When you’re hooked on cocaine, you’re hooked on the high speeds of life. You feel great—everything moves at a lightning pace, and all of the best answers land in your mind. Many people become addicted to stimulants like cocaine when they’re depressed because they can be uplifting.

And plenty of others become users when they’re not depressed. They get hooked on the idea that they’ve found a magic cure for sluggishness. All of a sudden, they’re able to get up and do the things they liked best. Sometimes even at lightning speed, depending on the person.

Lovers of cocaine tend to binge, as the drug wears off very quickly, leaving you wanting more almost immediately. One binge leaves you feeling as high as you want to be, but it’s gone before you know it. What you’ve really become hooked on is a love of dopamine. When you do normal, everyday things, like eat food you enjoy or watch TV you like, the brain releases small amounts of dopamine, which is a natural chemical messenger that signals to the brain that you enjoy something. Just as eating ice cream releases dopamine, cocaine does as well, though in much greater amounts.

Just as you were able to bring the drug cocaine into your life, you’re able to bring yourself out of addiction. The beginning of recovery from cocaine addiction begins with acceptance. And in order to recover, the brain must heal, and learn how to deal with rewards properly.

So, how exactly do you deal with your cocaine addiction? There’s never a straightforward answer. Of course, a combination of treatment modes is going to be the best way to stay recovered. There are many types of therapy, but recovery always begins with detox, or the process of removing drugs from your body. For a strong drug like cocaine, this means that a medically assisted detox provides the best way to jump start addiction treatment. From there, learning to be recovered comes with treatment in the form of therapy, recovery groups, counselors, and living in a space away from the locations and people that inspired your substance use disorder.