How Cocaine Turns Users to Addicts : Doctor Warns Athletes of Sudden Deaths, Slow Deaths

An athlete, or anyone else, who begins using cocaine has a chance to quit before he travels a one-way street to self-destruction, but a Washington physician says that the trip doesn’t take as long to complete as one would believe.

There are no hard and fast rules as to when one becomes an addict, and that, Dr. Edward A. Rankin believes, is part of the problem.

Rankin, chief of orthopedic surgery at Providence Hospital in Washington and a former physician for the Washington Federals of the United States Football League, said that the psychological makeup of an individual really determines the severity of the problem in its early stages.

“To get the same response that he initially wants, a person has to use more of the drug,” he said after a weekend seminar on drugs at the convention of the National Medical Assn. “But this is a highly addictive drug, and some don’t realize the extent of the problem until they can’t walk away from it.

“Some persons may delude themselves,” he said. “If a player is very talented, his ability can mask the problem. Those who are less talented may believe they can perform better, but they can’t. That’s the standard line of users. That’s dangerous.”

Using as examples the cocaine-induced deaths last month of Maryland basketball player Len Bias and Cleveland Brown safety Don Rogers, Rankin said: “These men died a sudden death. Others are dying a slow death.”

Rankin says education and proper drug testing of athletes can help fight the transition from recreational pursuit to addiction.

“First of all, you need to test every two to three days because cocaine leaves the system very rapidly,” Rankin said. “And you need to supervise the urinalysis. They can put junk in the sample to make it read negative, or they can switch the samples.”

Rankin said that a team physician should be in a position to know if a player is using drugs, but that it’s not always possible because some of them “mask it very well.”

Experimental, or occasional users may still retain the power to swear off drugs, he said.

“But it doesn’t take long to become addicted,” he added. “And make no mistake about it . . . cocaine is a very, very addictive drug.”

Rankin is hopeful that early detection and continuing education can help turn the tide against the use of cocaine. But the key, he insists, is that athletes realize the futility of the drug.

“There is no way cocaine can enhance the performance of anybody,” he said.