Review Erowid at GreatNonprofits.org
Help us be a "Top Rated Nonprofit" again this year and spread
honest info (good or bad) about psychedelics & other psychoactive drugs.
("Share Your Story" link. Needs quick login creation but no verification of contact info)
Disappointment
Nitrous Oxide
Citation:   broque. "Disappointment: An Experience with Nitrous Oxide (exp89413)". Erowid.org. Mar 9, 2016. erowid.org/exp/89413

 
DOSE:
5 carts. inhaled Nitrous Oxide (gas)
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
To preface, I'm 18 years old, and the only other psychoactive drugs I've tried are alcohol and marijuana. I have been smoking pot near daily for about the past five months. I've grown somewhat weary of how burned out it makes me feel, and as a student I can't compromise my study time any more, so I've been looking to try something newer and ideally briefer.

I stumbled upon nitrous, and it seemed like a good fit for me. I've always been desiring a high with some nice visuals - I recall my first few experiences with pot, seeing the world warp around me at the edges of my visual field as well as distortion of colours. Overall, they were fantastic experiences and were what drew me into being a daily pot smoker. Since then, however, I suppose I've built up a tolerance to the point where smoking a reasonable amount of pot just doesn't get me there anymore. So the search began. Leafing through various hallucinogens online, I determined acid and shrooms to be too long-lasting to be able to do recreationally more than once. Perhaps another time I would try them. I contemplated DXM for a few days, considering the fact that I had a bottle sitting in my medicine cabinet anyways, but again ruled it out because of the long lasting effects. Then, I found Nitrous. Cheap, brief, legal, safe, intense, it sounded just like what I wanted.
Cheap, brief, legal, safe, intense, it sounded just like what I wanted.
So I decided to give it a shot.

I got a hold of one of those whipped cream dispensers and about half a dozen little nitrous canisters. Surely enough, I figured, to give me a good taste of what this drug was like. I got settled into my bedroom one morning and prepared my setting. I put on Beethoven's 9th, 2nd mvt, set to a nice visualizer. I develop a love for classical music when I smoke weed, so I figured this to be a good choice. I got comfy with a blanket and a chair, and set out to work preparing the nitrous.

The first canister I put in, I accidentally released it without the balloon properly attached. Whoops. Waste of a whole one there.

Second canister, I kept the balloon on nice and tight and filled it up. I took a little taste of the gas and a strange, sweet flavour filled my mouth. I liked this already. To be cautious, I just took a few small inhales off of this first balloon to gauge my personal tolerance. At most, I experienced a brief tingly feeling in the core of my body. It was working. As the tingling quickly faded away, I loaded up another canister, this time I was going to inhale the entire balloon properly.

The balloon filled with the same quick whooshing sound. Now, I had read online a few different strategies for inhalation. One person had said, for safety's sake, to inhale about 3/4ths of a lung with nitrous, fill the rest with air, and blow in and out of the balloon repeatedly. So I did exactly that. As I was breathing in and out of the balloon, the rush came quickly. I felt light-headed and my entire body got a tingly, floaty buzz. I emptied the balloon and turned to my computer, watching the visualizer and listening hopefully for some hallucination type effects. Nothing. As quick as the feeling had come, it had left me. It was like a brief feeling of being drunk - light headedness, some minor reduction in coordination, and a little feeling of goofiness, and it lasted at most 30 seconds. No changes in either visual or auditory perception. That couldn't be IT, I figured. I wanted to get a real experience here, and I got almost nothing. So, I decided that the problem was in the dosage. My balloon wasn't THAT full, it could easily hold another full canister.

I released two whole canisters into the balloon. This time, the balloon was nicely plump and filled fully. Music still racing in the background, I took a deep inhale from the balloon using the same method as previous. After four or five passes between my lungs and the balloon, I set it down and felt the now-familiar effects rush in. The feeling of light-headedness was more intense than before, as was the body buzz. Loss of coordination set in as I reached out to grab my computer mouse and missed by a few inches. Drunk again, it seemed. As I reached what seemed like the peak about fifteen seconds after setting down the balloon, I noticed very very minor auditory effects. My voice sounded somewhat strange when I spoke, but there was no perceivable change in the music. I looked at the computer screen and got a little giggly, and spun around in my office chair, feeling the weight of my body being pushed around. Excited, I wanted to go deeper, but as the thought crossed through my head, I was already coming down. Looking at the clock, the feeling lasted only about 30-40 seconds tops.

This was a massive disappointment to me, so I figured I must be doing something incorrectly. I immediately did some more reading online and I found that another person suggested a different inhalation method - rather than taking in some air with the nitrous and breathing in and out, he suggested to take one deep inhalation off the balloon and hold it in for as long as comfortable (within reasonable bounds) and then release. With my last cartridge, I tried this new approach. Taking a deep breath off my bright yellow balloon, I ended up getting the same effects as before - light headedness and mild coordination issues, not unlike being drunk. Duration was unchanged.

Overall, my nitrous experience was awfully disappointing. From reading tales of dissociation and great visual effects, I had assumed nitrous would be a fun activity for occasional use. The effects were far too brief to enjoy - many people report time dilation, which was what I was hoping for, but nothing of the sort occurred. Perhaps it was some sort of personal tolerance, perhaps it was poor technique, or perhaps it was poor quality nitrous ('Sparkwhip' brand cream chargers).

At the time of writing this summary not even an hour after my experiment, I feel a bit of a headache but otherwise completely sober. Ultimately, though, it was not worth it, and not something I'd want to bother with trying again. I get more lasting pleasure out of a nice dinner.

Exp Year: 2011ExpID: 89413
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Mar 9, 2016Views: 16,492
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Nitrous Oxide (40) : First Times (2), General (1), Alone (16)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults