May 29, 2021 • 53 mins
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. Get the scoop in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning or good afternoon everyone, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here.
Stuff you should know. It is February and Saturday Select time,
because we are going back to that day to talk
about how nitrous oxide works. And honestly, the reason I
picked this as this select is that I don't even
remember doing this one, so I'm gonna listen again, and
so should you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
(00:28):
production of I Heart Radio. Wa Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Wal There's Charles W Chuck
frant Wall, and there's Jerry And this is stuff you
should Wall Wall Wall Wall, good podcast you're making. I'm
(00:53):
giggling like a schoolgirl. You're making a I think I
just topped you schoolgirl. One echo e reverbi uh sal.
So this could only be about one thing, nitrous ox
side and that's right and two oh, that's right. Hippie Crack,
the Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz juice, Yeah why not? I
(01:14):
mean those are the street names that has medical applicats.
Some of those are made up. Yeah, we're going to
cover the whole gamut here. Yeah, medical use and recreational
use dangers. Yeah, we're gonna do an episode on nitrous oxide.
That's right. Um, so, Chuck, we should probably start not
at the beginning, but not at the end, somewhere in
(01:34):
the middle, because 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 Vegas Brother. Did you know that? Yeah? Oh,
(01:55):
you knew that. I did. Well, well, I don't think
that's not it's heavily as secret. Did you notice that
red Apple cigarettes make an appearance in more than just
pulp ficture? Yeah, all right, 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 tomb that Humphrey Davy wrote
(02:19):
on nitros oxide. 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
(02:41):
that Dennis Dennis see is That's 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 it's
in Connecticut. Uh. And this was in the eighteen thirties
(03:02):
and U oh man really yeah, maybe we should start over.
Wow wow wow, all right. Uh. He was a dentist
in the eighteen thirties, and he recognized something that all
dentists of the day recognized, which is everyone hates your
guts because you are causing excruciating amounts of pain on
(03:23):
a daily basis to your patients. Yeah. It's it's like,
here's some whiskey, Maybe bite on this broomstick. Well, actually
you 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 dentists. See. Uh. He
felt pretty bad about this enough so that, um, he
(03:46):
went to a traveling exhibition once that came through town.
And this was in the eighteen forties, and it was
staged by a man named h. A. Gardner Colton. That's
a great name, Gardner Quincy Colton. Yeah he sounds like
a 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.
(04:08):
And while he was in med school he was introduced
to the wonders of huffing nitrous oxide. Yes, and he said,
I'm not gonna do medical school anymore. Ims is gonna
drop out and hit the road with tank the old
hippie crack. Yeah exactly, and show people what's what. And
so at one of these demonstrations in Hartford and sometime
in the eighteen forties, um, he saw Colton give this
(04:31):
demo and and I guess 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,
(04:52):
here's what I'll do. I'll get Colton to come into
my office tomorrow and my buddy colleague John Riggs. I'll
get Cold 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
(05:15):
k A. Please stop hating me, right, And so Wells
followed in this really great tradition that really stopped in
I guess probably about the twentieth century, mid the late
twentieth century, of where if you were a scientist you
were your own first human test subject. That people still
do that. Yeah, apparently in um in Marvel Comics they do.
(05:35):
One of the greatest articles I've ever read in any
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
(05:58):
underlying thread where if you're my oologists and you discover
a mushroom, you try it out on yourself, right, Like
that's just what they do still today. I think that
you tried it on yourself after you fed it to
your children, just to see what happened, maybe your dog first,
and then you try it on you. Man. I'll bet
those those my collogist dogs were bandanas then are super
(06:18):
laid back. You know. Uh, what's the name of the article?
I want to check that out, blood Sport. It's 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
(06:44):
dental procedures for the next few weeks and months on
dozens of patients and they were all like this is great, 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 these tests,
(07:07):
successful tests, when he finally gets up the gumpch and
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.
I swear this is for real, I really care about
my patients. In the room started spinning and he fell
(07:29):
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 oxide.
But he was huffing a lot of nitrous oxide, right. Uh. Well,
although Davy, well we'll get to that a spoiler. He
went on to say that he thought that he had
(07:51):
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 stop breathing in nitris, you
go back to normal pretty quickly 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 would have been like ninety night pal.
(08:11):
But um, yeah, he he became well, like you said,
not hooked, but a heavy user of ether and chloroform
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
come to London. But by this time he'd sunk into
(08:33):
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 and went
out on the street and through 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 He kept doing chloroform and ether in prison because
(08:55):
I guess you could get it, and um 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 at home or maybe back if he's getting
(09:16):
chloroform in prison, it could have been there. He huffed
a dose of chloroform to anesthetize himself and then he
cut his femoral artery. So 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 A d A, the American Dental Association as a
(09:39):
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. That's right. He set up practice as a
dentist after all, and it was his successful demonstrations that
(09:59):
got the d A 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 we were in there already.
I think everyone just assumed, and we go back seventy
years previous to Horace Wells, to a guy named Jason
(10:20):
Priestley Dylan, Sorry, no, Brandon, Joseph Priestly. Oh that guy
Jason Priestley'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 Priestley. He was an
Englishman and he begins Priestley, that's right. And he was
(10:43):
a big He was an enlightened thinker, and he was
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 was a poly math math a holly
glodd as somebody speaks a bunch of different languages. Poly
Math is somebody who's in a bunch of different fields. Yeah. Probably.
