Nitrous oxide, better yet known as laughing gas, is a chemical compound with a slight metallic scent and taste. It has some pretty significant benefits within the medical community as it can be used for anesthetic and pain relief purposes. The name ‘laughing gas’ that this compound is so regularly called is because it induces a euphoric effect on the person who uses it.
And it is precise because of this euphoric property that many people have begun abusing it and using it as a recreational drug.
One girl used it so much over the span of a week that she may never walk again.
An unnamed woman in her 20’s was recently hospitalized after she took in so much laughing gas that it damaged the nerves in her spinal cord.
Doctors say that the injury is so severe that they fear the girl will never be able to walk again. She is now undergoing rehabilitation to hopefully be able to walk again.
It has been reported that hundreds of thousands of canisters of laughing gas are discarded in parks and public places each year.
According to a program on ABC, the increasing popularity of this drug has led to an increase in deaths among young people.
According to a toxicologist named Andrew Dawson, he said: ‘very recently I had a 20-year-old patient whose brain appeared to have the same level of damage as an alcoholic who had been drinking for 40 years.’
Those effects are severe nerve injury, or sometimes brain injury. There has been a real spike over the last two years.
Despite making it illegal to sell the drug in the UK in 2015, there is still a loophole around this drug since many doctors use it as pain relief or as anesthesia and thus is still considered to be a medicine.
Dr. Dawson said: ‘those deaths can relate to anything from the exploding of the small cylinders, to people becoming hypoxic – that is, short of oxygen – from overuse.’
