All of the heavy petrol sniffers McFarland has known have died in their 20s. Petrol sniffing wastes away the protective membrane around nerve endings in the brain. This causes messages to be scrambled, uncontrollable laughing, dark visions, sometimes violent behavior, memory loss and an inability to recognise everyday items such as door handles. Then the physical effects set in. The brain's ability to coordinate limb movements is impaired.
Many sniffers lose feeling in their feet and develop a tell-tale stomp in their walk.
The end comes when the brain can no longer run the sniffer's respiratory system. That is how the sad, brief life of Anselm Miller, about 25 and a long-term sniffer, ended last month when he wandered away from his Mt Liebig community about 60 kilometres on the dirt desert road west of Papunya. In the desert cold, his lungs finally collapsed. He was found with his face inside the cut-off plastic bottle from which he took his last sniff of petrol. His death, like most of those who succumb to petrol sniffing, will probably be recorded as respiratory failure.