Laughing gas, imagination, and suggestibility
Scientists report that people who are high on nitrous oxide (laughing gas) have more vivid imaginations and are also more open to hypnotic-like suggestions. The researchers from the University College London were spurred to conduct their study based on reports from dentists that "patients under nitrous oxide sedation are particular suggestible. A number of investigators, they write in the journal Psychopharmacology, also "have noted the clinical advantages of using a hypnotic voice when administering nitrous oxide." One of the authors of the current study is psychologist Matt Whalley, who maintains the fascinating Hypnosis and Suggestion site. From Mind Hacks (image of 1839 laughing gas party from general-anesthesia.com):
"Laughing gas increases imagination, suggestibility" (Mind Hacks), "Enhancement of suggestibility and imaginative ability with nitrous oxide" (Psychopharmacology)The researchers randomised patients at a dental surgery to either receive a nitrous oxide and oxygen mix, or just oxygen, with the patients not knowing which they were receiving. Two weeks later they were invited back and given which ever type of gas mix they hadn't already had.
While inhaling each gas mix, the participants were asked to complete a measure of imaginative ability, rating the clarity and vividness of their visual imagery, as well as being given various suggestions - without the hypnotic induction - from the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale.
This includes suggestions that your hands might move of their own accord, to suggested temporary paralysis, to a suggestion to experience hallucinated sounds - to name but a few.
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Have they elucidated a physiological mechanism by which this particular molecule, a combo of the two most common elements in our atmosphere, does its work?
I mean that's a basic question: why does this nitrgen/oxygen combo knock us out? by what bio-chemical means?
When I was on nitrous a zany little Indian guru guy taught me that the Ultimate Knowledge I was so certain I would get if only I could deprive my brain of fresh oxygen for just...a...few...more...seconds!...was, in fact, death.
I got "sweet air" at the dentist when I was around 10 and I can still remember the hallucination vividly. The dentist put the mask on me and asked me to name my favorite cartoons. I remember saying ," Scooby doo,
Inspector Gadget, um the Cosby Show". By then I was high out of my mind. I was inside my mouth looking at the dentist who was a cyclops with a glowing eye, but the eye was more like a negative of a glowing eye. It was mostly black. The talking sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher, and when the dentist pulled
my tooth I felt like was falling into oblivion. I said "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" for what felt like a half an hour. Than I woke up feeling like I was beaten by a Tonka truck. I puked at some point later I think.
"using a hypnotic voice"
Syntax like this causes my BS alarm to go off. I have some, albeit limited, working experience with hypnotism (stage and clinical) and while I believe from context and the rest of the piece I know what are they trying to get at, describing it like this makes it at least sound like they are talking about pop culture fictional hypnotism.
Iwood, it's not a simple "deprive brain of oxygen" effect...since nitrous contains oxygen, no?
Carbon monoxide does that...yet it's no anaesthetic.
Carbon monoxide does that...yet it's no anaesthetic.
Yeah it is. It just has one very big side effect.
Oh CO as a permanent anaesthetic. My previous point does not wash either as CO has oxygen as a constituent too, huh?
Nevertheless, nitrous oxide's ability to knock one out with no other ill effects is rather unique, and physiologically unexplained to date.
Strange that nitrogen and oxygen if combined just so would have this effect...does it affect reptiles/bugs/etc. in the same manner, or is it a mammalian thing, this susceptibility to nitrous oxide?
#5 posted by Ugly Canuck:
No, it's not a simple hypoxic effect, however, when you do a lot of nitrous, and hold your breath to keep the hits in, and eventually pass out like a hippy in the parking lot outside a Dead show, it's because your brain is deprived of oxygen. The body requires free O2, not N20, and can't crack the oxygen out of its bond with the nitrogen.
See here for what's known about its neuropharmacology.
WEIRD: Xenon gives similar effects, but Argon does not. (At $10/liter, I've not tried it myself.)
POP REF: True Bozos know that Doctor Beddoes of the Pneumatic Institute, featured in Firesign Theater's EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG, was the actual historical figure involved with Humprey Davy and the first instances of the "taking of Dephlogistated Nitrous Air."