(11:07):
He was an enlightenment guy for sure. 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. Gases. It needs to
shoot a duck and he actually lived next to a brewery,
(11:29):
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
(11:52):
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
(12:12):
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 simplistically beautiful. It is so
um priestly had his own that he made the pneumatic trough,
and this guy actually isolated eight different gases or airs
(12:36):
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 an arologists, anist? Well, if you do that right
(13:00):
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
(13:32):
was quite 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 Newmatic Institute, and
they used gases as for therapy, curative therapies, and he
got into using them on himself, which, like you said,
(13:54):
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 nineteen seventy five that I
read pointed out he was also like twenty at the time,
so it totally makes sense that he would like half
a bunch of nitrous oxide and then the call it science, right,
but he I mean, it really was science. So this
(14:15):
guy apparently had tried it a few times before, but
then his big experiment, his first huge experiment was on
Boxing Day of seventeen, right, which is December. It's very
important that you remember December. Why is it important, Well,
it was Boxing Day, but it was also literally box
(14:38):
day because Humphrey David 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'd just be crazy, right. He released twenty
courts of nitrous oxide every five minute as long as
(15:00):
I'm conscious. That must have been the safe words. 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.
(15:20):
And they're like, how are you still standing? And he goes,
I'm not I'm flying. He basically did. He had a
great disposition to laugh, which eventually is where laughing gas
would come from. He talked about shining packets of light
and energy. He talked about objects dazzling in their intensity,
and sounds amplified into a cacophony that echoed through infinite
(15:43):
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 Davy,
who became the Poet Laureate of Great Britain. Later on
(16:05):
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 as he continued to inhale.
(16:26):
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 the largest dose of nitrous
(16:47):
oxide anyone had ever taken, these effects were intensified to
levels he could not have imagined. So I keep going, sure,
do you want to do? You want to take over?
I think it's better when we break it up. I'm
gonna the southy part. So okay. His hearing became fantastically acute,
allowing him to distinguish every sound in the room, and
seemingly from far beyond, a vast, distant hump wah wah
(17:11):
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 buddy you mentioned the future poet laureate.
(17:32):
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 the gaseous oxid. Oh Tom again,
(17:55):
exclamation point, I have had some. It made me laugh
and single and 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 Boyit pretty great stuff, No wonder
(18:16):
he was 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 see under the guise of experimentation, but
(18:38):
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 words. Their experience
(19:00):
it was, 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 Taylor Coleridge, the great poet, um put it best.
(19:23):
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 with 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
but a silk bag and just walk around England huffing.
(19:47):
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
breathing and think, oh man, I wish I had some gas.
That's how they call it, hippie crack. Yeah, exactly. So
(20:07):
everyone else fell away. He was only experimenting with themselves
for a little while. Then he brings in Coleridge 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 all
this time, while he's under the he's just huffing nitrous
(20:27):
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 on humans and animals.
(20:52):
Should I read the title, Yeah, Researches chemical and philosophical
chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or deep Oh man, what is
that word? Deflogisticated nitrous air and its respiration was the
name of it? Yes, So in that book he he
mentioned something, um kind of I guess off handedly. He
(21:13):
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
going to set someone's broken arm. Right, So he says this,
But it's another forty years before Horace Wells starts trying
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
for its intended Uh, well, what would end up being
its intended purpose? That's still used today 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 never goes more
(22:19):
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,
(22:40):
you're fine, You're totally fine. Um. So it's kind of
nuts chuck that with nitrous oxide. We 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.
(23:02):
It is a little bit dice you know. It makes
you feel good, right, It does 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 anxioltic, which means it diminishes anxiety. And so I
(23:25):
found this two thousand six paper UM and it basically says,
here's what we think is going on. So within anxiolytic
um it triggers the same UM response in the brain
as a benzodiazepin, which is like valium or annex or
something like that. So it actually does cut down an anxiety,
(23:45):
which is why they dentist will use it for like
little kids 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 totally I doc,
go ahead and do whatever you like. Yeah, UM, as
far as an analgesic is concerned, it actually does have
(24:06):
a tremendous amount of UM an ability to cut down
on pain. And it does so by activating your opioids
that those are released, opioids are producing the brain and
your oh 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.
(24:29):
And they say that something like a just a thirty
percent concentration of nitrous oxide 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 the se is when it is
known as an anesthetic, right, And so it's not technically
(24:50):
an anesthetic in that if you if you huff that
until you lost consciousness, you're probably in big trouble. You
don't want to use nitro sock side 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
(25:12):
of like ketamine, which means that it goes after your
n M d A receptors, which have to do with
memory formation and they control UM like neural firing, right,
And it 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
(25:33):
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 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 exactly.
But I don't get because you said it was an analgesic. Yeah,
(25:56):
I mean, well, I guess maybe childbirth is so painful
I can't knock 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
(26:17):
what nitrous does to the brain. Right, you can also
find nitrous elsewhere outside of medical settings to right, Yeah,
you can find in a 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 to be used as a propellant. So, uh, it
(26:38):
works really well with fatty liquids and heavy creams and things.
So what happens is the gases in their compressed into
a liquid 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
(26:58):
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, 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
(27:23):
no bacteria can can form inside a can of Ready
Whip or any other instant 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 fasts
(27:49):
and furious is or is this Sammy Hagar solo fan,
I can't drive, that's right? Does he talked about nitros No,
but it's just assumed that there's nitrous and all. 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
(28:11):
the little tank in there. And 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 levels going into the engine. Right, with more oxygen,
more gaskets burned, right, more gaskets burned, more horsepowers produced
(28:32):
because the gases expanding pump those pistons even harder than
You're too fast and too furious, yea 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 they made seven of them. Yeah,
(28:53):
but like the first one made a billion dollars world
its first week, or the last one, the last one
made like a billion dollars. It's crazy how I saw.
