• Cocaine is usually a white powder that is snorted (Cocaine Hydrachloride).
• Cocaine use destroys dopamine in the brain and is highly addictive.
• Cocaine use causes constricted blood vessels, dilated pupils, increased temperature, increased heart rate and blood pressure, loss of appetite, restlessness, irritability, paranoia, aggressive and violent behavior, seizures, respiatory arrest, cardiac arrest, convulsions, and possible death.
• Snorting can result in ulceration of the mucous membranes in the nose.
• After the Cocaine high, the user feels a "coke crash" that includes depression, irritability and fatigue. 
• Withdrawal symptoms from Cocaine include apathy, long periods of sleep, irritability, depression and disorientation.

• Crack is usually a white to yellowish rock or hard substance that is smoked.
• Crack is a smokable, freebase form of Cocaine with impurities removed.  It is stronger and even more addictive.
• Crack has all the same effects that Cocaine has on the body (above).

Common Street Names include Speed, Meth, Zip, Crank, and many others.  Ice is a crystalized form of freebase Methamphetamine.

• Methamphetamine is usually an off-white or tan powder that is snorted.  However, some users also mix it with water and heat it so it can be injected into the body.  Sometimes users mix Methamphetamine with Cocaine to shoot it, referred to as a "Speedball".
• Methamphetamine is a stimulant that causes excitation, increased pulse rate and blood pressure, insomnia, loss of appetite, heart palpitations, blurred vision, extended wakefulness, aggitation, increased body temperature, paranoia, decreased appetite, decreased desire to sleep, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle twitches and uncontrolled movements, aggressive behavior and violence.  Methamphetamine causes acne, and leads to sores from obsessive scatching. It can also cause hallucinations, convulsions and possible death.  It causes damage to the brain and liver.  (Ice is smoked and causes additional damage to the lungs).  Long-term effects also include tooth decay, strokes, heart infections, lead poisoning, higher chance of birth defects, kidney disease and homicidal or suicidal thoughts.
• Methamphetamine is addictive.  Users often avoid sleep for 3 to 15 days while binging.  Methamphetamine can interfere with vision, judgement, coordination, and reflexes. It can cause automobile and other machinery accidents.
• Psychological symptoms of prolonged meth use are characterized by paranoia, hallucinations, repetitive behavior patterns, and delusions of parasites or insects under the skin. Users often obsessively scratch their skin to get rid of these imagined insects. Long-term use, high dosages, or both can bring on full-blown toxic psychosis (often exhibited as violent, aggressive behavior). This violent, aggressive behavior is usually coupled with extreme paranoia.
• New research shows that those who use methamphetamine risk long-term damage to their brain cells similar to that caused by strokes or Alzheimer's disease.

• LSD is actually a clear and odorless liquid that is placed on blotter-paper squares or sugar cubes.  It can also be mixed with other liquids like "Sweet Breath" or other things to deter detection.  It is taken orally.
• LSD is the most common hallucinogen.
• The physical effects of LSD use include dilated pupils, higher body temperature, increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, dry mouth, tremors, illusionas and hallucinations, altered perception of time and distance, psychosis and possible death.
• Sensations and feelings change much more dramatically than the physical signs. The user may feel several different emotions at once or swing rapidly from one emotion to another. If taken in a large enough dose, the drug produces delusions and visual hallucinations. The user's sense of time and self changes. Sensations may seem to "cross over," giving the user the feeling of hearing colors and seeing sounds. These changes can be frightening and can cause panic.
• Some LSD users experience flashbacks, recurrence of certain aspects of a person's experience without the user having taken the drug again. A flashback occurs suddenly, often without warning, and may occur within a few days or more than a year after LSD use.

• Heroin is usually a white to off-white or tan powder sold in small blue-waxpaper bags.  Due to its increased strength or potency, it can be snorted.  It can also be mixed with water and heated for injection into the body.
• Heroin is often cut with various substances like powdered milk, cornstarch, quinine or poisons like strychnine - so users never know what they are getting.
• Heroin is highly addictive and users build up tolerance that creates an increasing amount of heroin to reach the same effects.
• In the body, heroin is converted to morphine and changes the limbic system, which controls emotions and blocks pain.
• Heroin causes warm flushing of the skin, severe itching, dry mouth, nausea and vomiting.  Users have decreased mental ability and clouded due to the depression of the central nervous system. 
• Following the initial euphoria, the user goes "on the nod," an alternately wakeful and drowsy state.
• Other effects included slowed and slurred speech, slow gait, constricted pupils, droopy eyelids, impaired night vision, vomiting, constipation.
• Heroin users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulites, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin's depressing effects on respiration.   Heroin damages the brain and users frequently suffer from arthritis.  The sharing of needles creates an increased risk of HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C, and bacterial and heart infections.
• Street heroin may have additives that do not really dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs.
• Withdrawal symptoms include drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps ("cold turkey"), kicking movements ("kicking the habit"), full body shakes, abdominal cramps, and other symptoms. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last does and subside after about a week. Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependent users who are in poor health can be fatal.
• Heroin users have great risk of overdose.  They are common and kill fast.  Fingernails and lips turn blue, muscles become rigid, and the heartbeat slows dramatically.  Users lose consciousness and when their breathing slows too much, they stop breathing and die. 
• Studies show that half of all addicts have been present when some overdosed on Heroin, yet "friends" sit by, rarely call for medical help and let them die because they are afraid of arrest.