IRRELEVANCIES: Tesla-cles deviant to Fudd's First Law of Opposition: it goes in, it must come out.
Here's my amusing dentist/laughing gas story:
When I was a teen, I had to have several of my huge teeth removed to make the rest fit in my tiny jaw properly. I wasn't exactly jazzed on the idea, and it was the dawn of the age of modern techniques to make this particular hell a bit more comfortable. To that end, I got many, many shots of Novocaine and and laughing gas nose mask.
The series of Novocaine injections took some time to kick in and ensure that I was comfortably numb, so I also was given headphones. It was just FM radio, so I thumbed around to find soothing, distracting music whilst pondering my upcoming fate. Just as the gas was kicking in and the dentist was doing curls and scrubbing up to yank my teeth out, evidently it was "the top of the hour" and the local news headlines came over the headphones: A truck had overturned on the highway releasing a dangerous gas and an inmate would be executed by lethal injection.
The dentist adjusted the gas flow to my mask and leaned in, needle-in-hand....
Dentists? I thought they'd stopped using nitrous.
Where I got that idea: My dad was a dentistry academic; he once remarked that complaints of molestation under sedation pretty much stopped when they stopped using nitrous. So I'm not too shocked by the finding here.
The Baghwan used it I read.
Does this remind anyone else of that episode of Seinfeld?
Anyway, nitrous oxide really helped me when I had a minor procedure done. I'm a big chicken, and before the gas, I was trembling like a leaf. After the gas the dentist could have done anything he wanted to my teeth and I wouldn't have cared. I didn't need a hypnotic suggestion either!
The suggestibility under the gas is not surprising. When we are in hyper states like laughing and crying, our defenses are lowered. The effectiveness of comedy and tragedy is also related to this. These must have evolved as pressure release mechanisms to transform built up stresses.
Well I've known this for a while, as would anyone else who has had their fair share of inhalants. If you combine them with strong psychadelics the effect is a great deal stronger (to quote my friend; "think of as acid as n. acid plus a nang is n+1").
The auditory hallucination that you get is where we get our name for nitrous (nang)
For anyone considering trying this, make sure you mix the nitrous with air in a balloon first so you dont suffocate, and try to use medical grade nitrous canisters (that fit into a whipped cream dispenser) and enjoy.
hope this has been informative.
IWOOD: thanx for the link. Back on campus way back when, only dental students/pharmacology students would use this stuff recreationally - not a deadhead among them. very successful people now, to boot.
But you are describing the perils of over-indulgence, yes?
Passing out "because the brain is deprived of oxygen" implies damage...but that is not quite what the nitrous is doing, is it? The loss of conscioussness under the influence of nitrous is not (or not mainly) due to hypoxy.
Losing awareness due to breathing nitrous is different than falling asleep due to suffocation.
I haven't thought about N02 in years and now I'm feeling scientific. Going to the store now to pick up a 6 pack of whipets and study science.
Doesn't every powerful psychedelic drug increase imagination and make people more open? You guys know N20 is a hallucinogen right? Check out erowid.org
My dentist uses it. He'll turn it on for a bit before he gives me a shot. As far as I can tell, the pain seems only slightly less than without gas. But every bit helps, I figure. I've never had a hallucination with the stuff.
N2O was the major reason why I always paid my dentist bills.
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RedLeatherman..
Get some N2O, rather than NO2.. You can thank me later, when you're not dead :)
Canuck, actually the brain can suffer under N2O usage. Even though the pleasant effect of it is not through hypoxia, displacing the oxygen in your lungs and body will eventually have this effect.
If the people you know used it anything like how the people I know use it, it can be dangerous (eg. taking it in a balloon and inhaling, then exhaling back into the balloon repeatedly in a closed cycle - breathing no other oxygen in the meantime - until you fall over ).
Although it is a different sensation to suffocation, it is quite similar to huffing carboxygen (another old favourite, in days gone by). You can try this by inhaling the carbon-dioxide from the top of a fresh, shaken bottle of coke. If you release it slowly enough to not erupt in fizz, you can inhale the release gas and get a fairly good physical buzz.
Light headed, spinny, rushes-up-your back, super-colour vison.. all for free.