I think I saw the first one. Yeah, I've never
seen any of them. But that's about it's just not
my bag. No, 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,
(29:17):
but I've never been like, oh man, look at that
sports car. I sure would like to drive fast in that. Yeah. Well,
remember when we hosted or 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 common, do we. Yeah, Josh,
and I judged a soapbox derby contest sponsor by Red
(29:38):
Bull and Young Jock at local Atlanta rapper who was
super cool. He's 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
(30:00):
more about cars, and we'll come back and talk about
some of the recreational use and dangers. But we're done
talking about cars, right, Yes, And by the way if
(30:25):
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 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 all right, so, uh,
(30:48):
recreational use. Um. It has this medical purposes and its
food and auto purposes. But nitros is very famous for
becoming um, a big, 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
(31:11):
or let's be honest, at a grateful dead show. Right.
They're also I'll post that Rolling Stone um article on
the podcast page for this really interesting. But it's also
a a what is that? Oh it's called second hand embarrassment? Like, um,
what people getting never watching the Jeb Bush campaign? Second
(31:33):
hand embarrassment? Well, yes, well you never you're embarrassed somebody, Yes, exactly. Um,
the the the you definitely get that from reading this
because the writers very earnestly super seventies. Really Yeah, like
one of the person the people who has interviewed as
(31:53):
a as an expert of sources, 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,
(32:16):
I know what it was going to solid dorm rooms.
In this Rolling Stone article, they were saying like if
you go to like a lot of us said at
in Berkeley, California, and they were like places all over,
not just a concerts Um, it was everywhere in the
seventies because a lot of people were like, as it's cool,
but this stuff like you can just stop and five
minutes later you're back on your feet. Yeah, so it
(32:39):
was like a big deal to him. Well, which is
one reason they call a hippie crack because the the
highest short lived. Uh, and you want to do another one?
Uh and go listen 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
(32:59):
and twentieth century, though, like you said, when it was
um 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 uh not High Times the h what
was the one Casa Blanket? No, the famous pop movie
I'm totally blanking out on the pot movie for madness. Uh.
(33:22):
There were movies about huffing, though. Was Charlie Chaplin was
in one in nineteen fourteen where he played a dentist. Uh, well,
someone posing as a dentist who would hugh gas? Have you?
Have you ever seen that chaplain 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
uh movies early on called Laughing Gas, not just one, right,
(33:46):
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
(34:07):
huffing it, right, because you're huffing nitrogen gas or nitrogen
nitrogen oxide gas, and it's displacing oxygen I'm sorry, nitrous oxide, guess,
And it is displacing oxygen. But as long as you're
huffing in a safe supply of oxygen as well, your
brain is continuing to function. But your opioid receptors are
also going crazy, and you're dissociative, and d m A
(34:29):
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 into your
(34:51):
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.
(35:13):
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. I did find a study though, and um,
I think it was last year, uh, published in Clinical Neurophysiology,
(35:33):
that they hooked people up to an e G and
had m 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 UH 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
(35:54):
wallah sound, Well, it's it. 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 whereof you would think you
(36:16):
would you you would physiologically be back to normal too.
That is surprising. 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
(36:37):
concentration meaning like fifty years like what they used 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,
(37:01):
and your neurons. It causes your brain cells to die
because of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen or nitrous oxide
displaces oxygen and your brain needs oxygen. And 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
s uh receptors which are responsible for the mile in
(37:23):
which is the sheath that coats your your nerves right, 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 of super high concentrations
that that create irreversible damage. Yeah. They've done a lot
more studying about it in the UK than here because
(37:46):
up until this year it was legal. Oh they allowed it. Yeah,
well so I guess the results of the study weren't promising. Uh. Well,
I mean this was that only what is it now
mid February. Yeah, it's only like two weeks ago that
like literally came on the really has officially law. Uh.
And there were big demonstrations in in England, like like
massive huffing parties on the lawn of uh, like the
(38:10):
I don't know where they decide these things in Parliament
put Buckingham Palace, say Buckingham Ballace because they're like this
is you know, what are we gonna do at Glastonbury
Festival every year? Now? Uh? And they nice bozz marketing
by the way, what the Glastonbury Well, we're not going
to that. I know. I was saying nice, okay, Um,
(38:31):
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 canisters and tear their
legs off because they're not strong enough to lift them.
So worldwide it was in two thousand fourteen it was
(38:52):
the fourteenth most used drug in the world. And m really, yeah, huh,
what do you think of higher or lower? I didn't
even think about it. I think it's that's just that's
that just totally caught me by surprise. Uh. And the
Independent said that um, the UK's largest drug and alcohol
charity alistair Boe. They said, you know what, we can't
(39:14):
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 out this old World War two gas masks,
or let me put a bag over my head, or
(39:35):
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 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 I don't
(39:57):
want some kids 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, son. But there have
been plenty of plenty of incidences of death. Um. Joseph Bennett,
a seventeen year old from North London, died in two
thousand twelve after falling into a coma, and then just
this year that twenty one year old student was found
(40:18):
dead um in his room with two hundred spent cartridges.
Oh well, 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 nitris. I mean, like,
if you're being administered nitrous, even in a medical setting,
(40:41):
you can have a bad reaction to it, and it
turns out your allergic to nitris and your debt or
you're in 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 outside of a medical setting,
your likelihood of dying or or suffering some sort of
(41:01):
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 passing out and hitting your head. Yeah.
