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How to Extract Life Out of Your Life
Nitrous Oxide
Citation:   KingMidas. "How to Extract Life Out of Your Life: An Experience with Nitrous Oxide (exp88357)". Erowid.org. Dec 29, 2013. erowid.org/exp/88357

 
DOSE:
  repeated inhaled Nitrous Oxide (gas)
BODY WEIGHT: 85 kg
This is my story of using nitrous oxide, sometimes in combination with other substances, over the course of a single year. I am posting it to hopefully help people avoid the state I am currently in.

I don't tell anybody that drugs are bad, I was the last person to tell that. Nevertheless, I can't stretch this point enough, be very careful with this substance. It can be heavily addictive and due to its ready availability (and its legal status) there are almost no boundaries to it.

I started using N2O approximately a year ago. I had tried it a few years before but I hadn't been into it that much back then. After a decent night partying I found myself in the apartment of a good friend, who suddenly pulls out a whipped cream dispenser and chargers. There was it again, this mind blowing rush, this sudden deconstruction of my familiar reality. As soon as the effect wore off, I instantly asked for another balloon. We kept going like this until there were no more chargers left. Desperately hoping to find at least one more I was searching the floor, but it was all gone.

This night I decided that I would get my own dispenser and chargers and conduct my own research on that substance. Maybe six or eight weeks later my shipment arrived. Occasionally I would go through a few balloons and analyze the flexibility of my perception.

Four weeks later, a few days after Christmas, I did a blotter of acid. A few hours into the trip I was thinking about combining these two mighty substances. And did it. I am now going to illustrate a few vivid memories of the scenes I landed in. These scenes appeared astonishingly real, almost hyper real. If I didn't know that I was on a trip I would have taken these scenes as absolutely real and true.

Standing in my room I inhaled the contents of the balloon. I shouldn't be doing this because there is always the danger of going unconscious, falling and thus hurting myself. Anyways, my head started to become glass. Slightly green, solid glass. Realizing this, my complete jaw broke off, fell to the ground and burst into a million tiny shards. Before I could even correctly process what just happened I was back in the real world, my jaw was in place, my head was normal again. I was deeply shocked and fascinated at once.

Another scene: I was sitting in the middle of my bed. I was using a red balloon, I found out that the color of the balloon to a certain degree defines the quality and/or the theme of the following scene. Breathing in and out suddenly waves of warm, red blood covered my skin and bed. Surprisingly this scene did not scare me at all.

One of the most impressive scenes was this one: I have a printing of a Dali picture in my room that my subconscious probably noticed as I was sitting down on my bed with a yellow balloon. Suddenly the whole environment changes and I am sitting in the middle of a flat desert, blue sky and sun above, endless plains of sand around me. It was hot. Suddenly I recognize a sunk down humanoid figure. It was rather ugly, deformed, a very alien-like being, as it looked at me I looked back into pitch black eyes. It started to talk in a language that strangely reminded me of French. In this moment a neon yellow square appeared above my head and landed on it. It was melting with my head, and my head as well as the yellow plastic thing started to drip onto the carpet between my feet. I was thrilled!

These experiences and scenes were highly intense, sometimes disturbing, sometimes beautiful. The combination of the two seemed to me like the key to a gate to a universe inside my head. An universe my head had produced. An universe containing infinite possibilities. An universe I could even influence to a certain degree. An universe I really wanted to explore.

As time went by I would occasionally start a trip and do Nitrous. In the beginning about 50 chargers a night. This soon changed. It went up to 100, sometimes even 200, if I was with friends for example. The next level was reached when I noticed that quite similar hallucinations would occur when consuming large amounts of nitrous in a short period of time (10 chargers in two minutes or so). I soon started consuming Nitrous when not tripping on cid. A few capsules every now and then.

The effect was already reduced drastically, the wah wah sounds and acoustic effects most people experience while on nitrous had faded away a long time ago, I needed more and more chargers to get the desired effect and so on.

Meanwhile I also didn't care about getting enough oxygen into my system anymore.

When ordering supplies I did not order 100 chargers as I did the first time, but boxes of 360 chargers. I became concerned about the health risks that Nitrous poses when abused regularly. I was getting B12 injections, nevertheless sometimes I would get feelings of numbness in my limbs, or muscle twitches, but like every addict, that didn't keep me from going on.

My obsession with nitrous reached a ridiculous extent. I spent lots and lots of money for that cheap two seconds of bliss I don't even remember afterwards. My family noticed I was changing and caught me twice while I was using. This led to several arguments and clashes. My mom threatened to throw me out of the house and to stop giving me money. This didn't keep me from going on, though.

