DOSE:

repeated

inhaled

Inhalants

BODY WEIGHT:

46 kg

[Erowid Note: Our understanding of the literature is that there is no such thing as safe recreational use of volatile solvents, aerosols and other street inhalants : their psychoactive effects are inseparable from nerve and organ damage. We have chosen to include these reports to help document the real world use of inhalants, but their inclusion is not intended to imply that they are anything but dangerous.]
I had my first sniff of glue was just before my 12th birthday. I’m now 16 and glue has become an enemy, an enemy I thought I needed for what seems like a long time. It was my friend for a while. I now know just how messed up glue can make anybody. I have been clean now for about a year, albeit I have succumbed to cravings on perhaps half a dozen occasions. When I do slip up, however, I haven’t gone on a bender nor has the session been as long.

This transformation in me stems largely from my man, who I started dating a year ago. He despises it when I take glue, although he is very supportive of me when I slip up now. He tells me it’s a ‘lapse’, not a ‘relapse’. He told me the one thing he hated more than anything (and there was a lot to dislike when I was sniffing) was the “blank look “I would get in my eyes. He told me it was a look he had never seen before, and he has been a polydrug addict for about seven years and counting, so he has seen a lot of people wasted on a lot of different things. He keeps me strong, and I have to be. Glue can, in fact definitely will, mess me up in all sorts of nasty ways.

I used to do it because of the intense high. When I was on it, I would feel like I was in a completely different world. I could sit for hours, often alone, immersed in a world where there are actually two worlds, and some place in between. Cars would make strange noises, like the Doppler Effect over and over and greatly amplified. Music I had never heard before, like rock and roll (a genre I don’t follow at all) would flow through my brain. Once, I was watching the news and the presenter suddenly broke into what, to my ears, was rapping. Audio hallucinations are a major part of the glue experience.

Noises would sometimes lead to open-eye visuals (OEV’s). I once heard a loud noise, only to see a row of large pine trees wither and die while I could only watch, helpless to control my response as I still had the bag against my mouth. I saw unicorns at train stations and watched the moon get progressively closer to earth. My cousin would appear to have drastically different hair to what I knew she had. But perhaps the most intense, and therefore alluring, effects of sniffing are the complete mental backflips it can cause. I would look at ants and believe they were in fact my friend’s parents preparing to go to the airport to fly home to England. I thought the police came to me; one crouched before me while the other stood behind her. And these weren’t exactly OEV’s. They were more like a deep belief that something is happening, and there is no need for visual proof of that event. It’s very hard to explain the experience to people who have never done it. But basically, it messed me up big time. Imagine the feeling of nitrous oxide bulbs (whippets) and multiply it ten-fold. In that regard glue, and all inhalants, are very different to the other psychoactive compounds I’ve ingested (and that, sadly, is a fairly long list).

Because us sniffers can’t get the high we seek without doing nerve and organ damage, the crash is as physical as it is mental. I wake up with sore legs, a headache, aching arms and a general feeling of anger and frustration at the way my body feels. Then there’s the crime, the anti-social behaviour, the alienation from society at large. I have committed break and enters (more often than not simply out of glue-driven curiosity and disregard for consequences rather than financial gain). [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] I stole a car from a car yard, drove it up the coast. I was high, the bag always close to my mouth. It was pouring down rain, and I had two passengers. Somehow, we got to the north coast, about 120 km away. And then back. After the event, I could only remember parts of the evening. I was wasted. I would snap really badly at my boyfriend, and regret it after sobering up. I have cheated on partners because of how badly that shit can affect my judgment. I’ve been to court at least 10 times, and am well known to the police. And sniffing glue has certainly been at the root of many of those interactions.

As for any brain damage cause, well, that’s the biggest irony of all; how could I possibly be objective in making that assessment? As for other people who know me, they come and go so fast. My family, however, have never said I have changed or seem fundamentally different to who I was. And they have seen me fairly regularly since I was a little kid.
Things are better now, and I know that there is a new way to live. I avoid seeing old mates who still sniff, even if it means I spend time worrying about how they feel when I decline their invitations to socialise. But I have to do it. I’m not that strong yet. But every day I get closer. There’s more to life than the glue….choose life.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 90398
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 16
Published: Feb 12, 2018	Views: 2,182
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Inhalants (29) : Addiction & Habituation (10), Hangover / Days After (46), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)