(41:24):
Or I saw this one sad case. I think it
was in the United States. This lady's son, like you know,
wandered out into traffic and got hit by a car
from nitrous. Yeah, because he did nitros 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 going on at the time and chasing
(41:45):
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 air in between. What a waste? Yeah, it's just
it's not smart. No, it doesn't know. Um, I think
we got that across anyway. I think so you know
who doesn't do nitrous no? How no way? Scientologists? Uh why?
(42:11):
L Ron Hubbard hated nitrous oxide 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
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 a manuscript called ex Caliber,
(42:34):
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.
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
(42:57):
it in Dianetics, saying it's it's bad jam. He's the
only person ever do it and not say this is great.
You had a bad time on it. Well, let's talk
about childbirth unless you have anything else. So in Canada,
in Finland, Australia, in the United Kingdom, traditionally women have
(43:18):
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 offered it. I've
never heard of that in the U. S. Well, that's
all changing now. Um, basically the medical establishment is basically
(43:39):
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 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
(44:00):
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. The thing
is so 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 taking
(44:25):
care of 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 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
fifty mix under like a controlled supervise setting. Well, the
(44:46):
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 don't think
there is any danger to the key aid so far,
because they said it's filtered through the lungs and uh
not like the narcotics that are filtered through deliver um.
(45:07):
So they said, so far they haven't found where it
hurts a baby in any way. Plus to let you
remember being born. I just think the self administration part
it is pretty interesting. Yeah, you know, it makes lets
a woman feel more in control, supposedly of their own
uh comfort. Right, So I'm all for it. Why not?
(45:28):
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 and two oh Humphrey Davy the gas. Uh. If
you want to know more about nitrous oxide, type those
words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
(45:49):
And since I said search parts, time for a listener
mayo no, Chuck no, no, what is it time for?
It's time for administrative So chuck first and foremost. I
really want to thank John Morgan over at Queen Charlotte's
(46:11):
Pimano Cheese Royal. He has hooked us up good, good stuff,
wonderful stuff. The men cheese like the best pimono 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 stuff.
Queen Charlotte's Permono Cheese Royale. Alright. We received Christmas cards
(46:34):
from the Kavanaughs, the Lees, the Loses and you know
Hillary and Mike who were talking to They hook us
up with the cheese. Yeah with a flathead lake, flathead
lake or just flathead cheese. I think flathead lake. I
think it is too. It's delicious. Hillary, You're the best. Yeah,
thank you. And the Nelson's so thank you for those
(46:55):
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 awesome, great gift for yourself for somebody else where.
They send you all the ingredients you need to make
cocktails voting recipes. You just add booze and wow are
(47:16):
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
the 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 boots. Nice guy, did
you try not yet? I guess you just found it
(47:39):
today in the office. So there you tried it. That'd
be 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
around with Lego candy at least in California now, Um.
(48:02):
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 grief Chuck, thanks, Yes, loves
that too. She won't set it down. Good luck with
(48:22):
your alcoholism, right, I'm just kidding. Thanks to Eric Young
from Squamish BC for 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,
and he uses a Squarespace site. Pretty awesome. How about that.
(48:44):
Kelly from the Elephants Trunk send us some awesome toys.
Thank you very much for those, Kelly. Thank you to
em from Melbourne, Australia via Knoxville, Tennessee for the homemade
sour dough hot Cross bun. Yes, that was good. Um.
And in Elizabeth Henry send us a signed copy of
Who Killed Mr? Moonlight by the One and Only David
(49:05):
J of Bauhaus And 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 Bouhouse? He played bass? Wow? Yeah he
also had a good solo career too. Yeah. Yeah. Shan Erskine,
thank you for the stuff you should know bottle cap
(49:26):
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 and
then blow a glass bowl so that it molds on
the bottom to that specific piece of teak. And then, buddy,
(49:50):
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 uh ellie 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. Check out K A M I y A
CEO dot com. Dorrian Wilson, owner of Revival Ltd. They
(50:15):
make cool shirts and the proceeds of those shirts go
to people in Brazil displaced by the World Cup. Is
that right? Oh? Yeah? Wow? Uh and you can find
that information at Revival Global dot com. Yes. Um, Johnny
Wood who works for Yakima, the outfitter, the biking outfitter.
(50:39):
Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Yakima. Yeah,
and they like pike racks, thank you. Yeah, he sent
us some swag. Yeah, I got a tuk that I wear. Yeah,
and he travels around selling Yakima 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.
(50:59):
He made the bullet pins man, and he sent tho
so long ago and it's so it's we we've just
been lax, so thank you for those. It's really neat.
He has a series called 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
(51:21):
a statement in school looking Yeah. Um, we got a
nice letter from Jenny Cochrane. That's that. We want to
thank Matt for the handmade hinge game h E n
g e is in stone inch Um. And Lorie Gesh
for the copy of her kid's book Copper Light Colon,
a really crappy story, and she sent us some real
(51:42):
copper lights, which is fossilized poop. Oh. That's right, I
remember seeing that. I have a piece of tuck to
my cheek right now. Thanks to our buddy 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, insformed society, and brought the world to
the Brink by Richard L. Courier. Thank you very much
(52:04):
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 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,
(52:25):
I've got the last one all right, uh, which seems
chumpy following that heartfelt thing. But thanks a lots to
Brett Goods first sending us pork Cloud stuff port Cloud
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
(52:46):
was decidedly non chumpy. Thank you nice, Thank you Brett Goods.
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 always,
thank you to those who send in good thoughts and
letters and handmade fun gifts. Yeah, we're nice. We really
appreciate it. It's the best. Uh. So if you want
(53:09):
to get in touch of this. You can tweet to
us at s y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at a home on the web Stuff you Should Know
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
(53:30):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Good morning or good afternoon everyone, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here.
