DOSE:

repeated

inhaled

Inhalants

(gas)

BODY WEIGHT:

174 lb

[Erowid Note: Our understanding of the literature is that there is no such thing as safe recreational use of volatile solvents, aerosols and other street inhalants : their psychoactive effects are inseparable from nerve and organ damage. We have chosen to include these reports to help document the real world use of inhalants, but their inclusion is not intended to imply that they are anything but dangerous.]
A little background: I am 18 years old, closer to 19, and have had an interesting courtship with life thus far. My father passed from cancer when I was just a few days old and my mother has some psychological conditions such as paranoid-schizophrenia. When I was 13 she abandoned in a parking lot and eventually I ended up in DSS (Department of Social Services) care. I have always been free minded, enjoying a challenge, loving the difficulty in figuring out how to complete a task. Yet, until I left my mother's care I had been fairly well sheltered from the 'world outside the Bible.' This included movies, music, and drugs.

Sometime around my birthday in May of 2000 I signed out of DSS and began to make it on my own. I had a steady job at a pizzeria and money in the bank. I moved in with friends and began to experiment. Ever since I have grown to develop a deep respect and love for marijuana and the peace and happiness it allows me to achieve. Ever since 2000, I have experimented with many substances; including cocaine, mushrooms, acid, ketamine, and others. I really enjoy what these and other substances do for me especially since I have the ability to 'go into it' with a clear mind and adapt myself to the experience.

More recently I have begun to try things like nutmeg, DXM, wood rose seeds, morning glory seeds, and most recently inhalants. Something I'd really like for everyone to understand is that I don't do these things just to get 'fucked up.' I really enjoy what happens on a psychological level to myself. Which brings me to the main point of this article:

About two months ago I began to enjoy the relatively short, but intensely euphoric and psychedelic trips Propane gas allows me to have. Over the first week or so the effect of the gas was mainly a fairly pleasurable and anesthetic experience lasting up to 10 minutes, but without psychedelic responses. Key characteristics of propane inhaled are: a cold sensation that travels down over my body, distortion of vision, a pulsing of audio stimuli, and often a rhythmic ringing sound. It is fairly intense and I really cannot compare it justly to other inhalants like nitrous oxide or ether. For me, propane is a very real drug with a very real affect.

Around week two, the gas began to have a much stronger affect on me. I would pass out of reality after 45 seconds or so and become convinced that one or two other people were in the room with me. It wasn't that I so much saw them as just 'knew' they were present.

By week three of breathing propane, I had become used to these two 'propane buddies.' One of them is male and speaks much like an auctioneer; quickly almost like he were attempting to sell a product. The other is female and doesn't speak much. Her main role is to ask questions of the man occasionally, which he always, every time, answers quickly and extremely rationally. Occasionally my mind develops a question of its own accord, which the man perceives and answers rationally and non-judgmentally.

After the pleasurable affects of the gas dissipated (as I passed out of reality), these 'sessions' with the man and woman had become fairly typical and expected. It is generally fun and often enlightening.

However, the other night something different happened. I had been using Propane for about a month when I had a very real and almost tangible hallucination.

The situation was this: I had just finished watching the Matrix with a very good friend of mine in a dark room. I picked up the bottle of propane and after two hits passed out of reality. Except this time the propane people were not present. Instead, I looked at my friend, and was absolutely convinced that out of the side of his neck was pouring this thick, green smoke that almost had a braided texture to it. It was issuing through a hole maybe a 1/4 in diameter and I was sure it was toxic. Without panicking, I told him to cough, and out of his mouth billowed this cloud of black smoke. I was just asking him if I should call the poison control center when I came back to reality, realized there was no hole in his neck and no smoke of any kind. We both laughed as we imagined what the person at the PCC would have heard/thought if I had made that call.

It was then that I took another hit of propane. As usual I went limp and passed out of the real world. But when I moved to look at my friend a moment later, what I saw legitimately scared the living shit out of me.

It was my friend's body, my friend's voice, but what I saw as his face was not his face. Sitting there next to me was my friend, but his face was that of some other creature: no eyes, no expression, dead-looking, creepy. I couldn't look at him. I could hardly talk. I looked again and saw the same thing. (Something I should mention here is that I am not by any definition inexperienced with hallucinations and other typical affects psychedelics can produce). He spoke to me trying to convince me that it was him but I just couldn't get a grip. After a minute or so I ran to the light and turned it on. When I looked at my friend in the light he looked perfectly normal. This was a pretty unnerving experience.

I am not sure it is was because of the movie I was watching prior to the gas that opened new channels of subconscious thought or if it was just the state of mind I happened to be in. I really don't know and this has not happened in the week since.

While on propane I have experienced things like watching the TV and hearing the sound in real time but seeing the picture freeze and progress frame by frame. Or while on propane and playing music, staring at visualations produced by Windows Media Player, I have become aware that there is like a hologram superimposed over my head which makes me appear as someone else; longer hair, different color, etc. But I never become scared. And that night when my friend had a different face, I was truly scared. I will never forget that experience.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 21258
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 12, 2003	Views: 23,298
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Inhalants (29) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Retrospective / Summary (11)