How Nitrous Oxide Works

Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz Juice, Yeah, why not? I mean those are the street names that has medical efforts. Some of those are made up. Yeah, we're gonna cover the whole gamut here. Yeah, medical use and recreational use dangers. We're gonna do an episode on nitrous ox side. That's right. Um so, Chuck, we should probably start not at the beginning, but not at the end, somewhere in the middle, because the history of nitrous ox side is extraordinarily interesting. Just

the history. Yeah, we're gonna tell it out of order like pulp fiction. That's right. See if you can recognize characters from other movies like Vincent vegas brother. Yeah, Michael Madison was Vincent Vega's brother. Did you know that? Yeah, oh, you knew that. I did. Well. Well, I don't think that's not most heavily guarded secrets. Did you notice that red Apple cigarettes make an appearance in more than just pulp ficture? I'm done. Did you notice that Quentin Tarantino

likes to write two hundred and seventy five page scripts. Yeah, but that's nothing compared to the five hundred and eighty page tone that Humphrey Davy wrote on nitros ox side. Very nice little segue. All right, So we're not even talking about Humphrey Davy yet, he's at the beginning. He's not even at the beginning, but he's towards the beginning. We're gonna talk instead about the sad saga of one Dr Horace Wells d d S very sad. Yeah. So Dr Horace Wells was a dentist in New Haven, Connecticut.

I believe in the eighteen forties. What is dds is that Dennis Dennis Cee? Is that what that means? That's what I've always assumed it was. And at this point everyone knows. We just make most of the stuff we stay up. That's right. Uh, so you're right, sir. He was a dentist in Hotford, Connecticut. It was Hartford, I said, new Haven. Uh what's the difference, as long as the thing Connecticut. And this was in the eighteen thirties and uh, oh man really yeah, maybe we should start over. Wow

wow wow, all right. Uh. He was a dnnist in the eighteen thirties, and he recognized something that all dennist of the day recognized, which is, everyone hates your guts because you're causing excruciating amounts of pain on a daily basis to your patients. Yeah. It's it's like, here's some whiskey, Maybe bite on this broomstick. Well, actually can't do that because you're doing dynastry. You can't even do that. Yeah,

you ever heard the term it's like pulling teeth. That's where it comes from, right, And and so Horace wells dds dentist. Dentist. See. Uh. He felt pretty bad about this enough so that um he went to a traveling exhibition once that came through town. And this was in the eighteen forties, and it was staged by a man named h A. Gardener Colton. That's a great name, Gardner Quincy Colton sounds like a rich kid from Texas or yeah, or like a side show showman, which is what he was, right.

And he actually was in medical school for a little while. And while he was in med school he was introduced to the wonders of huffing nitrous oxide. And he said, I'm not gonna do medical school anymore. I's gonna drop out and hit the road with the old hippie crack.

Yeah exactly, and show people what's what. And so at one of these inmonstrations in Hartford and sometime in the forties, um, he saw Colton give this demo and and I guess right afterwards, saw a man run into the stage or fell off the stage and hurt his leg, and Wells went over. I was like, are you okay? And the guys like, what are you talking about? And he said the bonus sticking out of your legs, sir, And he's like, what's the bone? Now? It wasn't that bad, but he

did say interesting, Um, here's what I'll do. I'll get Colton to come into my office tomorrow and my buddy colleague John Riggs, I'll get Colton to administer the gas, and I'll get Rigs to pull one of my teeth, and uh, he did so, and he said, I did not feel so much as the prick of a pin.

And he said, I think we're onto something here, something called pain free dentistry a k a. Please stop painting me, right, And so Wells followed in this really great tradition that really stopped and I guess probably about the twentieth century of the late twentieth century of where if you're a scientist, you or your own first human test subject. People still do that. Yeah, apparently in um in Marvel Comics they do.

One of the greatest articles I've ever read in any magazine anywhere in all time throughout the universe in perpetuity is called blood Spore, and it was about the murder of a mycologist scientists who studies mushrooms, and um it's really really interesting. There's all sorts of weird like cold case stuff to it, but there's also like an under underlying thread where if you're a mycologist and you discover a mushroom, you try it out on yourself, Like that's

just what they do still today. I think that you try it on yourself after you fed it to your children, just to see what happens. Maybe your dog first, and then you try it on you. Man. I'll bet those those mycologist dogs were bandanas then are super laid back. You know. Uh, what's the name of the article? I want to check that blood spore is in Harper's which means it's behind a paywall. But gotcha, it's It's almost worth a year's subscription just for that one. And Harper's

archives are definitely full of good articles, agreed. So Wells was pretty happy because he knew he was onto something there. And he said he performed um, just dental procedures for the next uh a few weeks and months on dozens of patients, and they were all like, this is great, it's great. Didn't feel a thing, doc, And he said, I think I'm ready. I wanna present this to some Harvard medical students in the establishment. And he got on stage and uh, he went to pull a tooth and