Stuff you should know. It is February and Saturday Select time,
because we are going back to that day to talk
about how nitrous oxide works. And honestly, the reason I
picked this as this select is that I don't even
remember doing this one, so I'm gonna listen again, and
so should you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
(00:28):
production of I Heart Radio. Wa Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Wal There's Charles W Chuck
frant Wall, and there's Jerry And this is stuff you
should Wall Wall Wall Wall, good podcast you're making. I'm
(00:53):
giggling like a schoolgirl. You're making a I think I
just topped you schoolgirl. One echo e reverbi uh sal.
So this could only be about one thing, nitrous ox
side and that's right and two oh, that's right. Hippie Crack,
the Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz juice, Yeah why not? I
(01:14):
mean those are the street names that has medical applicats.
Some of those are made up. Yeah, we're going to
cover the whole gamut here. Yeah, medical use and recreational
use dangers. Yeah, we're gonna do an episode on nitrous oxide.
That's right. Um, so, Chuck, we should probably start not
at the beginning, but not at the end, somewhere in
(01:34):
the middle, because 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 Vegas Brother. Did you know that? Yeah? Oh,
(01:55):
you knew that. I did. Well, well, I don't think
that's not it's heavily as secret. Did you notice that
red Apple cigarettes make an appearance in more than just
pulp ficture? Yeah, all right, 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 tomb that Humphrey Davy wrote
(02:19):
on nitros oxide. 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
(02:41):
that Dennis Dennis see is That's 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 it's
in Connecticut. Uh. And this was in the eighteen thirties
(03:02):
and U oh man really yeah, maybe we should start over.
Wow wow wow, all right. Uh. He was a dentist
in the eighteen thirties, and he recognized something that all
dentists of the day recognized, which is everyone hates your
guts because you are causing excruciating amounts of pain on
(03:23):
a daily basis to your patients. Yeah. It's it's like,
here's some whiskey, Maybe bite on this broomstick. Well, actually
you 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 dentists. See. Uh. He
felt pretty bad about this enough so that, um, he
(03:46):
went to a traveling exhibition once that came through town.
And this was in the eighteen forties, and it was
staged by a man named h. A. Gardner Colton. That's
a great name, Gardner Quincy Colton. Yeah he sounds like
a 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.
(04:08):
And while he was in med school he was introduced
to the wonders of huffing nitrous oxide. Yes, and he said,
I'm not gonna do medical school anymore. Ims is gonna
drop out and hit the road with tank the old
hippie crack. Yeah exactly, and show people what's what. And
so at one of these demonstrations in Hartford and sometime
in the eighteen forties, um, he saw Colton give this
(04:31):
demo and and I guess 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,
(04:52):
here's what I'll do. I'll get Colton to come into
my office tomorrow and my buddy colleague John Riggs. I'll
get Cold 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
(05:15):
k A. Please stop hating me, right, And so Wells
followed in this really great tradition that really stopped in
I guess probably about the twentieth century, mid the late
twentieth century, of where if you were a scientist you
were your own first human test subject. That people still
do that. Yeah, apparently in um in Marvel Comics they do.
(05:35):
One of the greatest articles I've ever read in any
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
(05:58):
underlying thread where if you're my oologists and you discover
a mushroom, you try it out on yourself, right, Like
that's just what they do still today. I think that
you tried it on yourself after you fed it to
your children, just to see what happened, maybe your dog first,
and then you try it on you. Man. I'll bet
those those my collogist dogs were bandanas then are super
(06:18):
laid back. You know. Uh, what's the name of the article?
I want to check that out, blood Sport. It's 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
(06:44):
dental procedures for the next few weeks and months on
dozens of patients and they were all like this is great, 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 these tests,
(07:07):
successful tests, when he finally gets up the gumpch and
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.
I swear this is for real, I really care about
my patients. In the room started spinning and he fell
(07:29):
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 oxide.
But he was huffing a lot of nitrous oxide, right. Uh. Well,
although Davy, well we'll get to that a spoiler. He
went on to say that he thought that he had
(07:51):
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 stop breathing in nitris, you
go back to normal pretty quickly 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 would have been like ninety night pal.
(08:11):
But um, yeah, he he became well, like you said,
not hooked, but a heavy user of ether and chloroform
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
come to London. But by this time he'd sunk into
(08:33):
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 and went
out on the street and through 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 He kept doing chloroform and ether in prison because
(08:55):
I guess you could get it, and um 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 at home or maybe back if he's getting
(09:16):
chloroform in prison, it could have been there. He huffed
a dose of chloroform to anesthetize himself and then he
cut his femoral artery. So 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 A d A, the American Dental Association as a
(09:39):
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. That's right. He set up practice as a
dentist after all, and it was his successful demonstrations that
(09:59):
got the d A 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 we were in there already.
I think everyone just assumed, and we go back seventy
years previous to Horace Wells, to a guy named Jason
(10:20):
Priestley Dylan, Sorry, no, Brandon, Joseph Priestly. Oh that guy
Jason Priestley'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 Priestley. He was an
Englishman and he begins Priestley, that's right. And he was
(10:43):
a big He was an enlightened thinker, and he was
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 was a poly math math a holly
glodd as somebody speaks a bunch of different languages. Poly
Math is somebody who's in a bunch of different fields. Yeah. Probably.
