DOSE:	repeated	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
	repeated	smoked	Tobacco	(plant material)
	repeated	inhaled	Inhalants	(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

13 kg

[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.]

From the age of aroung 15, I started experimenting with more intriguing drugs than weed and booze. Ecstacy became available to me, and 'anything I can get my hands on' became my limit of intake. Poppers (Alkyl Nitrate) were the first solvent abuse I had tried. They were fun because they were quite intense, though didn't last for too long, but the downfall was the throbbing headache which followed every worthwhile session. Weed was always my backbone drug whatever else I may be taking, but when supplies wore thin I would scour the haouse for anything that could possibly get me fucked.

I found butane an interesting substitute for poppers; an almost identical high, maybe a bit longer lasting, and no pain. Every now and then I would do a small amount but it got to the point where I wanted more and more and within one night I dramatically increased the dosage.

Lying in bed with my TV on, I would be popping toots (like a bong but instead of a gauze you use a tobacco 'plug' and when it's all burnt you suck it all through the downpipe and get a nice satisfying, though somewhat painful, rush), maybe two or three in rapid succession, followed by 10-30 lungfuls of butane. I didn't close my mouth around the nozzzle fully for fear of sufffocation or overdose. I started to feel warm and fuzzy, and all of a sudden I would pass out and enter a dreamlike trance. I never realized that I had passed out because it was as though I was still lying in the same position, but strange things started to happen around me. It's hard to put them in order, because it was a while ago and I'm sure it fucked with my head and somehow altered my perception of reality.

I would feel some strange connection with, I don't really know what: spirits, elements of my subconscious, other minds around the World experiencing the same thing as me(?). In another trip report there was a description of an alternate reality called the 'Boink' World. That particular word intrigued me, because I often heard faint bouncing sounds, and half-imagined minds of other more experinced butane-heads bouncing on some sort of psychic spring, which enabled them to travel through the minds of others on the gas, but I also got the feeling there was some place they gathered. I imagined some sort of butane rave, and felt the energy flowing through me, like they knew me and I was completely accepted, and I knew and understood them too.

I am trying to be as specific as possible but it's difficult to describe exactly what I experineced. I have realized through several phases of drug use and abuse that there is no way to fully explain a drug experience in a way others can understand, and this is something I have always been interested in, so I saw no other way than to try myself. Given the chance I probably wouldn't do it all again.

Other experiences include actors on TV stopping to watch me, and whisper about me onscreen. Wierd random stuff like looking shocked and asking each other 'What's he doing?' 'Will he live?' 'Crackheads drink it to deal with a comedown' (I'm not on crack though). I thought there was a tube connecting my TV to some source where the World could wathc me from for a while, and though I knew It was pretty stupid and unlikely, and completely eccentric, I still checked it most nights to be sure.

I was watching one thing, where a man and a woman were sitting on a bed. The TV sarted to flicker and the picture bent out of shape in places, and then it was as though the camera panned to the right to reveal the woman only, and she was looking right at me. 'I want to have your babies. Come with me, I will show you.' The gas starts to wear off, her voice is gone. I wipe the cold drool from the side of my mouth and look up to see some other completely unrelated scene.

The woman reappeared at a later date. She made a picture of me show on the screen. Then it cut to a close up of my eye and a portion of one side of my face and as it appears, all that is shown on TV becomes numb and starts to twitch, like pins and needles or a muscle spasm. I think I asked how she did it, but it was too late, the stuff doesn't last long enough. I've tried taking more and more, but I lose track of what I'm doing, I end up holding the can above my face, which lets the liquid rather than the gas into my mouth, which is cold and kind of freeze burns my tongue and just feels fucking wrong.

I see myself throwing up foam, and the woman is above my head on TV shouting my name, asking if I'm ok. I've inhaled imaginary cardboard squares which I believed were at the bottom of the can above a spring to force the gas out and believed I was choking trying to cough up the cardboard. A minute or 2 pass and I look for the foam, or the cardboard, but there's nothing. But it's all so real, I ignore the fact that it's not when I sober up.

There have been little transparent/purple cactus men walking past my bed, and jumping through a crack in my wall saying he'll be back later to take me to a butane mind-gathering.

I've spoken to the butane and it vibrated in response, for one night they were conscious particles from some distant asteroid, harvested for our need for fire, unknwn to the majority that they actually induce mind expansion or psychic powers or some other bullshit resulting from a brain which is probably functioning at less than half it's usual waking ability.

A scary one was more like a dream than most my hallucinations. On TV was some strange image of a girls face with some sort of tube in her mouth-not like a hospital tube but like some paper rolled up to suck up maltesers or something. My mind said this was my girlfriend, though I'm not sure who I was at the time. I was sucking the other end of the tube, and some evil force was making us battle in some way, we were both being drained. I felt like I was being forced to take some horrible drug, and whoever took the most or gave in first would suffer some terrible fate. I gave in, and my girlfriend was ripped away from me, and all there was around me was darkness, and there was nothing to hold on to, so I was justfalling, and falling, and falling into more darkness. Sometimes I think I almost OD'd on the gas, and I was falling to hell for all the horrible things I've done. I don't know if or when I stopped falling, but I ended up in my bed again.

Butane was starting to hurt. My lungs felt like they were coated in a thin layer of melted plastic or cligfilm and hard lumps were consantly easing their way up my throat, but emerged as white stringy liquid. My head felt emtpy and strained, pushed to the edge of exploding or caving in. I stuck to toots for a while, they got me to sleep ok, I didn't need to trip. But every time I remembered the wierd, the crazy, the unreal, I had to go back, there is no feeling like it. I started doing ecstacy and acid, and after having a really bad trip on cid(LSD) + a little ket, I retired to my room and got on the lighter gas, and instantly my head pounded and thudded like never before, I've never felt such pain. I grabbed Either side and struggled for breath, and all I could see was black and red in jagged lines, like lightning. I thought I was having a stroke.

Since then I did it occasionnally, but all that happens is the people on TV say things about me, things they know will hurt. I've had so many wierd experiences, painful, things that make me feel empty and inhuman. I blame acid, ketamine, pills, weed, but butane is the first hardcore (class A?) drug I did, and I did it to excess, and I think that is what did all the damage. Other drugs just brought it out. Butane has fucked me. I know because my mates have done the same amount and the same sort of drugs as me, barr butane, and have no such side effects.

I've stopped it now, stopped butane, but still battle with harsh paranoia, social awkwardness, delusional beliefs, superficial relationships, an uncontrollable fear of the world outside my head, lack of connection to anything real and solid. I know people can read minds, and they know what I have done. But then I don't really know if it's real, and I never will. The boundary separating my mild insanity/eccentricity from the real world has crumbled away, and only now is it starting to rebuild, but I'm not the sane. I took some things too far. But I still think back and imagine maybe I could experience it again. It was fucking fun, but even mainstream drugs have their unknown, unexpected side/after effects.

Exp Year: 1997	ExpID: 39726
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 4, 2007	Views: 19,603
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Inhalants (29) : Health Problems (27), Entities / Beings (37), Post Trip Problems (8), Retrospective / Summary (11), Not Applicable (38)