the guy started screaming. Yeah. So like after all of these tests, successful tests, when he finally gets up the gumpchen to give a successful demonstration, it goes as bad as it could and it's actually called the Humbug affair because the medical students shouted humbug and what was the other swindler at him, and he's like, no, I'm not, I'm not, and I swear this is for real, I really care about my patients. In the room started spinning and he fell over and when he came to, he

was on skid row, hooked on chloroform and nitrous oxide. Yeah. He later went on to say that, um, although wait, let me let me clarify, you technically can't get hooked on nitrous ox side, but he was huffing a lot of nitrous oxide, right. Uh. Well, although, Davy, well we'll

get to that be a spoiler. He went on to say that he thought that he had probably withdrawn too much too soon from the guy, because, as we'll go on to talk about here in a little bit, um, when you stopped breathing in nitris, you go back to normal pretty quickly, very quickly. So he kind of just aired. I don't know, I would have gone a little bit overboard for the demo. Sure, on the same side, I would have been like ninety night pal, but um, yeah, he he became well, like you said, not hooked, but

a heavy user of ether and chloroform. Oh yes, ether um in the on his thirty third birthday, he was I think awaiting arrival of his He ended up living alone, moved and was waiting on his wife and kid to come to London. But by this time he'd sunk into like a terrible depression, right and uh, he was alone because his family wasn't able to join him yet. And he flipped out on his thirty third birthday, went out on the street and throw acid on these two women.

Flipped out after going on like a chloroform vendor. Yeah, and went to prison, and in prison he sort of reached. He kept doing chloroform and ether in prison because I guess you could get it and hit rock bottom and under an ether, Binge slashed his femoral artery in his thigh died. Well. Yeah, he talked to the guard into escorting him home to get his shaving kit. And at home it's like I need a big razor. I think at home or maybe back. If he's getting chloroform in prison,

it could have been there. He huffed the dose of chloroform to anesthetize himself and then he cut his femoral artery to the end. He was a believer in anesthesia, I guess so. However, um years later, in eighteen sixty four, he was he was recognized by the ADA, the American Dental Association as a pioneer of using uh not ether But what are we talking about? Two in dentistry in two? Oh? Yeah,

And do you know who got him to that point? Well, yeah, Gardner Colton's He set up practice as a dentist, after all, and it was his successful demonstrations that got the a DA on board. So now we need to go back in time. Yeah, even further back. That's sort of the middle. So we're in the way back machine. I guess we didn't point out where we're in there already. I think everyone just assumed. And we go back seventy years previous

to Horace Wells, to a guy named Jason Priestley. Dylan, sorry, no, Brandon, Joseph Priestley, that guy Jason Priestly's dad, Yeah, or great great, great, great, great great great grandfather. I don't think there was any relation. Actually, you don't know, you're right. Joseph Priestly. He was an Englishman, and he begins like Priestley, that's right. And he was a big he was an enlightened thinker, and he was a contemporary Ben Franklin, and he was a smart guy

on a lot of different subjects. He was a polyglot. Yeah, that's a good word for it. Cool guy. And no, I'm sorry, he's a poly math. A polyglot as somebody speaks a bunch of different languages. Poly math is somebody who's in a bunch of different fields. Yeah. Probably. He was an enlightenment guy for sure. Uh. And in the seventeen seventies he was studying a love I think we should go back to using only old terminology because what they called gases back then was the study of the airs,

which is great, totally makes sense. Gasses and to shoot a duck. And he actually lived next to a brewery, so he had a lot of access to CEO two and very smartly created a device called the pneumatic trough to isolate gases, collect and isolate these gases, and he was good at it so well. A guy named Steven Hales actually created the first pneumatic trough, which is actually pretty simple invention. It's neat though, so like you have a tube Let's say you have a fire and you

want to collect carbon monoxide from it. You basically have a tube that collects it the smoke that's coming off of it, and the tube goes into a vat of water and up into a like a glass bell jar that's upside down. It's inverted so that there's there's air at the top. I think the principle is similar. And so the smoke goes into the water and then goes

up and is filtered through the water. And what the gas you have on the other end is whatever you're looking for, or a bunch of different gases that you can study and pure form, simple, pistically beautiful. It is so um priestly had his own that he made the pneumatic trough. And this guy actually isolated eight different gases or airs for the first time, which apparently is a record. Still, yeah, I don't know what the record is, like most gases

discovered in a single lifetime. Okay, I guess all right, that's good it is. I don't know that there's any more gases to discover. I wonder, and who studies that kind of thing? What do you call somebody who studies gases? An Arologists analysis. Well, if you do that right into us, because I want to know all about that and if there's if you guys think there's any gases left to be discovered here on earth. Agreed. Alright, let's take a break before we talk about Humphrey Davy because he's this

is where the story gets really good. That was quite a break. Yeah, I can't believe you broke that lamp. That was upset, all right, Humphrey Davy. Uh, he worked at a place called the Neumatic Institute, and they used gases as for therapy, curative therapies, and he got into using them on himself, which, like you said, was sort of the thing to do at the time, you experiment

on yourself, right. Plus, as the author of this Rolling Stone article from n that I read pointed out, Yeah, he was also like twenty at the time, so it totally makes sense that he would like half a bunch of nitrous ocksides and then and call it science, right, But he I mean, it really was science. So this guy apparently had tried it a few times before, but then his big experiment, his first huge experiment was on Boxing Day of seventeen nine d nine, right, which is

