The five most mentioned advantages of cocaine are:

• energy boost, staying awake
• feeling good, having fun
• high, relax
• facilitating communication
• self-confidence

The five most mentioned disadvantages of cocaine are:

• much time needed to recover
• expensive
• unpleasant physical effects
• fake reality
• unhealthy

Decorte and Muys illustrate in their study, "how perceptions of ´pleasures´ and  ´pains´ of cocaine use throughout a user´s career are heavily influenced by (changes in) settings, and the social roles and responsibilities that are connected to them. Changes in working situations, changes in family situations (like becoming a parent and the ending resp. starting of relationships) seem to have an important impact on how the drug is perceived.

Conversely, this personal balance between the advantages and disadvantages may also change as functions of cocaine use, the preferred routes of administration, and levels of use change over time. Most cocaine careers are marked with constant variation in the amounts and frequencies of use, and they are subject to many changes that are caused by a variety of drug, set and setting factors. With them, the users perceptions change continuously ..."

Tom Decorte and colleagues deliver a "collection of nine referenced essays or qualitative research reports on the themes of pleasure, pain, and profit." Michael Linnell reviews the book (in Druglink 1/11): "... a pleasing variety of research methods covering a neglected area of research and policy, presented in an enjoyable and easy to read style. Highly recommended."

Pleasure, Pain and Profit – European Perspectives on Drugs
Decorte, T.; Fountain, J. (Eds.)