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by lhh 622 days ago
I likewise had it in tea several times hiking in Peru. I personally didn’t notice any effect whatsoever, might as well have been mint tea.
1 comments

Perhaps it's the fact that I was chewing them? I don't know! I'd assume tea was more potent. But I definitely had a decent reserve and was imbibing all day.
Wikipedia says that 59% to 90% of the alkaloid is absorbed when drunk as a tea [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca

Interesting, I'd always assumed people snorted the powder because it's not absorbed if consumed orally, but apparently that's not true. Maybe just it's just for the absorption speed? So... if someone drank industrial quantities of coca tea in one go, it'd be a 2-12 hour cocaine high?
snorting means it is absorbed into the bloodstream in your nose - that is very fast. Drinking means it goes through the stomach and then is released into the intestines to be absorbed (depending on what else you ate this could be slow or somewhat fast - but always much more drawn out than snorting).