December it's very important that you remember December. Why is it important, Well, it was boxing Day, but it was also literally box day because Humphrey Davy got into a box and had some guy pump in. Was it like twenty courts? Yeah, he's he stepped into a seal box and he requested a physician, like a real doctor, to release twenty courts because otherwise it just be crazy. Right, He released twenty quarts of nitrous oxide every five minutes as long as I'm conscious. That must have been the

safe word is I'm passed out. And he went for an hour and fifteen minutes like that in this box, and then he stepped out and apparently grabbed some oil skins or also called gas bags, and um huffed another twenty courts right afterward. And they're like, how are you still standing? And he goes, I'm not i' he basically did. He had a great disposition to laugh, which eventually is where laughing gas would come from. Uh. He talked about

shining packets of light and energy. He talked about objects dazzling in their intensity and sounds amplified into a cacophony that echoed through infinite space, and losing all connection to external things. It's pretty cool. So we there's this really great article on the public domain review and it's called oh excellent, gas bag, gas bag or airbag, airbag, air bag, I'm sorry, which is a quote from a poet that was friends with Humphrey Debut, who became the Poet Laureate

of Great Britain. Later on Um and the the Um, the author really does a good job of describing what nitrous oxide does to you, almost suspiciously good. So um. They say that the first signature was it's curiously benign sweet taste, followed by a general pressure in the head as he continued to inhale. Within thirty seconds, the sensation of soft, probing pressure had extended to his chest and

the tips of his fingers and toes. This was accompanied by a vibrant burst of pleasure and a gradual change in the world around him. Objects became brighter and clearer, and the space in the cramped box seemed to expand and take on unfamiliar dimensions. Now under the influence of the largest dose of nitrous oxide anyone had ever taken, these effects were intensified to levels he could not have imagined. Should I keep going sure, do you want to do you want to take over? I think it's better when

we break it, Okay. His hearing became fantastically acute, allowing him to distinguish every sound in the room, and seemingly from far beyond, a vast distant hump wah wah wah wah, perhaps the vibration of the universe itself. In his field of vision. The objects around him were teasing themselves apart into shining packets of light and energy. He was rising effortlessly in a new world whose existence he had never suspected. Somehow,

the whole experience was irresistibly funny. So Robert Southey, his buddy you mentioned the future poet laureate. He brought him in. Afterward he was like, I gotta get some more people in on this fantastic I gotta share this. Yeah, that's what you do. So he brought in Southey, got him high, and he wrote his brother Tom a letter that said, oh Tom, exclamation point, such a gas. As Davy discovered the gaseous oxid, Oh Tom again, exclamation point, I have

had some. It made me laugh and tingle in every toe and fingertip. Davy has actually invented a new pleasure for which language has no name. Oh Tom, I am going for more this evening. It makes one strong and so happy, so gloriously happy. Oh excellent air bag exclamation point.

Pretty great stuff, no wonder So in the summer of after they closed the shop down the Pneumatic Institution, during the day, he would invite surgeons and playwrights and poets and chemists and anyone who was interested who we could get the word to to come in there and huff

nitrius um. I was about to say under the guise of experimentation, but it really was because he would he learned that he was really finding that there were it was a language experiment because no one could accurately describe what they were feeling with English words right exactly they He found that very strange and insignificant that people would just come out and just couldn't put it into into words their experience. I mean, it was a brand new sensation,

there was um. One guy, James Thompson said, we must either invent new terms to express these new and peculiar sensations, or attach new ideas to old ones before we can communicate intelligently, or I'm sorry intelligibly with each other on the operation of this extraordinary gas. I think Um Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet, um put it best. He put it really succinctly. He basically said that it was like coming in from the snow into a warm room. Yeah.

So what happened was he did these experiments of these people. They eventually got kind of tired of it. He experimented on himself, like, not even in the room. He just would fill up a big balloon or not a balloon but a sip bag and just walk around England huffing. And he found himself getting psychologically hooked at least because he said, he confessed that the desire to breathe the gas is awakened in me by the sight of a

person breathing. So he would just see someone walking and breathing and think, oh, man, I wish I had some gas. That's how they call it, hippie crack, Yeah, exactly. So everyone else fell away. He was only experimenting with himself for a little while. Then he brings in Cole Ridge and they really buddied up, and Um, he I think they were just kind of saw eye to eye on the gas like neither one of them wanted to cease

using it. And so again, though you have to point out, all this time, while he's under the he's just huffing nitrous basically constantly. Humphrey Davy is still remaining a man of science. Right, So remember December was the day that the Boxing Day experiment took place, right by Easter. Just a few months later, he'd written a five hundred and eighty page scientific treatise on nitrous oxide and its effects

