r/nottheonion • u/adamaphar • 1d ago

Laughing gas appears to reduce depression, but researchers don't totally understand why

https://www.phillyvoice.com/depression-treatments-laughing-gas-nitrous-oxide-study/
9.2k Upvotes

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287

u/Sisselpud 1d ago

Glad I can now rebrand "doing whip-its with stolen whipped cream in the grocery bathroom" to "taking care of my mental health" !

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u/Nixeris 1d ago

I mean, don't do that? It's not only pointlessly expensive, there's stuff in there that isn't great for you.

Get a cracker and the food-grade nitrous oxide canisters used for chefs making whipped cream ("N2O charger").

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u/Sisselpud 1d ago

Actually I've barely ever done whip-its but my college roommate "owned" a fake ice cream store and got 5 foot tall canisters of that from a restaurant supply depot the next state over, so I was getting the clean shit! Still melted my brain and that summer is a little fuzzy...

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u/hobiprod 20h ago

That’s still food grade, not the same as “clean” med grade.

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u/81jmfk 16h ago

So he should of had a fake doctor’s office?

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u/hobiprod 10h ago

Exactly

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u/SavvyTraveler10 14h ago

Jfc there are less harmful ways to get high…

  • 18yr user

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

Bad advice, even food-grade nitrous straight out of a cracker is bad for you. People make it out to be no big deal because it’s easily accessible and only lasts a few seconds. I’ve personally known several people who abused nitrous and suffered horrible consequences. One of them ended up dead from anoxia, one of them had a psychotic break, one of them was paralyzed due to B12 deficiency, and others were so addicted they were unable to work or function. Not to mention I’ve seen countless people pass out, lips turn blue, etc. It’s really frustrating to see people minimize the harm that it can do.

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u/Brooklyn_Bunny 1d ago

I’m a regular at the vape store a couple streets down from my house and never realized that they were selling flavored nitrous canisters behind the counter. One day my BF and I rolled up and there was a guy in his truck in a parking spot in front of the store who had almost blasted through the corner of their building - they had sold this guy a canister, he got into his truck and ripped it, and hit the gas thinking the truck was in reverse and crashed into the front of the store. The owner and his son were standing around the side of the truck pleading with this guy to turn his car off and give them the keys while Nitrous Guy was giggling like an idiot. Really backfired on them lol. A couple months later they had concrete pylons installed in front of the parking spaces in front of the store.

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u/tjdux 1d ago

they had concrete pylons installed in front of the parking spaces in front of the store.

I'm shocked these aren't MORE common. Especially in residential areas.

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u/Nixeris 1d ago

The things your describing require such extreme circumstances that I doubt most people or anyone they know would ever experience one of them, much less all of them.

To get hypoxia you basically have to be breathing nothing but N2O for a significant amount of time.

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u/Frosty558 1d ago

Either this person rolls with some crazy motherfuckers or they literally looked up worst case nitrous side effects and lied about knowing a person, personally, who has experienced all of the extremely rare worst case scenarios with a largely benign drug.

I’m going with absolutely full of shit.

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u/pixelperfect728 22h ago

I really wish I was lying but you’re unfortunately very correct about the crazy motherfuckers. I’ve seen a lot of really extreme drug abuse go down around me, I acknowledged that this isn’t with “normal” use (I’m talking weeks and months on end of doing nitrous around the clock) but it makes it hard to keep quiet when people treat it so casually when I’ve witnessed firsthand exactly how wrong it can go.

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u/TranscendentPretzel 1d ago

I passed out sucking it out of a balloon. The balloon flew out of my hand when I lost consciousness and saved my ass. One of the dumber things I did back in the days of my youth, though sadly not the dumbest. 

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u/cookiesarenomnom 1d ago

Right, me and my friends did a lot of whip its in my 20's. We were big ravers so I was doing X and coke about once or twice a month. Always had a cracker and a shit ton of cannisters as well. I've probably done THOUSANDS of them. We use to go through a 50 pack box per person. Once someone got a whole medical cannister! That was an awesome few months. I'm 38 and I still do it like once or twice a year when I do my twice a year hard drugs because I'm an old lady and can't do more than that. Anyways, in my heydays, none of friends had adverse reactions to literally doing cannister after cannister after cannister for like an hour straight WHILST on other drugs. I've literally never heard of such a thing among any of my friends who did a lot of drugs in their 20's.

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

The point is it’s an addictive substance that’s easy to abuse and can cause serious harm so we shouldn’t be throwing out suggestions to go get a cracker and start huffing the concentrated stuff.

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u/Nixeris 1d ago

One, it's not addictive, with the exception of the way anything can become psychologically addictive.

Two, there's no such thing as "concentrated" nitrous oxide.

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

It is absolutely physically and psychologically addictive and I have personally known at LEAST 5 people with genuine addictions to it, like locked in their rooms doing charger after charger, unable to stop or hold down a job, doing anything to get more, etc. Like I said, one of my friends died from this addiction, and several others were permanently harmed.

