made my mom go through hell with what he was doing at my age, he was a heroin addict and did twice the things i’ve done, he’s basically clean now and runs a great life as a father. and another thing is my mother actually knew i’ve been abusing substances for months before my incident happened, she would drug test me and tell me it would come up positive for cocaine or anything other then weed, but i would convince her to let me get away with it because of how good i was at soccer at the time and my future in it, which i was foolish for doing because i stopped my mom from being a good mom, and sounded like an ignorant kid who just wanted to party and take drugs, which is what cocaine turned me into at the time, i’m honestly so glad i don’t do anything anymore, and don’t have the will to relapse or anything since i wasn’t addicted to cocaine ever, i just did it because it made me get my mind off things while enjoying time partying or being with friends on it, as was the reason i did all the drugs i’ve done, and the reason i did so much that night and have always been the idiotic person to go all out on drugs is because at the times i didn’t care if died, but i think half of the suicidal thoughts or depression was coming from me constantly doing some sort of drug, because being sober now i rarely get depressed in any ways, but either way, i’m really happy with the person i am now being 4 months sober from all hard drugs, just ingesting marijuana very occasionally, maybe once or twice a month, and same for drinking, but i almost have my life 100 percent back on track. i just need to get to the bottom of my heart problem and try everything i can to resolve it so i can play sports and live a normal life again, i’ll try and talk to my mom about it soon, thank you for the responses 🙂

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@caden, I'm really glad you have taken steps to see a physician. As @afrobin and @colleenyoung mentioned, it is still important to stay on top of the symptoms. Early intervention is the best thing you can do for your heart, and you've started down that road. Please continue to keep us updated.

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Mentor
Teresa, Volunteer Mentor | @hopeful33250 | Apr 24, 2020
In reply to @caden "of course, and i unknowingly left out the the part that i did actually talk to..." + (show)
@caden

of course, and i unknowingly left out the the part that i did actually talk to my mom about going to the doctor, but being literally so frightened to tell her it was resulted from cocaine, i just told her i woke up in my sleep having heart palpitations and problems, but 2 days after the incident actually happened i went to the ER, and they gave me an EKG and said everything was fine, a day later i had a bunch of symptoms again and went back and they put me on an EKG for longer but unfortunately i had no palpitation attacks during any of the EKG’s they gave me. they told me it was most likely just me having anxiety attacks, which i am 99 percent sure it wasn’t because i never really get anxiety for my health, and the attacks would just happen randomly, when i was sleeping, or just watching TV. anyways, about a month later i went to a cardiologist because everything was still just as bad then, and they gave me an EKG which turned out fine, gave my heart an X-ray, basically did some basic tests and determined my heart was okay from those, but they said to be sure, they gave me this heart monitor to wear on my chest for a month to detect any attacks, i would wear the monitor at times, and i did actually press the buttons on it when i had a few attacks, and they never called back saying they saw anything unusual (the device gave them feedback immediately). which really got me confused about the situation at hand for me, there was some faults i had for this, and one being that i might have not worn the monitor enough, and another being that i haven’t told a single person that’s able to aid me that the cause of my problems is cocaine, i’ve been trying to build up enough confidence to tell my mom, i honestly am not scared about her getting mad or disappointed, because my older brother who’s 26 made my mom go through hell with what he was doing at my age, he was a heroin addict and did twice the things i’ve done, he’s basically clean now and runs a great life as a father. and another thing is my mother actually knew i’ve been abusing substances for months before my incident happened, she would drug test me and tell me it would come up positive for cocaine or anything other then weed, but i would convince her to let me get away with it because of how good i was at soccer at the time and my future in it, which i was foolish for doing because i stopped my mom from being a good mom, and sounded like an ignorant kid who just wanted to party and take drugs, which is what cocaine turned me into at the time, i’m honestly so glad i don’t do anything anymore, and don’t have the will to relapse or anything since i wasn’t addicted to cocaine ever, i just did it because it made me get my mind off things while enjoying time partying or being with friends on it, as was the reason i did all the drugs i’ve done, and the reason i did so much that night and have always been the idiotic person to go all out on drugs is because at the times i didn’t care if died, but i think half of the suicidal thoughts or depression was coming from me constantly doing some sort of drug, because being sober now i rarely get depressed in any ways, but either way, i’m really happy with the person i am now being 4 months sober from all hard drugs, just ingesting marijuana very occasionally, maybe once or twice a month, and same for drinking, but i almost have my life 100 percent back on track. i just need to get to the bottom of my heart problem and try everything i can to resolve it so i can play sports and live a normal life again, i’ll try and talk to my mom about it soon, thank you for the responses 🙂

Jump to this post

Hi @caden,

I'm also glad to hear that you have been checked out in the ER as well as with a cardiologist. The reports sound good so far. It is important, however, for these physicians to understand the history of your problems as it relates to drug use. They might want to look further if they understand the origin of the problem.

Can you inform your doctors about this?

Here is some information on the use of illegal drugs and their effect on the heart. This is from the American Heart Association. As you will read, cocaine is considered the "perfect heart attack drug." I'm glad that you are now drug-free for several months. Keep up the good work!
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/consumer-healthcare/what-is-cardiovascular-disease/illegal-drugs-and-heart-disease

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