(11:07):
He was an enlightenment guy for sure. 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. Gases. It needs to
shoot a duck and he actually lived next to a brewery,
(11:29):
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
(11:52):
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
(12:12):
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 simplistically beautiful. It is so
um priestly had his own that he made the pneumatic trough,
and this guy actually isolated eight different gases or airs
(12:36):
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 an arologists, anist? Well, if you do that right
(13:00):
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
(13:32):
was quite 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 Newmatic Institute, and
they used gases as for therapy, curative therapies, and he
got into using them on himself, which, like you said,
(13:54):
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 nineteen seventy five that I
read pointed out he was also like twenty at the time,
so it totally makes sense that he would like half
a bunch of nitrous oxide and then the call it science, right,
but he I mean, it really was science. So this
(14:15):
guy apparently had tried it a few times before, but
then his big experiment, his first huge experiment was on
Boxing Day of seventeen, right, which is December. It's very
important that you remember December. Why is it important, Well,
it was Boxing Day, but it was also literally box
(14:38):
day because Humphrey David 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'd just be crazy, right. He released twenty
courts of nitrous oxide every five minute as long as
(15:00):
I'm conscious. That must have been the safe words. 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.
(15:20):
And they're like, how are you still standing? And he goes,
I'm not I'm flying. He basically did. He had a
great disposition to laugh, which eventually is where laughing gas
would come from. He talked about shining packets of light
and energy. He talked about objects dazzling in their intensity,
and sounds amplified into a cacophony that echoed through infinite
(15:43):
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 Davy,
who became the Poet Laureate of Great Britain. Later on
(16:05):
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 as he continued to inhale.
(16:26):
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 the largest dose of nitrous
(16:47):
oxide anyone had ever taken, these effects were intensified to
levels he could not have imagined. So I keep going, sure,
do you want to do? You want to take over?
I think it's better when we break it up. I'm
gonna the southy part. So okay. His hearing became fantastically acute,
allowing him to distinguish every sound in the room, and
seemingly from far beyond, a vast, distant hump wah wah
(17:11):
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 buddy you mentioned the future poet laureate.
(17:32):
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 the gaseous oxid. Oh Tom again,
(17:55):
exclamation point, I have had some. It made me laugh
and single and 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 Boyit pretty great stuff, No wonder
(18:16):
he was 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 see under the guise of experimentation, but
(18:38):
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 words. Their experience
(19:00):
it was, 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 Taylor Coleridge, the great poet, um put it best.
(19:23):
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 with 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
but a silk bag and just walk around England huffing.
(19:47):
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
breathing and think, oh man, I wish I had some gas.
That's how they call it, hippie crack. Yeah, exactly. So
(20:07):
everyone else fell away. He was only experimenting with themselves
for a little while. Then he brings in Coleridge 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 all
this time, while he's under the he's just huffing nitrous
(20:27):
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 on humans and animals.
(20:52):
Should I read the title, Yeah, Researches chemical and philosophical
chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or deep Oh man, what is
that word? Deflogisticated nitrous air and its respiration was the
name of it? Yes, So in that book he he
mentioned something, um kind of I guess off handedly. He
(21:13):
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
going to set someone's broken arm. Right, So he says this,
But it's another forty years before Horace Wells starts trying
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
for its intended Uh, well, what would end up being
its intended purpose? That's still used today 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 never goes more
(22:19):
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,
(22:40):
you're fine, You're totally fine. Um. So it's kind of
nuts chuck that with nitrous oxide. We 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.
(23:02):
It is a little bit dice you know. It makes
you feel good, right, It does 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 anxioltic, which means it diminishes anxiety. And so I
(23:25):
found this two thousand six paper UM and it basically says,
here's what we think is going on. So within anxiolytic
um it triggers the same UM response in the brain
as a benzodiazepin, which is like valium or annex or
something like that. So it actually does cut down an anxiety,
(23:45):
which is why they dentist will use it for like
little kids 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 totally I doc,
go ahead and do whatever you like. Yeah, UM, as
far as an analgesic is concerned, it actually does have
(24:06):
a tremendous amount of UM an ability to cut down
on pain. And it does so by activating your opioids
that those are released, opioids are producing the brain and
your oh 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.
(24:29):
And they say that something like a just a thirty
percent concentration of nitrous oxide 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 the se is when it is
known as an anesthetic, right, And so it's not technically
(24:50):
an anesthetic in that if you if you huff that
until you lost consciousness, you're probably in big trouble. You
don't want to use nitro sock side 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
(25:12):
of like ketamine, which means that it goes after your
n M d A receptors, which have to do with
memory formation and they control UM like neural firing, right,
And it 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
(25:33):
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 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 exactly.
But I don't get because you said it was an analgesic. Yeah,
(25:56):
I mean, well, I guess maybe childbirth is so painful
I can't knock 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
(26:17):
what nitrous does to the brain. Right, you can also
find nitrous elsewhere outside of medical settings to right, Yeah,
you can find in a 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 to be used as a propellant. So, uh, it
(26:38):
works really well with fatty liquids and heavy creams and things.
So what happens is the gases in their compressed into
a liquid 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
(26:58):
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, 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
(27:23):
no bacteria can can form inside a can of Ready
Whip or any other instant 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 fasts
(27:49):
and furious is or is this Sammy Hagar solo fan,
I can't drive, that's right? Does he talked about nitros No,
but it's just assumed that there's nitrous and all. 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
(28:11):
the little tank in there. And 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 levels going into the engine. Right, with more oxygen,
more gaskets burned, right, more gaskets burned, more horsepowers produced
(28:32):
because the gases expanding pump those pistons even harder than
You're too fast and too furious, yea 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 they made seven of them. Yeah,
(28:53):
but like the first one made a billion dollars world
its first week, or the last one, the last one
made like a billion dollars. It's crazy how I saw.
