A Visit Back
Nitrous Oxide & Lorazepam
Citation:   destiga. "A Visit Back: An Experience with Nitrous Oxide & Lorazepam (exp80572)". Erowid.org. Jun 8, 2018. erowid.org/exp/80572

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
2 mg sublingual Pharms - Lorazepam  
  T+ 0:45   repeated inhaled Nitrous Oxide (gas)
  T+ 0:45   repeated inhaled Oxygen (gas)
  T+ 0:00 1 glass oral Alcohol - Hard (liquid)
  T+ 4:00 2 mg oral Pharms - Lorazepam  
BODY WEIGHT: 175 lb
I've gone through various drug phases but have never been addicted to anything other than nicotine (cigarettes for 15 years). Other than occasional marijuana and alcohol use, in the last ten years I've stopped using whatever else I used to throw in my body to alter my consciousness/mood (cocaine, heroin, LSD, mushrooms, mdma, valium, etc etc).

Recently told a dentist that I didn't really want to go in to get my teeth done and he said he'd be glad to give me 'something for the anxiety' as well as 'laughing gas while I do the scaling.'

Dissolved a 2mg Ativan under my tongue on a relatively empty stomach about 45 minutes before going into the dentist's office.

About thirty minutes in, noticed a kind of lessening of anxiety - not a real sloppy or 'high' feeling, but a kind of overall relaxation and feeling that everything was a bit removed and separate; that I wasn't fully involved in or anyhow didn't really owe my physical reality a great level of attention or care. Everything was going to work itself out without any exertion of effort or will on my part. My wife driving me to the dentist, the dentist himself, the entire thing. Not quite indifference, not quite 'whatever,' a little bit nicer than not caring at all, but nothing really joyful or pleasurable or 'high' about the feeling, either.
Not quite indifference, not quite 'whatever,' a little bit nicer than not caring at all, but nothing really joyful or pleasurable or 'high' about the feeling, either.


About forty five minutes after taking the Ativan, I was in the chair asking the dentist's assistant turn the nitrous up to its highest setting (40%?) by saying 'I don't really feel anything' while I was in fact getting increasingly high and taking the deepest possible breaths. Kept narrating to myself 'just act like you aren't feeling this, they have no way of getting into your head and knowing' and 'they don't really care how high you are, that's for you alone to experience.' This gradually turned into 'who cares what anyone thinks or knows about how high I am' and then into a kind of super-blissful, disassociated, hallucinatory state, in which everything became like a 'long hallway version of itself' (the phrase sprung to mind at the time) and I essentially passed out as the dentist went on with his work. I think he showed me some pictures of his kids and - yes - pitched me a movie idea where everyone on earth is drugged with nitrous and there is no more war (Beverly Hills dentist, heh).

But gradually his voice became such a 'long hallway version of itself' that I couldn't hear him anymore. The hallucinations were vague but overpowering and reality receded to the point that I either don't remember it or it stopped going on, as far as I was concerned, altogether.

I later learned that after the appointment, about two hours after taking the Ativan, I made my next appointment, texted my wife (mostly misspelled, something about 'the nvr know yr high') and was accompanied out to the garage by the dentist's assistant. My wife apparently picked me up.

Returning home, I mixed a strong vodka grapefruit juice and sat down to watch TV with my wife. She later said that I appeared relatively normal and in control of myself, but I probably would've smoked crack if it had been sitting in front of me. My inhibitions were severely lowered and the sense that I was living in a blackout kept coming in and out of focus (and in fact I was coming in and out of blackout the whole time). I watched a show that I later insisted I had never seen (as I insisted I had never made my follow-up appointment) and, about four hours after taking the initial 2mgs, stumbled upstairs and chewed up another 2mg Ativan.

Strangely, I have a brief period of coming back into some kind of focus after the second Ativan. We were watching a Goddard movie at that point (I think it was Alphaville) and I kept telling my wife 'I've seen this before, except it was aliens doing it.' I was very insistent about it but what's more I remember very clearly seeing every scene and simultaneously 'remembering' having seen it, except with aliens acting in the major roles, and a clear sense that aliens had made the film for their own purposes. This didn't bother me so much as mildly surprise and somewhat amuse me. Soon afterwards I went to bed, slept well, and woke feeling well-rested.

The combination of Ativan and nitrous didn't produce any of the revelations, visuals, or life-changing insights of any of my psychedelic experiences. Nor was it anything like the dull chemical bliss/stupidity of smack/crack or numb sloppy alcohol. The Ativan seemed to lay down a bottom line of detachment and disassociation that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant (though if my life were sucky - it isn't, it's wonderful - then I could see this neutral feeling being a great relief). It seemed clear that it contributed more to the blackout element of the trip than the nitrous.

The nitrous seemed to make the whole thing both a lot more fun and more 'trippy.' The giddy, silly bits seemed to be all nitrous, and (even though it was hours after the nitrous ingestion) the 'alien Goddard movie' revelation seemed much more nitrous than Ativan.

The lowering of inhibitions was bothersome, in retrospect, and I feel like I could have done any number of dangerous things if I'd been on my own. In fact, I think drinking the vodka and taking the second Ativan were relatively stupid behaviors for a middle aged man with a young child.

I can still sneak back into a slight flashback of the experience when I remember 'how high you're feeling is only in your head, no one else can know.'

On the whole, quite a pleasant little day trip back for a guy whose drug days are long past.

Exp Year: 2009ExpID: 80572
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 8, 2018Views: 4,239
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Pharms - Lorazepam (79), Nitrous Oxide (40) : General (1), Combinations (3), Various (28)

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