on humans and animals? Should I read the title Researches Chemical and Philosophical Chiefly concerning Nitrous oxide or de man? What is that word? Deflogisticated nitrous air and its respiration was the name of it? Yes, So in that book he mentioned something um kind of I guess off handedly. He says that as nitrous oxide appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advantage during

surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood takes place. Yes, so not like open heart surgery, but maybe if you're gonna set someone's broken arm. Right, So he says this, But it's another forty years before Horace Wells starts trying to use nitrous oxide as an anesthetic. Up to that point, it's basically just a high society drug that people have like nitrous parties with. That was the fate of nitrous

oxide from eighteen hundred to about the eighteen forties. And then Horace Wells picks it up and it becomes brought into the medical field. Yeah, they finally start using it for its intended Uh, well, what would end up being its intended purpose? That's still used today, right and uh. In fact, nitrous oxide is the number one inhaled anesthetic in the medical profession. Asked for it by name. And here's the deal though, when you get it in the at the dentist, they can actually vary it, but it

never goes more than a seventy thirty mix. I saw that too. This article says it's always a fifty fifty mix. That's not right. So it's it's um no more than nitrous Yeah, which is very much key, as you'll learn, because one of the big dangers of doing it recreationally is not mixing it with oxygen. If you mix it with oxygen, like, you're fine, You're totally fine. Um, So

it's kind of nuts. Chuck that with nitrous oxide. We've spent at least a hundred and fifty years and still the day we're not a million percent sure, but at least a hundred and fifty years using it medically without understanding how it worked. Yeah, it's like you said, though it's still a little dicey. It is a little bit dice know. It makes you feel good, right, It does the trick, and it kicks in your your dopamine and all the pleasure receptors. So it's it's classified as three things.

It's an analgesic, which means that it kills pain, it's a it's an anesthetic, but it's actually not a true anesthetic. And uh, it's an anxio lot eltic, which means it diminishes anxiety. And so I found this two thousand six paper um and it basically says here's what we think is going on. So within angxiolitic um, it triggers the same um response in the brain as a benzodiazepin, which is like valium or z annex or something like that.

So it actually does cut down an anxiety, which is why they dentist will use it for like little kids or patients who are like nervous about going to the dentists. Get a little gas, probably not a seventy thirty concentration, just a little bit, and it will cut down on your anxiety and you're you're totally fine, Doc, go ahead and do whatever you like. UM as far as an analgesic is concerned, it actually does have a tremendous amount

of um an ability to cut down on pain. And it does so by activating your opioids that those are released, opioids are producing the brain and your sorry opioid receptors are activated as well. And then it also goes to your spinal column and messes with its ability to UM to process pain there too. And they say that something like a just a thirty percent concentration of nitrous oxide is equal to about ten to fifteen milligrams of morphine. Yeah, and that's if it's fifty fifty or below with oxygen.

It's on the analgesic side, I think up to is when it is known as an anesthetic, right, and so it's not technically an anesthetic in that if you if you huff that until you lost consciousness, you're probably in big trouble. You don't want to use nitrous oxide for that,

and anesthetists know that kind of thing. But it's used usually as an aid to a general anesthetic, right, And it does have anesthetic properties, but it's a dissociative anesthetic, kind of like ketamine, which means that it goes after your n M d A receptors, which have to do with memory formation and they control UM like neural firing. Right, And it has a dissociative effect, which is why when you're on nitris you feel like you have left your body,

You've gone back the time you died and are being reborn. Yeah. And one of the UM, we'll talk a little bit more about childbirth later, but um, one of the quotes I saw from a childbirth nurse. Um, they said they the mothers who use it during childbirth are that sometimes they can still feel pain, they just don't care about it, which would be the disassociative quality. But I don't get because you said it was an analgesic. Yeah, I mean, well, I guess maybe childbirth is so painful you can't knock

it out completely. And also I mean, like with anesthetics of any kind, UM or even analgesics, any any person is going to have different reactions, varying reactions to different drugs, you know. UM, So that's that's kind of the current state of understanding with um the what nitrous does to

the brain. Right, you can also find nitrous elsewhere outside of medical settings to right, Yeah, you can find in the can of ready whip, or if you UM, A lot of chefs will have their own um nitrous canister to put whatever they want in it, uh to be used as a propellant. So uh, it works really well with fatty liquids and heavy creams and things. So what happens is the gases in there compressed into a liquid and mixed with the cream because it's it's fat soluble,

highly pressurized. But as soon as you open that thing up, it turns back into a gas and expands it like four times. So that's why the whip cream will come shooting out. What's neat is you could buy ready whip twenty years hence after it sat in a garage in Tampa, Florida, say somewhere hot and muggy and shake it up and pour it out, and that whipped cream will be totally fresh,

not the least bit rancid. That's because nitrous oxide totally displaces air and oxygen, so no bacteria can can form inside a can of ready whip or any other instant whip cream. Well, and that displacement of oxygen is also why you can die if you, let's say, put a bag over your head to intensify your high if you're using it recreationally. Well, we'll talk more about that later, right, yes, before we break though, let's mention cars, because anyone who has ever seen Fast and Furious is or is this