I think I saw the first one. Yeah, I've never
seen any of them. But that's about it's just not
my bag. No, 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,
(29:17):
but I've never been like, oh man, look at that
sports car. I sure would like to drive fast in that. Yeah. Well,
remember when we hosted or 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 common, do we. Yeah, Josh,
and I judged a soapbox derby contest sponsor by Red
(29:38):
Bull and Young Jock at local Atlanta rapper who was
super cool. He's 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
(30:00):
more about cars, and we'll come back and talk about
some of the recreational use and dangers. But we're done
talking about cars, right, Yes, And by the way if
(30:25):
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 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 all right, so, uh,
(30:48):
recreational use. Um. It has this medical purposes and its
food and auto purposes. But nitros is very famous for
becoming um, a big, 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
(31:11):
or let's be honest, at a grateful dead show. Right.
They're also I'll post that Rolling Stone um article on
the podcast page for this really interesting. But it's also
a a what is that? Oh it's called second hand embarrassment? Like, um,
what people getting never watching the Jeb Bush campaign? Second
(31:33):
hand embarrassment? Well, yes, well you never you're embarrassed somebody, Yes, exactly. Um,
the the the you definitely get that from reading this
because the writers very earnestly super seventies. Really Yeah, like
one of the person the people who has interviewed as
(31:53):
a as an expert of sources, 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,
(32:16):
I know what it was going to solid dorm rooms.
In this Rolling Stone article, they were saying like if
you go to like a lot of us said at
in Berkeley, California, and they were like places all over,
not just a concerts Um, it was everywhere in the
seventies because a lot of people were like, as it's cool,
but this stuff like you can just stop and five
minutes later you're back on your feet. Yeah, so it
(32:39):
was like a big deal to him. Well, which is
one reason they call a hippie crack because the the
highest short lived. Uh, and you want to do another one?
Uh and go listen 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
(32:59):
and twentieth century, though, like you said, when it was
um 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 uh not High Times the h what
was the one Casa Blanket? No, the famous pop movie
I'm totally blanking out on the pot movie for madness. Uh.
(33:22):
There were movies about huffing, though. Was Charlie Chaplin was
in one in nineteen fourteen where he played a dentist. Uh, well,
someone posing as a dentist who would hugh gas? Have you?
Have you ever seen that chaplain 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
uh movies early on called Laughing Gas, not just one, right,
(33:46):
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
(34:07):
huffing it, right, because you're huffing nitrogen gas or nitrogen
nitrogen oxide gas, and it's displacing oxygen I'm sorry, nitrous oxide, guess,
And it is displacing oxygen. But as long as you're
huffing in a safe supply of oxygen as well, your
brain is continuing to function. But your opioid receptors are
also going crazy, and you're dissociative, and d m A
(34:29):
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 into your
(34:51):
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.
(35:13):
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. I did find a study though, and um,
I think it was last year, uh, published in Clinical Neurophysiology,
(35:33):
that they hooked people up to an e G and
had m 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 UH 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
(35:54):
wallah sound, Well, it's it. 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 whereof you would think you
(36:16):
would you you would physiologically be back to normal too.
That is surprising. 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
(36:37):
concentration meaning like fifty years like what they used 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,
(37:01):
and your neurons. It causes your brain cells to die
because of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen or nitrous oxide
displaces oxygen and your brain needs oxygen. And 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
s uh receptors which are responsible for the mile in
(37:23):
which is the sheath that coats your your nerves right, 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 of super high concentrations
that that create irreversible damage. Yeah. They've done a lot
more studying about it in the UK than here because
(37:46):
up until this year it was legal. Oh they allowed it. Yeah,
well so I guess the results of the study weren't promising. Uh. Well,
I mean this was that only what is it now
mid February. Yeah, it's only like two weeks ago that
like literally came on the really has officially law. Uh.
And there were big demonstrations in in England, like like
massive huffing parties on the lawn of uh, like the
(38:10):
I don't know where they decide these things in Parliament
put Buckingham Palace, say Buckingham Ballace because they're like this
is you know, what are we gonna do at Glastonbury
Festival every year? Now? Uh? And they nice bozz marketing
by the way, what the Glastonbury Well, we're not going
to that. I know. I was saying nice, okay, Um,
(38:31):
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 canisters and tear their
legs off because they're not strong enough to lift them.
So worldwide it was in two thousand fourteen it was
(38:52):
the fourteenth most used drug in the world. And m really, yeah, huh,
what do you think of higher or lower? I didn't
even think about it. I think it's that's just that's
that just totally caught me by surprise. Uh. And the
Independent said that um, the UK's largest drug and alcohol
charity alistair Boe. They said, you know what, we can't
(39:14):
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 out this old World War two gas masks,
or let me put a bag over my head, or
(39:35):
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 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 I don't
(39:57):
want some kids 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, son. But there have
been plenty of plenty of incidences of death. Um. Joseph Bennett,
a seventeen year old from North London, died in two
thousand twelve after falling into a coma, and then just
this year that twenty one year old student was found
(40:18):
dead um in his room with two hundred spent cartridges.
Oh well, 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 nitris. I mean, like,
if you're being administered nitrous, even in a medical setting,
(40:41):
you can have a bad reaction to it, and it
turns out your allergic to nitris and your debt or
you're in 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 outside of a medical setting,
your likelihood of dying or or suffering some sort of
(41:01):
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 passing out and hitting your head. Yeah.