Don't do it too much though, it'll fuck you up :)
speaking of laughs; a bOINGbOING "comics page"? just a one framer/one poster daily of the best reader submission? With the death of newspapers I find I still crave my daily habitual fixes,the familiar pattern.
Arkizzle: Your example, and Iwood's, semm kinda like blaming the heroin for the effects caused by dirty needles....the balloon-heads only huff/re-huff due to not having a cylinder+mask, or have not been taught to properly use the nitrous...they are suffering not from the nitrous, but the improper technique in the use of nitrous...easy enough by using similar examples to make any endeavor, harmless if properly performed, into a "dangerous undertaking".
The bad practice of the nitrous abusers - using the bad techniques you described - ought not to form the basis of a judgment as to the 'hazard' of the nitrous itself. Nitrous, properly used for recreation, is essentially harmless.
Speaking for myself, instead of the hassle of using nitrous, I find it simpler just to spin myself around and around in place until I'm so dizzy I fall laughing onto the soft summer grass.
Or into the soft powdery snow, at this time of year.
I call BS on the hypnotic voice, also. I've unashamedly had many many fillings, and still against the advisement (and to the amazement) of my dentist have I opted only for the N.Ox instead of injected locals. There are certainly aural hallucinations present -- but not at all by suggestion. I think the suggestion aspect is instead clarifying what is actually being heard -- not that the hallucinations were not there prior to suggestion, but that the person simply didn't realize that it was something worth noting prior to the suggestion.
The gas does not make me at all suggestible, but it inspires me toward deeper philosophical ponderings (perhaps some subjects that need not be pondered, even) and seemed to enhance profundity exponentially. After realizing I would be experiencing a number of fillings upcoming, I opted to chronicle my experiences and include subject matters that seemed especially profound when under its spell -- such as whether increments of anything are purely man-made divisions and do not actually exist naturally in any form.
@Arkizzle, saw that but too late to fix it, good news though, they get it right in the whipits every time.
About Dentist visits, last year I had to wait over half an hour to get a tooth pulled, the dentist put the little mask on me and left, I looked and viola! no computerized control just a regulator with a knob and flow guage, by the time they pulled the wrong tooth 45 minutes later I didn't even care, until the next day when I figured it out.
While back they didn't stink up the gas we bought for drag racing the boat but now days you can't hardly find it unless it's got the smelly stuff in it.
"..good news though, they get it right in the whipits every time."
Zing! :)
Canuck, I'm not saying it in a negative way at all, and wouldn't use the words "blame" or "abusers" at all. Just because there is a clean, healthy way of doing something doesn't mean people are going to do it.
That is how I've seen it done (and done it myself) at every party and festival I've ever been at in Europe. You walk around, buy a balloon from the man with the cylinder, fall over. Buy another. trade some ketamine for some more balloons, accidently send the balloon guy into a k-hole, no more balloons.. :(
You know the story :)
http://www.justsayn2o.com/nitrous.dangers.html
Just Say N2O! See what they did there?
My dentist used to use it but I quit going to him... I couldn't stand the way it made him laugh uncontrollably and lose track of which tooth he was meant to be pulling.
#16 posted by Ugly Canuck:
Yes, it is.
Not to...well yes, actually, to belabor the point.
You will not lose consciousness if you consume N20 with an adequate air/O2 mix, such as what a dentist provides. Ever.
It won't "knock you out" like a more powerful general anesthetic. If you inhale pure N20 and nothing else you will pass out in a few minutes, and if you continue to do so while unconscious you will asphyxiate and die. This is entirely due to anoxia, not the effects of N20.
But if one is not abusing the nitrous ,ie if you maintain the adequate mix, hypoxia will not result.
Nitrous is safe if properly used. The effect, the buzz, is not in any way due to the hypoxia; hypoxia results from the ignorant use of the nitrous. Breathing only CO2 would also have this effect.
The aenaesthetic effect of nitrous is not caused by deprivation of oxygen to the brain (for that kills neurons, yes?): otherwise, any gas could be used for that purpose, and as this is not the case...
I'm on a linkspree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_Oxide
hahahahahahaha
hahahahah!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide