Nitrous Oxide
Pronunciation:NIGH-truhs OX-eyed
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number:10024-97-2
Formal Names:Dinitrogen Monoxide, Dinitrogen Oxide, Entonox
Informal Names:Fall Down, Gas, Hippie Crack, Hysteria, Laughing Gas, Nitro,
Nitrous, Nitrous Acid, Noss, Pan, Shoot the Breeze, Tanks, Thrust, Whippets
Type:Inhalant.Seepage 26
Federal Schedule Listing:Unlisted
USA Availability:Nonprescription, but sales and usage are controlled in some
jurisdictions
Uses.This drug has been known since the 1720s. Some authorities describe
nitrous oxide as an opioid; some persons even use the gas to counteract effects
from stimulants. Nitrous oxide actions and its recreational use are similar to
those of other inhalants. Recreational use is illegal in some jurisdictions but
has a venerable history. The writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, thesaurus com-
piler Peter Mark Roget, and potter Josiah Wedgwood were all eighteenth-
century notables who relaxed with nitrous oxide.
Although this substance is a pharmaceutical product, it also occurs natu-
rally. For instance, eating lettuce generates enough nitrous oxide that scientists
can measure it in a person’s breath. Large quantities are produced by wild
prairie grass. Humans do not receive enough nitrous oxide from such natural
sources to be affected, however. The substance is also produced by the human
body. One study found the amount to increase as oral hygiene declined. As
with the amounts produced by grass and lettuce, the level created by the body
is too small to have any known effect on a person. From a global environ-
mental perspective, however, nitrous oxide is a gas that promotes the green-
house effect and ozone layer destruction, and concern exists about medical
usage affecting the world’s climate. Medical sources are estimated to create
2% of the atmosphere’s supply. Such usage may seem insignificant in that
regard, but the gas is so durable in the atmosphere that any artificial source
has been described as an environmental hazard.
Medically this drug is used as an anesthetic and to relieve pain ranging
from dental work to migraine headache and cancer. In a medical context
nitrous oxide is considered a reliable sedative. Experimental usage to treat
anxiety has been successful, and one authority has noted a therapeutic anti-