The “balloon drug” is nitrous oxide: a legal gas, also used in cooking. Inhaled to seek the “exhilarating” effect, it inactivates vitamin B12 and risks causing permanent neurological damage, up to paralysis.
It is an anesthetic gas, but it is also used to whip cream, sold in cans and completely legal in Italy. It is especially abused by very young people, who use it to inflate balloons and then breathe it. Due to its effects it is called laughing gas, but the scientific name is nitrous oxide, and it is a small molecule containing nitrogen and oxygen.
What are you laughing at?
Once inhaled, it quickly travels to the brain, causing euphoria, sensory changes, numbness and hallucinations. The effect lasts a few minutes and, once it wears off, everything seems to return to normal, as if nothing had happened.
Like all drugs, however, nitrous oxide also damages the nervous system and does so in an insidious way: by inactivating vitamin B12, which is essential for maintaining the myelin sheath that protects the nerves. This is why “balloon drug” can cause paralysis, as well as cognitive impairment and psychosis.