Sammy Hagar solo fan, I can't drive, that's right. Does he talk about nitros No, but it's just assumed that there's nitrous involved. Well, you've heard, you may have heard or seen on TV or movies about using nitrous in your car, like you have that little tank or you may see one of those cheesy cars in a parking lot with the with the little tank in there. And basically what it does is cars run burn hotter. Engines

burn hotter and go faster with more oxygen. And if you crank in that nitrous oxide, Uh, it's just basically going to ramp up the oxygen level going into the engine. Right, with more oxygen, more gaskets burned, right, more gaskets burned, more horsepowers produced because the gases expanding pump those pistons even harder than You're too fast and too furious for the roads, maybe even doing a little tokyo drifting. Have

you seen those any of them? No? But I believe I believe they're the most lucrative movie franchise in the history of like all movies, because I made seven of them. Yeah, but like the first one made a billion dollars its first week, or last one. The last one made like a billion dollars. It's crazy how I think I saw the first one. I've never seen any of them. But that's about it's just not my bag. I don't. If you like that kind of thing, that's great. I'm not.

I've never been a car guy. Yeah, you know, like I like my cars, but I've never been like, oh man, look at that sports car. I sure would like to drive fast in that. Well. Remember when we hosted or Um Judge that Red Bull thing. Oh yeah, I was talking to uh young Jock and I was talking to him and he started talking about cars, and I'm like, Wow,

we don't have anything in common, do we. Yeah, Josh and I judged a soapbox derby contest sponsored by Red Bull and Young Jock at local Atlanta rapper who was super cool. He's a very nice guy, but he was a car dude, and I'm not a car dude. I know you're not a car dude either. Like, well, I got my pickup truck. Yeah, I'm like, look at those uh tires pretty neat. They really make contact with the asphalt,

don't they. All Right, well, let's take a break and go learn more about cars, and we'll come back and talk about some of the recreational use and dangers. But we're done talking about cars, right And by the way, if you want to know about cars, if you're into that kind of thing and you love us, and you're not getting your fixed from cars from us, go listen to car stuff. You don't. You're definitely not getting your fix about cars from us. I can't tell you that

you can get it from car stuff. Ben and Scott have it locked down over there. I bet you they've covered nitros. I'm sure in the automobile they've covered everything. Alright. So, uh, recreational use, um, it has this medical purposes and its food and auto purposes. But Nitris is very famous for becoming um, a big, a big, especially at concerts. That's

what they call it, hippie crack. In the in the seventies, you started being able to buy this stuff like a big balloon full of it at like a concert festival or, let's be honest, at a Grateful Dead show. All right. They're also I'll post that Rolling Stone um article on the podcast page for this. Really interesting it is, but it's also a a what is that? Oh, it's called second hand embarrassment? Like, um, what people getting from watching

the Jeb Bush campaign? Second hand embarrassment? Well, yes, what you never hear somebody? Yes, exactly, Um, the the the you definitely get that from reading this because the writers very earnestly super seventies. Yeah, Like, one of the person that people who has interviewed as a as an expert of source is the guy from High Times. Only in the mid seventies did you get away with calling up the High Times guy and just using him like a

regular source. You'll see what I'm saying, like it sounds normal. Read the article and you'll be like, yeah, this is super seventies. Well, in the seventies is when it started becoming a big concert going activity. Oh wait, I know it was room. In this Rolling Stone article they were saying, like if you go to like a lot of us said at Burke in Berkeley, California, and they were like places all over, not just a concerts. Sure, um, it

was everywhere in the seventies. Yeah, because a lot of people were like, a, SI, it's cool, but this stuff like you could just stop and five minutes later you're back on your feet. Yeah, so it was like a big deal to them. Well, which is one reason they call it hippie crack, because the the highest short lived. Uh and you want to do another one? Uh and go listen to our crack episode. Should we talk about why the highest short lived? Uh? Well, let me finish

my thoughts. Sorry. So um, earlier in the nineteenth and twentieth century, though, like you said, when it was um sort of the back room parlor game of the high society. It made its way into Hollywood and uh back in like the days of making High Times and movies like or Not High Times? The h what was the one cast of Blanket No, the famous pop movie I'm totally blanking out on the pot movie madness. Uh, there were movies about huffing those. Charlie Chaplin was in one in

nine fourteen where he played a dentist. Uh, well, someone posing as a dentist who would hugh gas? Have you have you ever seen that chaplin um thing where he does coke and jail and ends up like pulling the bars apart. It's pretty hilarious actually. And there were several movies early on called laughing gas, not just one, right, and they weren't sequels. There were just multiple movies called

laughing gas. Yeah, I'm sure you could get a decent amount of people into a theater to watch people doing laughing gas. And then they thought, man, I could go for some laughing gas myself. All right, So what were you gonna say about? Oh? Why the high last such a short period of time? So it's constant while you're huffing it, right, because you're huffing nitrogen gas or nitrogen nitrogen oxide gas. Yeah, and it's displacing oxygen I'm sorry,