I started developing whole stories about ghosts and gods and entities I encountered in the Nitrous dimension. And – as every madman – I saw myself as a chosen one, sent to make this realm accessible for mankind.

My method of use also changed over the course of time. I started with one charger in one balloon. It soon became two in one balloon. Afterwards many double-balloons rapidly. Up to the point where I was inhaling directly out of the dispenser and exhaling into a balloon. Quite dangerous if you accidentally put more chargers into it than you are likely to burst your lungs with the pressure. This almost happened to me two times.

When I noticed that one of the local stores sold chargers I sometimes went there up to thrice a week to get gas. One time even the cashier told me that she knew exactly what I was up to with the 100 chargers I bought. Hundreds of charger boxes towered up in my wardrobe and drawers. I began to feel ashamed but this also didn't make me quit.

The experience of the combination was, until then, unimpaired by tolerance, so I was convinced that nothing really serious or dangerous had happened so far.

Another evening when tripping with friends, they noticed how I changed when using Nitrous. At that point I realized the first time that I actually was. It made me a mindless slave, a hardcore addict that would freak out and get angry if somebody took away his chargers. When there was no gas left a certain sadness/anger started to set in. I believe that the short effect of Nitrous has a lot to do with its addiction potential. It deserves to be called Hippie Crack. I never did crack but I can't imagine it to be any worse than Nitrous is to me. The short but intense effect makes me want more and more until I get into a gas frenzy where I don't think about or even realize my excessive use anymore.

A friend who visited me one day told me he was willing to help me get rid of the empty chargers. So we put all boxes we found into a large suitcase. Weighing about 60 kilograms and containing about 8000 chargers. I knew, that I was using a lot but didn't expect it to be that much. Again, I felt a bit ashamed.

I gave my whipped cream dispenser to my brother, telling him I was not able to do this anymore and that I wasn't able to do this to myself or my family ever again.

Then, about a month ago I started using even more excessive than ever before. I ordered a new dispenser with 360 chargers and emptied all of them in three days. I needed more. So I instantly ordered another 600. And again I used a large proportion of these within three days.

Apart from the tingling and numbness I never experienced ill or side effects. But this now changed. My brain felt pretty fried. I had terrible headaches. I wasn't able to focus or concentrate correctly. I swore to myself to never touch this substance again. The spasms and the numbness got worse. I took my B12 and hoped that this condition was to end soon.

My last relapse was about two weeks ago. I did 160 chargers in one night. I felt horrible. All the effects were gone. All the magic and bizarre realities had faded into a weak barely noticeable feeling. I developed thoughts like 'the CIA massively influences my television' and 'I brainwashed myself', abnormal and disturbing thoughts. I was getting paranoid. Nitrous didn't do shit for me anymore. I was hating myself for ruining my physical and mental health for something I didn't even get anything out of. I was hating myself for going through approximately 10,000 chargers in a single year. I was hating myself, I was hating my life.

Right now, the physical symptoms are gone, but until now I did not realize the psychic damage I had done to myself. Life appears colorless and tasteless to me. It is trivial and dull. I feel misplaced. As if I had taken the wrong exit to the wrong dimension. One thing that deeply bothers me is that music doesn't sound the same anymore. My brain somehow filters off some effects or vocals, reducing the songs I once loved to a sad cacophonous sludge of noise. I am not myself anymore. I am shattered. My concentration and focus last for 3 seconds maximum, I am unable to produce complex thoughts.

My life changed in a way I never expected it to do. I regret having ever started using nitrous. Before my life was rich and full of life. Now it's a shallow show of incomplete sensations. Calling this condition sad would make the understatement of the year. Nitrous extracted my will, my vitality, my soulfulness. My interests. My creativity. My ideas. My self. Its all gone.

Many people I have met, that use or have used Nitrous did not encounter any problems with addiction. My problem basically was that I was having large amounts around and a lack of self discipline (I think every addict has). N2O produces profound experiences, definitely, and I am sure it is an interesting and useful recreational drug. But in case you tend to excessive consumption of whatever or use drugs to solve problems (it doesn't work) do not ever touch nitrous.

It will sucked me in, changed me, took away my true self, ruined me financially, socially, emotionally. This is by far the worst substance I met in my drug career. Up to the current day I am hoping my life will normalize again. This ain't worth living. I did not consume this drug. It consumed me.

Exp Year: 2010ExpID: 88357
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Dec 29, 2013Views: 17,234
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Nitrous Oxide (40) : Addiction & Habituation (10), Depression (15), Post Trip Problems (8), Loss of Magic (34), Alone (16)

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