Using inhalants can’t be that bad for you. After all, you can buy them legally in stores. They’re just everyday products and can’t hurt you, unlike drugs like heroin and cocaine.
These statements are definitely wrong. Using an inhalant in the wrong way can lead to some serious health complications, even death. Is that worth a cheap, temporary high?
Even though inhalant abuse sounds unusual, there’s a good chance that you know a little something about it. People have been sniffing products such as glue and spray for a long time. Still other people sniff substances such as gasoline, markers, screen cleaners, nail polish remover, and the gas from cans of whipped cream, to name a few substances.
Part of what makes inhalant abuse so frightening is that it is popular with young people. Why?
- Unlike medications like opioids, you don’t need a prescription to buy inhalants.
- Unlike alcohol, you don’t need to be a certain age to buy most inhalants.
- Unlike heroin or cocaine, you don’t have to deal with drug dealers or personal risk to buy inhalants—you just go to the store.
- Unlike some other substances, inhalants are inexpensive. You can take multiple hits (or doses) from a container of glue or a gallon of gasoline.
Of course, multiple hits are part of the problem of inhalants. If people use inhalants, the effects often don’t last a long time. To stay high, then, they take more and more inhalants. This brings more harmful substances into their bodies in a short amount of time.
As amazing as the human body is, it’s not make to withstand those amounts of foreign substances in such a brief period. On a short-term basis, inhalants can make you disoriented and high. That’s bad enough, but the long-term effects are scary, and include coordination problems, disorientation, and even dementia. People who abuse inhalants and other substances might want to alter their brains temporarily, but they might not realize that they could be doing so on a permanent basis.
