When a party is brewing, it is not uncommon to find whipped cream traps hidden in supermarket caddies between bottles and snacks. This craze for these pastry utensils is not explained by a desire for gluttony but a search for euphoria. More than the sweet cream, it is more the nitrous oxide cartridges that are screwed into the siphons that are of more interest to young people.
“To have giggles” while inhaling laughing gas puffsor “proto”, as its aficionados call it, is it a new phenomenon? “No, objected Dr Laurent Karila, psychiatrist specializing in addictions. It’s just that we talk more about it because the phenomenon is more visible, in particular with the deaths recorded in the United Kingdom”. Across the Channel, where the trend for laughing gas is exploding, misuse and repeated consumption would have caused the death of 17 people between 2006 and 2012.
But what exactly do we reproach with this gas? If the inhalations give initially hilarious effects (voice which changes, hearing and visual distortion, giggles), they also involve side effects: “the lips and the wings of the nose burn, one can have headaches, nausea, vomiting and note muscle weakness, “says our expert.
Worse, repeated and too frequent use of nitrous oxide can lead to heart problems, high blood pressure and neurological disorders in some people.
Not a source of addiction
Can a single take still have these harmful consequences? “An isolated take is a priori without seriousness, but it all depends on the state of health of the user, underlines Dr. Karila. In other words, the zero risk does not exist.” We cannot say that only one use is excluded from undesirable effects “.
If all danger is not removed, it would be wrong to consider nitrous oxide as a drug. A drug induces changes in the nervous system and is a source of addiction, adds the addictologist. However, “nitrous oxide is not a source of addiction, it is rather the behavior that there is around which can become an addiction”, if one gets into the habit of inhaling it at home by example.
Thanks to Dr Laurent Karila, addictologist psychiatrist and vice-president of SOS addictions.
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