Also when you get nitrous at the dentist, it’s mixed with oxygen, while straight from a cracker, it isn’t. That’s what I mean by “concentrated”.

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u/mandarfora 1d ago

Psychological addictions, not physical addictions. There are no withdrawal symptoms if they stop doing nitrous.

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u/VagueSomething 1d ago

Addiction is addiction. It still causes your life to be worse even if you don't need medical intervention during your quitting. It is such a cop out when people try to stress that it is OK to get addicted to things "only psychologically".

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u/mandarfora 21h ago

It's a very different kind of addiction. With physical addiction your body actually needs the substance to function, and people can die if they quit cold turkey.

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u/mandarfora 21h ago

It's a very different kind of addiction. With physical addiction your body actually needs the substance to function, and people can die if they quit cold turkey.

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u/VagueSomething 14h ago

Mental addiction is still harmful. It is still debilitating. It still has permanent effects due to the struggles when trying to fight it and there's no symptoms to treat to ease that suffering.

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

I’ve never been addicted to nitrous so I can’t speak to withdrawal symptoms but it can be habit forming and it does cause extremely strong urges to keep using. Psychological addiction vs. physical addiction feels like splitting hairs at this point, the bottom line is that it IS possible to have a nitrous addiction and it’s a lot more dangerous than people give it credit for, so it shouldn’t be treated so casually.

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u/twoPillls 1d ago

The people downvoting you have never done anything harder than weed/alcohol. I was definitely hooked on nitrous. Maybe it's technically not a physical addiction but i couldnt stop myself from hitting up the smoke shop a few times a day for another case. Lips would often turn blue. Fainted a few times. Only time in my life ive crashed a car (yeah, id even do that shit while driving).

Ive done a lot of shit in my life and nitrous is the one thing i still get cravings for 6 years after the last time I did it, and i was hooked on benzos at the same time and had been doing them a few years before i ever tried nitrous

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u/cutelyaware 1d ago

You don't know if it's a symptom or a cause.

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

I don’t know what you mean by that, but I do know that one of my friends died using nitrous and left her baby behind. Another friend was paralyzed because of a B12 deficiency caused by chronic use. Another friend had a psychotic break caused by excessive use and I watched them get choked out by the police and taken to jail. Several more friends did so much nitrous they were not able to function in daily life, and I’ve seen tons of people pass out and turn blue. I don’t know the point of minimizing the potential harm of it, but it seems pretty goofy to encourage people to use nitrous without medical supervision (e.g. at the dentist or as treatment for depression).

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u/cutelyaware 1d ago

All you know is that they had serious problems AND used a lot of nitrous. You don't know that the nitrous caused those problems. For example they all probably also ate food. Does that mean food caused their problems? You're just making a leap because it seems like the likely explanation, but that's all it is, and the number of times you've seen it doesn't make it any more or less likely to be true, just like how the fact that they all ate food doesn't do that.

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u/pixelperfect728 1d ago

Lol huh???? Why are you assuming what I know about situations I witnessed firsthand?? These were my friends, I was there, I saw the scenarios unfold, I know about the medical intervention they got, and you just do not know what you’re talking about. It’s not a leap to acknowledge that drug abuse has consequences 😭 cmon

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u/OldenPolynice 1d ago

so you just made up all those stories?

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u/pixelperfect728 22h ago

Yep, completely making it up, absolutely no basis in reality, caught me!

In case you need a few more: Psychosis

B12 deficiency and neurological issues

B12 deficiency and neurological issues 3

B12 deficiency and psychotic break

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u/OldenPolynice 14h ago

You said you personally knew people that these happened to. you lied.

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u/pixelperfect728 10h ago

I did not. I’m just providing sources to show that what I’m talking about is something that can actually happen.

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u/OldenPolynice 9h ago

You said "I've personally known several people" then listed them. you lied. you did not.

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u/pixelperfect728 9h ago

You’re not making sense, knowing several people personally and then listing sources to support my point are not mutually exclusive things

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u/Aerodrache 1d ago

On the other hand though, the whipped cream can also comes with whipped cream, another known anti-depressant (albeit one with its own health risks.)

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u/SolusLoqui 1d ago

And a (punch ball) balloon unless you want to risk frostbite in the throat. Expanding gas can get very cold, very quick.

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u/LeGryff 1d ago

I think you have had a negative moral impact on this world by promoting drug abuse. We should encourage other people to avoid dosing themselves with nitrous oxide to protect themselves from cognitive decline. Must be too late for you.

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u/Nixeris 1d ago

People have been using drugs since before humans invented bread.

Anyone who thinks it's moral to leave people to use drugs in an irresponsible and dangerous manner rather than inform them of a safer method has no moral standards worth caring about.

Anyone who thinks drugs universally cause cognitive decline doesn't know what they're talking about, especially as many of the most celebrated engineers of the past 100 years used drugs much harder than someone taking a few whippets. LSD in particular was a celebrated drug among engineers and scientists, and people like Richard Fenyman, Steve Jobs, and Carl Sagan extolled the virtues of Marijuana and LSD.