(41:24):
Or I saw this one sad case. I think it
was in the United States. This lady's son, like you know,
wandered out into traffic and got hit by a car
from nitrous. Yeah, because he did nitros 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 going on at the time and chasing
(41:45):
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 air in between. What a waste? Yeah, it's just
it's not smart. No, it doesn't know. Um, I think
we got that across anyway. I think so you know
who doesn't do nitrous no? How no way? Scientologists? Uh why?
(42:11):
L Ron Hubbard hated nitrous oxide 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
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 a manuscript called ex Caliber,
(42:34):
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.
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
(42:57):
it in Dianetics, saying it's it's bad jam. He's the
only person ever do it and not say this is great.
You had a bad time on it. Well, let's talk
about childbirth unless you have anything else. So in Canada,
in Finland, Australia, in the United Kingdom, traditionally women have
(43:18):
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 offered it. I've
never heard of that in the U. S. Well, that's
all changing now. Um, basically the medical establishment is basically
(43:39):
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 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
(44:00):
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. The thing
is so 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 taking
(44:25):
care of 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 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
fifty mix under like a controlled supervise setting. Well, the
(44:46):
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 don't think
there is any danger to the key aid so far,
because they said it's filtered through the lungs and uh
not like the narcotics that are filtered through deliver um.
(45:07):
So they said, so far they haven't found where it
hurts a baby in any way. Plus to let you
remember being born. I just think the self administration part
it is pretty interesting. Yeah, you know, it makes lets
a woman feel more in control, supposedly of their own
uh comfort. Right, So I'm all for it. Why not?
(45:28):
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 and two oh Humphrey Davy the gas. Uh. If
you want to know more about nitrous oxide, type those
words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
(45:49):
And since I said search parts, time for a listener
mayo no, Chuck no, no, what is it time for?
It's time for administrative So chuck first and foremost. I
really want to thank John Morgan over at Queen Charlotte's
(46:11):
Pimano Cheese Royal. He has hooked us up good, good stuff,
wonderful stuff. The men cheese like the best pimono 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 stuff.
Queen Charlotte's Permono Cheese Royale. Alright. We received Christmas cards
(46:34):
from the Kavanaughs, the Lees, the Loses and you know
Hillary and Mike who were talking to They hook us
up with the cheese. Yeah with a flathead lake, flathead
lake or just flathead cheese. I think flathead lake. I
think it is too. It's delicious. Hillary, You're the best. Yeah,
thank you. And the Nelson's so thank you for those
(46:55):
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 awesome, great gift for yourself for somebody else where.
They send you all the ingredients you need to make
cocktails voting recipes. You just add booze and wow are
(47:16):
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
the 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 boots. Nice guy, did
you try not yet? I guess you just found it
(47:39):
today in the office. So there you tried it. That'd
be 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
around with Lego candy at least in California now, Um.
(48:02):
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 grief Chuck, thanks, Yes, loves
that too. She won't set it down. Good luck with
(48:22):
your alcoholism, right, I'm just kidding. Thanks to Eric Young
from Squamish BC for 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,
and he uses a Squarespace site. Pretty awesome. How about that.
(48:44):
Kelly from the Elephants Trunk send us some awesome toys.
Thank you very much for those, Kelly. Thank you to
em from Melbourne, Australia via Knoxville, Tennessee for the homemade
sour dough hot Cross bun. Yes, that was good. Um.
And in Elizabeth Henry send us a signed copy of
Who Killed Mr? Moonlight by the One and Only David
(49:05):
J of Bauhaus And 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 Bouhouse? He played bass? Wow? Yeah he
also had a good solo career too. Yeah. Yeah. Shan Erskine,
thank you for the stuff you should know bottle cap
(49:26):
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 and
then blow a glass bowl so that it molds on
the bottom to that specific piece of teak. And then, buddy,
(49:50):
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 uh ellie 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. Check out K A M I y A
CEO dot com. Dorrian Wilson, owner of Revival Ltd. They
(50:15):
make cool shirts and the proceeds of those shirts go
to people in Brazil displaced by the World Cup. Is
that right? Oh? Yeah? Wow? Uh and you can find
that information at Revival Global dot com. Yes. Um, Johnny
Wood who works for Yakima, the outfitter, the biking outfitter.
(50:39):
Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, Yakima. Yeah,
and they like pike racks, thank you. Yeah, he sent
us some swag. Yeah, I got a tuk that I wear. Yeah,
and he travels around selling Yakima 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.
(50:59):
He made the bullet pins man, and he sent tho
so long ago and it's so it's we we've just
been lax, so thank you for those. It's really neat.
He has a series called 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
(51:21):
a statement in school looking Yeah. Um, we got a
nice letter from Jenny Cochrane. That's that. We want to
thank Matt for the handmade hinge game h E n
g e is in stone inch Um. And Lorie Gesh
for the copy of her kid's book Copper Light Colon,
a really crappy story, and she sent us some real
(51:42):
copper lights, which is fossilized poop. Oh. That's right, I
remember seeing that. I have a piece of tuck to
my cheek right now. Thanks to our buddy 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, insformed society, and brought the world to
the Brink by Richard L. Courier. Thank you very much
(52:04):
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 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,
(52:25):
I've got the last one all right, uh, which seems
chumpy following that heartfelt thing. But thanks a lots to
Brett Goods first sending us pork Cloud stuff port Cloud
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
(52:46):
was decidedly non chumpy. Thank you nice, Thank you Brett Goods.
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 always,
thank you to those who send in good thoughts and
letters and handmade fun gifts. Yeah, we're nice. We really
appreciate it. It's the best. Uh. So if you want
(53:09):
to get in touch of this. You can tweet to
us at s y s K podcast. You can join
us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at a home on the web Stuff you Should Know
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
(53:30):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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