• GHB is usually a clean and odorless liquid that has a slight salty taste.  It is often mixed with sweet drinks.  It is one of the "Club Drugs" being found at Raves.
• GHB is a depressant that slows the heart and breathing rates and causes an inability to think quickly or logically.  Small doses are sometimes used as a date-rape drug having strong intoxication effects.  However, it also causes physical weakness and can produce seizures, coma or death. 
• GHB is an addictive drug and has withdrawal symptoms.

Common Street Names include K, Special K, Vitamin K, Ketaset, Ketaject, Cat Tranquilizers and Psychadelic heroin.

• Ketamine, which only legal use is as a cat tranquilizer, is either found in an odorless and tasteless liquid form that is drank or in a tan or off-white colored powder that is snorted or placed on tobacco or Marijuana and smoked.
• Ketamine causes hallucinations, numbing, loss of body control, and hallucinations.  It can also cause agitation, confusion, and difficulty commincating.
• It works quick in the body so if someone put it in your drink, you would lose consciousness in less than a minute.  When people awaken after using Ketamine, they often have amnesia and don't remember anything. 
• An overdose on Ketamine can be fatal.

Common Street Names include XTC, X, Adam, Clarity, Lover's Speed, Bean, E, Roll, MDMA and many others.

• Ecstasy is commonly found in a pill form in various colors with thousands of brands or logos stamped on them.  The tablets are often the size of aspirin or vitamins.  It is taken orally.
• Ecstasy is a drug that has properties like a combination of Methamphetamine and hallucinogens.
• Ecstasy causes psychological difficulties, including confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, severe anxiety.  Ecstasy also causes muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, rapid eye movement, faintness, dehydration, hyperstension and chills or sweating.  It ccauses heart and kidney failure.  Death from heart attack or stroke is also possible during Ecstasy use.
• Recent research findings indicate that MDMA causes long-lasting damage to the neurons that release serotonin in the brain (serotonin is involved in regulating a variety of functions including sleep, mood, aggression, and memory).   The loss of serotonin causes depression.

• Inhalant abuse can result in death from the very first use.
• About one in five kids report having used inhalants by the eighth grade.
• Young people are likely to abuse inhalants, in part, because inhalants are readily available and inexpensive. Parents should see that these substances are monitored closely so that children do not abuse them.
• They sniff or "huff" ordinary household products like nail polish remover, cleaning fluid, gasoline, and spray paint.
• Inhalants are breathable chemical vapors that produce psychoactive (mind-altering) effects.
• Nearly all abused inhalants produce effects similar to anesthetics, which act to slow down the body's functions. When inhaled in sufficient concentrations, inhalants can cause intoxicating effects that can last only a few minutes or several hours if inhalants are taken repeatedly. Initially, users may feel slightly stimulated; with successive inhalations, they may feel less inhibited and less in control; finally, a user can lose consciousness.
• Sniffing highly concentrated amounts of the chemicals in solvents or aerosol sprays can directly induce heart failure and death. This is especially common from the abuse of fluorocarbons and butane-type gases. High concentrations of inhalants also cause death from suffocation by displacing oxygen in the lungs and then in the central nervous system so that breathing ceases. Other irreversible effects caused by inhaling solvents include hearing loss, peripheral neuropathies or limb spasms, central nervous system or brain damage, bone marrow damage, liver and kidney damage, and blood oxygen depletion.

• Alcohol affects every part of the body. It is carried through the bloodstream to the brain, stomach, internal organs, liver, kidneys, muscles--everywhere. It is absorbed very quickly (as short as 5-10 minutes) and can stay in the body for several hours.
• Alcohol affects the central nervous system and brain. It can make users loosen up, relax, and feel more comfortable or can make them more aggressive.
• Alcohol also lowers their inhibitions, which can set them up for dangerous or embarrassing behavior. Alcohol is a drug and is only legal for people over the age 21.
• 2.6 million young people do not know that a person can die of an overdose of alcohol. Alcohol poisoning occurs when a person drinks a large quantity of alcohol in a short amount of time.
• People who begin drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who wait until age 21. Each additional year of delayed drinking onset reduces the probability of alcohol dependence by 14 percent.
• The average age when youth first try alcohol is 11 years for boys and 13 years for girls.  According to research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, adolescents who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who begin drinking at age 21.
• The three leading causes of death for 15- to 24-year-olds are automobile crashes, homicides and suicides -- alcohol is a leading factor in all three. 
• Alcohol use by college students contributes to 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape. Also, 400,000 students between 18 and 24 years old reported having had unprotected sex as a result of drinking.  An estimated 1,400 college students are killed every year in alcohol-related accidents.
• Adolescents who drink heavily assume the same long-term health risks as adults who drink heavily. This means they are at increased risk of developing cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, hemorrhagic stroke, and certain forms of cancer.
• Adolescents who use alcohol are more likely to become sexually active, which places them at greater risk of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases.
• Students diagnosed with alcohol abuse are four times more likely to experience major depression than those without an alcohol problem.
• Alcohol use among adolescents has been associated with considering planning, attempting, and completing suicide.