nitros oxide gas, and it is displacing oxygen. But as long as you're huffing in a safe supply of oxygen as well, your brains continuing to function. But you're opioid receptors are also going crazy, and you're dissociative, and d m A receptors are going crazy too, and so you're high, but you're staying alive because you're taking in enough oxygen. Right. The thing is, your body doesn't metabolize almost any of that nitrous oxide. Something like point zero zero four percent

of nitrous oxide is metabolized for the most part. You huff it in, it's dissipated through your lungs and your bloodstream and then brought back out and you exhale it, so it resembles almost exactly. It's same form that it went in when it comes out, which means that there's no hangover and it's expelled from your body through breathing, just normal breathing after you take the nitrous away, which is why so many people were like, you can have

crazy visions on this. This is what the hippies were saying. You can have crazy visions on this, and it takes you to other universes and then five minutes later, you're fine, sign me up. Let's call the High Times guy and see what he thinks about it. Let's get a quote

from him. H I did find a study though, and UM, I think it was last year, uh, published in Clinical neurophysiology, that they've hooked people up to an e G And had him huff nitrous They really yeah, and the guy there said nitrous oxide has control over the brain in ways no other drug does. And what they found was UM it altered it basically created slow delta waves for up to three minutes across the front of the brain

every ten seconds. I wonder if that's what makes the sound. Well, it's it's basically what they found is it lasted for three minutes. After you think you're okay, oh yeah, so it's still uh, still doing damage even though you think you feel fine for for three minutes, which completely surprised them. Oh yeah, I could see that especially. I mean, if the effects where off, you would think, yeah, you would

you you would physiologically be back to normal too. I found another study, UM from I'm not sure when that sometimes in the last few years where they studied the effects of it on rats and found that UM short term low concentration exposure and low concentration meaning like fifty years like what they use medically, UM would like the effects of it on the brain neural cells. Is reversible. But it is very true. And this is why everybody hears about nitrous oxide is that when you huff you

it kills brain cells. That's absolutely true. It create It creates apoptosis, which is pre programmed cellular death, and your neurons. It causes your brain cells to die because of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen or nitrous oxide displaces oxygen and your brain needs oxygen. When your brain cells don't get oxygen, they die and your brain undergoes hypoxy All right, not

good for you. Plus the fact that um, it goes after n D M A uh receptors which are responsible for the mile in, which is the sheath that coats your your nerves right yeah, um that can lead to brain damage. That last two The thing is, and this is a rat study, it seems like it's prolonged exposure or exposure super high concentrations that that create irreversible damage. Yeah. They've done a lot more studying about it in the

UK than here because up until this year it was legal. Yeah. Well, so I guess the results of the study weren't promising. Uh well, I mean this is that only what is it now? Mid February. Yeah, it's only like two weeks ago that like literally came on the books has officially law. Uh. And there were big demonstrations in in England, like like

massive huffing parties on the lawn of Uh. Like the I don't know where they decide these things is a Parliament, Buckingham Palace, say Buckingham Palace because they're like this is you know, what are we gonna do at Glastonbury Festival every year? Now? Uh? And they nice buzz marketing. By the way, what the glass roof? Well we're not going to that, I know, I was saying nice. Um, well,

they do it a lot there. That's why the festival people said it's like a big litter offender because I could totally see that canisters and balloons are just everywhere, and you know, birds pick up the balloons and they tried to fly off of the cancers and tear their legs off because they're not strong enough to lift them. So worldwide it was in two thousand fourteen it was the fourteenth most used drug in the world and um, yeah, huh would you think it be higher or lower? I

didn't even think about it. I think it's just that stats is totally common, by surprise. Uh. And The Independent said that UM the UK's largest drug and alcohol charity, alistair BOM. They said, you know what, we can't credibly deny that, compared to other drugs, is relatively low risk. The risk from taking it from balloons are quite low. Uh. And to back up what you said, he said, where there have been stories about deaths, they tend to be from people who are using canisters uh in masks. Uh.

That's when you get into danger. Like that's stupid. Let me get up this old World War two gas masks, or let me put a bag over my head, or let me get in a car. Uh. And then you're not getting that mix of oxygen and then you die. First of all, kids, if you are putting a plastic bag over your head for any reason, don't do it. You're a dummy. That's a dumb thing to do. Well, yeah, you're you're you're reaching, you're going down the wrong path

in life. That's a great way to put it, because I don't want some kid to be like, oh, I'm a dummy and that's why I do these things. You know, that's self defeating. Come on, come on, But there have been plenty of plenty of incidences of death. UM. Joseph been At, a seventeen year old from North London, died in two thousand twelve after falling into a coma. And then just this year that's twenty one year old student was found dead Um in his room with two hundred

spent cartridges. Oh well, they're just chasing that high. It's the problem. Yes, I mean, you shouldn't try it at all, but you're you're gonna die when you have those high, high, high concentrations. Yeah, that's the I mean, that's the problem with nitrous. I mean, like, if you're being administered nitrous, even in a medical setting, you can have a bad reaction to it and it turns out your allergic to nitrous and your dead or if you are in right, but if you even if you're in a medical setting,

