True, but it’s not far different from the figure cited in an Andrew P Jenkins medical paper that’s easy enough to Google. Jenkins and others argue that it’s under-reported for various reasons, particularly in the case of teenage deaths where parents clean up the scene. The profile of potential cases commonly turns up in the papers: teenage male hanging that isn’t clear suicide (e.g. no note, no history of self-harm, no stressful circumstances) and the police find no evidence of foul play – investigation fizzles out into a coroner’s open verdict.

Unfortunately inhaling Nitrous from a balloon, which has just been dispensed under pressure from a cylinder or a whipped cream dispenser, chills the vocal chords [cos the gas is cold]. So the hight voice helium effect is cancelled out by the lowered voice from the cold N20.

Apparently.

It appeared in an episode of [Six Feet Under] recently repeated – a stranger dies at the start of each show and ends up in the funeral parlour. In this case I think characters in the show argued whether it was an urban legend, and I believe they included the “bite on a piece of citrus fruit” part. Other tellers of the story seem to have been unsure of where to put that, so to speak.

www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1866.html (not really work safe, like that matters by now either) claims “between 500 and 1000 deaths occur annually in the United States from this”, which is citeless and vague.

But I have to say that this whole MHRA thing sounds like a typical (and typically pathetic) example of the “drugs are baaaaaad” instinct and will not be listened to one jot. It will not be trusted or taken seriously. One person dies because of a plastic bag over his head – honestly, that is not the least bit relevant to people sucking out of balloons using soda syphons.

its very much not recommended to use nitrous made for car engine systems. It apparently has additives in it that could be nasty. recreational use should be with product passed for human consumption, medical or catering.

I wonder though if it really does work? I have this picture of these people trying it because they’ve been told it does and then assuming they have done it long enough for it to work properly until the time they do it a bit too long!!

Any practitioners out there willing to explain the fun?

I decided, for abstract curiosity, to look up online “How is nitrous oxide prepared”. As it’s a sensitive topic I won’t provide a hyperlink or credit, or the method (as pointless as it is to be coy)

Umm… The page that you quoted about industrial N2O being contaminated with NO2 mentions the method and it sounds perfectly innocuous to me. I was expecting it to say they get it by bubbling nitrogen and oygen through rabbits’ livers in vivo or something from your, err, coy moment.

Or did you just mean, you don’t want to give the kids ideas about trying this at home? Bit redundant since you can buy it all over the place.

Which reminds me, TheMole (37) says:

I’ve never tried nitrous, but a quick google reveals a few sites and a lot of ebay sellers selling N2O for whipping cream with suspicious “now, you’d never do anything naughty with this, because its really only for whipping cream” type disclaimers. While selling boxes of 600 refill bottles for a toy-sized cream whipper. Hmm.

On Camden High Street there are vendors selling (along with really big rizlas and the last type of magic mushroom they forgot to ban) dispensers and refills labelled for catering use. Underneath a big picture of a heavily tattooed and pierced punk winking at the camera while he holds a balloon to his lips. Subtle

Andrew.

People who I know who occasionally do N2O describe something similar but with more giggling. Sounds rubbish to me…

Aah the stupidity of youth. Apologies for off-topic ramblings down memory lane.

you’re seriously stretching it here, like no-one i’ve seen before.

you’re hanging your whole argument that I have said something wrong on some sub-editors headline on my column in the guardian.

you have to stoop to that, to get me saying what you want me to say, so that you can disagree with it.

that is absurd.

do you want me to reshash what i actually said, again, especuially for you, even though its written above, and other people have done that for you, as well as me?

let me hold your hand, yet again.

breathe deeply and try to pay attention.

the effect of nitrous is not due to oxygen starvation, it is a drug effect. the mhra to claim otherwise make themselves look like buffoons. nitrous has some risks. they are not enormous. they should be honestly communicated and managed.

you’re disagreeing with something, but it’s not with what i’ve written.

for the love of god.

i have not presented a gold standard essay on the relative risks or safety of nitrous, nor have i ever claimed to, that was completely not the point of what i wrote. i think it’s a pretty damning indictment of the lack of sophistication of our approach to drugs that no matter what anybody writes, somebody will come along and hysterically make it all about whether they are safe, attacking you for not saying it was dangerous frequently or prominently enough. this is like a totally topsy turvy witch trial.

if you want to talk about nitrous causing hypoxia, that’s great. you’ve got a real bee in your bonnet about it. go for your life, write about it here, i’ll give you an audience.

but you really seriously have to stop deliberately and repeatedly claiming i’ve said something i didnt because it’s rude, irritating, boring, repetitive, and twatty.

We’d have people just suffocating themselves or each other for the high, rather than suffocating themselves or each other during sexual intercourse. Without the sex it’d be less messy. You’d go into a bar at lunch and order a pillow held over your face for ninety seconds to set you up for the afternoon, or maybe your job isn’t as dull as mine.

I haven’t looked into the sex thing, it seems bloody silly, but I suppose the sexual use of strangulation may be of a piece with other physical sensations of distress or discomfort or pain that are perceived as pleasure – up to a point – as sexual arousal progresses. For some people, still, there’s also an element of guilt in sex… it’s complicated. And there may be a unique role of hypoxia but there are other ways to achieve that – then again if it’s a matter of breathing a gas other than oxygen or CO2 (or air containing one or other of those) then that is more inconvenient to arrange than using a plastic bag.

Now I have no idea whether N2O is safe in clubs. It seems a damn silly idea to me. As for the law… perhaps it wants looking at. But I think we should be specific about what actually does and doesn’t happen when someone is dosed or self-doses with N2O.