page_title: Recreational use of nitrous oxide
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Recreational use of nitrous oxide / History
caption_attribution_description: Doctor and Mrs Syntax, with a party of friends, experimenting with laughing gas. Coloured aquatint by T. Rowlandson after W. Combe. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Doctor Syntax; William Combe; Thomas Rowlandson
context_page_description: Nitrous oxide gas produces euphoriant effects when inhaled. First recorded in the 18th century at upper-class "laughing gas parties", the experience was largely constrained to medical students until the late 20th century when laws limiting access to the gas were loosened to supply dentists and hospitals. By the 2010s, nitrous oxide had become a moderately popular recreational drug in some countries. Possession of nitrous oxide is legal in many countries, although some have criminalised supplying it for recreational purposes.
context_section_description: Inhalation of nitrous oxide for recreational use, with the purpose of causing euphoria or slight hallucinations, began as a phenomenon for the British upper class in 1799, known as "laughing gas parties". English chemist Humphry Davy offered the gas to party guests in a silken bag, and documented its effects in his 1800 book Researches, Chemical and Philosophical which investigated "nitrous oxide, or diphlogisticated nitrous air, and its respiration". Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the effect as "like returning from a walk in the snow into a warm room".
  During the 19th century, William James and many contemporaries found that inhalation of nitrous oxide resulted in a powerful spiritual and mystical experience for the user. James claimed to experience the fusing of dichotomies into unity and a revelation of ultimate truth during the inhalation of nitrous oxide. The memory of this experience, however, quickly faded and any attempt to communicate was difficult at best. James described a man who, when under the influence of the gas, claimed to know the secret of the universe.
  Until at least 1863, low availability of equipment to produce the gas, combined with low usage of the gas for medical purposes, meant it was a relatively rare phenomenon that mainly happened among students at medical universities.  When equipment became more widely available for dentistry and hospitals, most countries also restricted the legal access to buy pure nitrous oxide gas cylinders to those sectors. Even so, its use in parties continued, with gas provided by medical professionals or restaurant workers, and by other legal or illegal sources.
  A report from Consumers Union report from 1972 (based upon reports of its use in Maryland 1971, Vancouver 1972, and a survey made by Edward J. Lynn of its non-medical use in Michigan 1970) found that use of the gas for recreational purposes was then prevalent in the US and Canada.
  It was not uncommon [in the interviews] to hear from individuals who had been to parties where a professional (doctor, nurse, scientist, inhalation therapist, researcher) had provided nitrous oxide. There also were those who work in restaurants who used the N
  ₂O stored in tanks for the preparation of whip cream. Reports were received from people who used the gas contained in aerosol cans both of food and non-food products. At a recent rock festival, nitrous oxide was widely sold for 25 cents a balloon. Contact was made with a "mystical-religious" group that used the gas to accelerate arriving at their transcendental-meditative state of choice. Although a few, more sophisticated users employed nitrous oxide-oxygen mixes with elaborate equipment, most users used balloons or plastic bags. They either held a breath of N
  ₂O or rebreathed the gas. There were no adverse effects reported in the more than one hundred individuals surveyed.
caption: Aquatint depiction of a laughing gas party in the 19th century
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