you're you're you're flirting with death. You're right there on on the edge of death. And if you're doing it outside of medical setting, your likelihood of dying or or suffering some sort of horrible adverse reaction to it is even more through the roof, right, especially if you're taking hits straight out of a tank and you're not taking breaths of clean air in between. Yes, you you very likely could die. And it's not just um hypoxia that that gets you or asphyxiation. You can also die from

passing out and hitting your head. Yeah. Or I saw this one sad case. I think it was in the United States. This uh lady's son, like you know, wandered out into traffic and got hit by a car from nitrous Yeah, because he did nitrous and was just like so spaced out. He just kind of walked out into traffic. Um, because you're not you know, you're not aware of what's going on at the time and chasing that high like I was talking about, Uh, it would feel so good.

You're like, but it's so fast, Like, well, how can I prolong that experience? I'll just stop breathing regular aeron between. What a waste. Yeah, it's just it's not smart. No, it doesn't know. Um, I think we got that across the naway. I think. So, you know who doesn't do

nitrous No, how no way who scientologists? Uh? Why? L Ron Hubbard hated nitrous oxide really so much so that he stopped going to the dentist he had famously terrible um teeth, and he didn't go to the dentist, and he in eight he did go to the dentist to have some work done, and they put him under with some nitris and he had a near death experience and came back and he wrote in a manuscript called ex Caliber, and it's unpublished, and in ex Caliber, l Ron Hubbard

claimed that anyone who read it either went insane committed suicide. I remember reading about that, and and all of this knowledge was given to him from his nitrous oxide experience. So he determined that nitrous oxide is very bad. It's a hypnotic, it makes you too suggestible, and um, you should avoid at all costs. Interesting. Yeah, he writes about it in Dianetics, saying it's it's a bad jam. He's the only person to ever do it and not say this is great. You had a bad time on it. Well,

let's talk about childbirth, uh, unless you have anything else. No. So in Canada, in Finland, Australia, and the United Kingdom, Uh, traditionally women have used this and still do today during childbirth up to six in the UK and about and those other countries. But it's not in the US. In two thousand eleven, less than one percent of hospitals even offered it. I've never heard of that in the US.

Well that's all changing now. UM. Basically, the medical establishment is basically saying, there's really no good reason not to. It's just sort of stubbornness in our history and being fixed in our ways. UM of offering the epidural and and other kinds of drugs during childbirth. So it's there's been a big push lately to have it as an option at least for women. UM. Labor machines are only fifty fifty. You can't even alter the setting to go

any higher than that. Uh. And it's self administered, Like the woman has the mask and she breathes it when she feels like she needs it, and at any point she can be like nope, I want the epidural. UM. The thing is, though epidurals can be really expensive, UM nitris is super cheap. It is super cheap. And again it's as effective as ten to fifteen milligrams of morphine for take can care pain. So they're basically saying women should have the option at least if they want to

try it out. Uh, it's a lot cheaper than an epidural, uh safer and they haven't um epidural. I mean they're narcotics and epidurals. Say, you know, there are a lot of side effects, and they really haven't found any side effects with that fifty mix under like a controlled supervise setting. Well, the big fear though, is that aside from dizziness, the kid is going to absorb some of this and there's going to be neural cell death in the baby as

it's delivered. Is that has that been proven wrong? They don't think there is any danger to the kids so far because they said it's filtered through the lungs and uh not like the narcotics that are filtered to deliver um. So they said, so far they haven't found where it hurts the baby in any way. Plus, it lets you remember being born. I just think the self administration part of is pretty interesting. Yeah that they you know, it makes lets the woman feel more in control, supposedly of

their own uh comfort. Right, So I'm all for it. Why not? Well, yeah, I mean, if it doesn't have any adverse effects, why not? It is a pretty good question. Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? That's nitrous socks side n two. Oh, Humphrey Davy the gas Uh. If you want to know more about nitrous oxide, type those words in the search part how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts, time for a listener mayo no, Chuck, no, no, what is it time for?

It's time for so chuck First and foremost, I really want to thank John Morgan over at Queen Charlotte's Pimento Cheese Royal. He has hooked us up. Good good stuff, wonderful stuff. The minute cheese, like the best pimento cheese you can buy on the planet, better than palmetto cheese, I think. So. All right, Yeah, yeah, it's good. And there's like some Yeah it's really good. Good try that

stuff Queen Charlotte's Pamano Cheese Royal. All right, we received the Christmas cards from the Kavanaughs, the Leaves, the Loses, and you know, Hillary and Mike. We're talking to hook up with the cheese. Yeah, with a flathead lake, flathead lake or just flathead cheese. I think flathead lake. I think it is. It's delicious. Hillary, do the best. Yeah, thank you and the Nelson's so thank you for those Christmas cards. Um Mike over at Shaker and Spoon and

