How Nitrous Oxide Works

For about 175 years people have been huffing nitrous oxide for everything from vision quests to anesthetic to get plain old high. And after all that time we are only now beginning to understand how it works on our brains.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Won wa hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark Wal There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant Wall,
and there's Jerry And this is stuff you should wall

(00:23):
Wall Wall Wall the podcast you're making. I'm giggling like
a schoolgirl. You're making a I think I just topped
to school girl. One echo e reverbi uh sound. So
this could only be about one thing. Nature's ox siden
that's right, and two oh, that's right. Hippie Crack, the
Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz Juice, Yeah, why not? I mean

(00:49):
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

(01:11):
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

(01:33):
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.

(01:55):
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

(02:16):
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,

(02:40):
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,

(03:02):
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

(03:25):
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

(03:45):
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

(04:08):
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

(04:29):
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,

(04:52):
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

(05:13):
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

(05:36):
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

(05:57):
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

(06:20):
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

(06:40):
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

(07:01):
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

(07:22):
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

(07:44):
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

(08:06):
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.

(08:28):
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

(08:50):
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

(09:11):
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,

(09:32):
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,

(10:00):
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

(10:23):
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

(10:43):
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,

(11:05):
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

(11:27):
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

(11:48):
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

(12:10):
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?

(12:31):
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

(13:08):
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

(13:28):
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,

(13:48):
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

(14:11):
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

(14:35):
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

(14:57):
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

(15:17):
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

(15:37):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:21):
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

(16:43):
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

(17:04):
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

(17:26):
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.

(17:50):
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

(18:12):
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

(18:33):
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

(18:54):
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

(19:16):
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

(19:37):
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,

(20:00):
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

(20:24):
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.

(20:48):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:33):
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

(21:53):
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

(22:19):
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

(22:41):
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

(23:01):
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

(23:24):
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

(23:46):
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

(24:10):
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

(24:32):
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

(24:53):
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

(25:14):
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

(25:35):
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

(25:58):
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

(26:21):
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,

(26:43):
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

(27:04):
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

(27:26):
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

(27:48):
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

(28:09):
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

(28:32):
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,

(28:53):
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

(29:16):
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

(29:38):
talk about some of the recreational use and dangers. But
we're done talking about cars, right And by the way,

(30:00):
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,

(30:23):
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,

(30:46):
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

(31:06):
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

(31:29):
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

(31:52):
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

(32:14):
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

(32:36):
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

(32:58):
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,

(33:21):
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

(33:42):
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

(34:04):
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

(34:26):
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.

(34:48):
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,

(35:08):
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,

(35:31):
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

(35:52):
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

(36:13):
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.

(36:37):
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

(36:58):
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

(37:20):
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

(37:40):
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

(38:03):
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.

(38:24):
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,

(38:46):
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,

(39:09):
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

(39:32):
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

(39:53):
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,

(40:14):
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

(40:35):
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

(40:56):
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

(41:18):
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

(41:40):
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

(42:01):
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.

(42:22):
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.

(42:44):
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

(43:05):
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

(43:27):
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.

(43:49):
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

(44:12):
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

(44:33):
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

(44:54):
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.

(45:20):
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

(45:42):
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

(46:05):
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,

(46:27):
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

(46:51):
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

(47:12):
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

(47:34):
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,

(47:55):
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

(48:16):
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

(48:38):
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

(49:00):
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

(49:21):
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.

(49:42):
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

(50:03):
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

(50:24):
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

(50:44):
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

(51:06):
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

(51:26):
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

(51:49):
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

(52:11):
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

(52:34):
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
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(52:55):
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