the rest of the gang. I thank them before for sending the box. Um, go check out Shaker and Spoon. It's off great gift for yourself for somebody else where. They send you all the ingredients you need to make cocktails putting recipes. You just add booze and wow are your friends? And what better time to go off the

page and thank Crown Royal. When we off handedly mentioned that the Crown Royals uh Rye Whiskey won the whiskey year and I was like, man, I'd love to try that, they sent us some someone heard it and they sent us six bottles of Boothe nice guy? Did you try not yet? I guess you just found it today in the office. So did there he tried it? That'd be nine We should We should mention Crown Royal basically every

time every episode. So Crown Royal, Ashley Miller, thank you for the wonderful Lego candy that you gave us in San Francisco. Yes, thank you for that. Um, and I think in Los Angeles to remember, she just follows us around with Lego candy, well, at least in California now, um, Lucy Brooks sent us a nice letter. Good luck with the rest of the Granny List, Lucy, thank you, congratulations the best of luck to Allison and Chuck for their wedding in Cleveland. Yes, Um Connor and Beatriz Marinan send

us our beautiful wine cork Greek Chuck. Thanks who sent that? Yes, loves that. She won't set it down. Good luck with your alcoholism right just kidding. Thanks to Eric Young from Squamish BC with the typewritten letter. Eric has a site called pigeons and Inc. Dot com where he offers the service of writing typewritten letters on others. Behalf Yeah. He uses a Squarespace site. Pretty awesome. How about that. Kelly from the Elephants Trunk sent us some awesome toys. Thank

you very much for those, Kelly. Thank you to him from Melbourne, Australia via Knoxville, Tennessee with the homemade sour dough hot cross bun. Yes, that was good. Um. And then Elizabeth Henry sent us a signed copy of Who Killed Mr Moonlight by the One and Only David J. Of Bauhaus. I made a joke about ba House and Um Elizabeth Henry said, Oh, David J. Is my boyfriend's dad. I'll get him to sign a copy of his autobiography and mail it to the guys. Who was he in Ballhouse?

He played Basso. Yeah, he also had a good solo career too. Yeah yeah, Shaan Erskine, thank you for of the stuff you should know bottle cap logo art. That was great. Yes, Um, Jeremy and Irene Kemia K A M I y A send us glass on teak which is amazing, Chuck, let me just describe us. They basically take an awesome piece of teak driftwood sure, and then blow a glass bowl so that it molds on the

bottom to that specific piece of tea. And then, buddy, you've got yourself a beautiful place to house a goldfish put used for hurricane, lamp for candle, keep your keys in there, maybe hold those jelly bean counting contests with who knows Sky's limit. But it's awesome and attractive and it looks really really cool and mid century modern, so good. Check out K A M I y A ceo dot com. Dorrian Wilson, owner of Revival Ltd. They make cool shirts and the proceeds of those shirts go to people in

Brazil displaced by the World Cup is that right? Wo uh And you can find that information at Revival Global dot com. Yes. Um, Johnny Wood who works for Yakima the outfitter, the biking outfitter, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Yakima, Yeah, make like pike racks. Thank you. Yeah. He sent us some swag yeah yeah, and he travels around selling Yakima stuff which probably sells itself, you know what I mean. And uh, he listens to us on the road. So

thanks a lot, Johnny. This is one of my favorites of recent memory. Robbie Zupta he made the bullet pins man and he sent the so long ago and it's so it's we we've just been lack, so thank you for those. It's really neat. He has a series called the He's an artist called the Mightier Than series, as in pin as mightier than the sword, and he takes like bullet casings and makes these fountain pins from bullet casings. It's really neat. Makes a statement in the school looking Yeah. Um,

we in a nice letter from Jenny Cochrane. That's that. We want to thank Matt for the handmade hinge game h E n g E is in Stone inche Um and Lori Gesh for the copy of her kid's book Copper Light Colin a really crappy story, very nice, and she sent us some real copper Lights, which is fossilized poop. Oh that's right, I remember seeing that. I have piece tucked in my cheek right now. Thanks to our buddy

Gary for the homemade cookies. Uh. And then Beth View Manic Lopez sent us a copy of Unbound colin How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society and brought the World to the Brink by Richard L. Courrier. Thank you very much for that hard copy. No less. Uh. In my final one, I had a bunch of people send very lovely gifts for Ruby. Oh yeah, my baby when we got her, and um, I'm not going to read off all of their names, but you know who you are,

and it was very very nice. You know you are they? Uh. I've got the last one all right, uh, which seems chumpy following that heartfelt thing. But thanks a lot to Brett Goodson for sending us pork cloud stuff pork cloud pork grind chips, soap and pork dust. If you're like I'm not too big on bread crumbs. I'd rather than be porky. Port Cloud has you covered. I think that was decidedly non chumpy. Thank you nice, Thank you Brett Goodson,

thanks to all Right, well we're gonna finish up. We have quite a few more and we're gonna finish up in the next episode. I think yes and uh as always thank you to those who send in good thoughts and letters and handmade fun gifts were we really appreciate it. It's the best ye uh So, if you want to get in touch of this, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us

on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. H