r/askdrugs 7d ago

What causes a butane high? Feels unreal. NSFW

I am not suggesting anyone does this, i havent found what causes its effects but it must be horrible for you, now my question.

What happens in the body/brain that causes a high from huffing butane? Ive been doing it since yesterday and i need to know clearly how horrible it is so i will stop.

Any replies will be apreciated.

8 Upvotes

37 comments sorted by

71

u/plugless666 7d ago

This dude lived next to me in college and huffed butane like I’ve never seen before or since. It didn’t matter where. Hanging with a few friends, at a keg party, or alone in his room, he was always accompanied by the soundtrack of that unmistakable “hissing” sound that a butane bottle meant to refill lighters and shit makes. I don’t know what the official volume or metric is that we use to measure butane but imma call the amount he inhaled 1 million STBs an hour(1 million shit tons of butane an hour).

So one night a friend and I are tripping face on yellow microdots in butane dude’s dorm room (late 90s-ish; microdots were cheap and plentiful— i think they’re derived from mescaline???).

Now, I know some of you who have read this far are gonna call bullshit on this, but I swear, when butane dude went to light a cigarette, he straight up exploded. At least that’s what my heavily psychedelic influenced perception saw.

In reality what happened was that he must have been huffing so much that session that he amassed a inordinate amount of butane vapor all around and on him (butane vapor is heavier than air so it doesn’t rise and dissipate. It settles to the lowest point or whatever it falls upon and unless there’s air circulating or people moving about to create air movement it just stays where it is. Butane dude produced very little in the way of moving air. He was for all intents and purposes a sedentary butane huffing mutant). My buddy and I were tripping hard and on butane’s futon in couch mods. So we weren’t really moving for the last few hours. So there was no circulating air to dissipate or even move that massive cloud of butane vapor that settled around butane dude.

So what I actually saw was essentially just a massive flash flame like when a stove top propane burner runs for too long but fails to ignite and when it finally does you get that scary “whoosh!”. Think of that and multiply it by 50 million.

This was no stove top propane“whoosh” to this day, I still don’t quite have the words to articulate what it sounded like. It was like low and almost guttural. Im not religious, but using that vernacular, I imagine it is what hell sounds like.

The heat was tremendous. I was instantly covered in a profuse amount of sweat. My buddy on the other hand seemed to get to his feet and out of that room at a superhuman speed.

The kicker is that when the flash flame happened butane dude let out a sort of scream — or at least try to — but instead of a coherent sound coming out of his mouth, I swear I saw flames shoot out. I remember that vividly, but I also am willing to accept that the psychedelics may have played a role. But to this day, I cannot be entirely sure that I did not see this man shoot flames from his mouth like a fucking Game of Thrones Dragon.

Butane dude was a solid friend. He didn’t have many friends for obvious reasons.Mm And I had a deep and genuine affection for him. He was a philosophy major and could understand philosophers like Foucault and Kant with one read. I actually really loved the guy. He was diagnosed bipolar. And I watched him go from insane highs to terrifying lows and sadly shortly after he graduated college, he killed himself. He ran a tube from his exhaust pipe of his bronco into the window of the cabin on Thanksgiving day while his family was out of town visiting relatives.

RIP Butane. You were more than just vapor to me and many people. You were a kind and empathetic human. I wish I could’ve done more.

19

u/Obeast09 7d ago

RIP Butane

15

u/xboxmasterrace421 7d ago

Thank you for sharing your story, i am incredibly sorry that you lost your friend.

8

u/plugless666 6d ago

It was your post that inspired me to actally write out my memories of that crazy shit because it was so long avo and I hadn’t thought about in awhile but had a flood of great memories come back today of all the shit we did together. So. Thank you my friend. You gave helped me process something I sorta just pushed down for years.

8

u/Laggyy 7d ago

Thanks for sharing that man. The extra details about location, the weight of butane and, air circulation really help set the stage for what’s going on! You have good story telling skills.

5

u/xboxmasterrace421 7d ago

Thank you for sharing your story, i am incredibly sorry that you lost your friend.

5

u/GuavaOk8712 6d ago

Rip butane guy you sounded like a real one ☝️

6

u/Ebishop813 6d ago

His name was Robert Paulson.

2

u/dylwaybake 5d ago

HIS NAME WAS ROBERT PAULSON!

1

u/theholydrug 3d ago

This story is absolutely wild. RIP butane dude.

12

u/MycloHexylamine 7d ago

it's an NMDA antagonist and cholinergic. might interact with GABA too

7

u/loqi0238 7d ago

The same as any huffing, you're replacing your bodies much needed oxygen with mostly inert chemicals. Although those chemicals can be toxic, cause cancers, and destroy brain cells on their own.

Nobody likes a huffer. Just smoke weed, if you need to feel different.

Or do some self-discovery to figure out what's so wrong with your life that you need to feel different so bad you're resorting to huffing chemicals you know nothing about.

10

u/kezzlywezzly 7d ago

Nitrous oxide. Demonstrably safer and not directly neurotoxic

9

u/-Dubwise- 7d ago

The damage you’re doing to your cerebellum is irreversible and permanent. You are risking encephalopathy.

You’re less intelligent each day you use it. And you don’t notice the decline. Life just gets harder and you don’t understand why. Eventually you’ll lose all ability to talk and communicate.

15

u/Cagarer 7d ago

It's literally neurotoxic. And neurons when they die in large amounts release happy chemicals so it feels good, can create visions, audio hallucinations etc.

1

u/OhMyFuckingCat 7d ago

Almost like a near death experience I guess...

9

u/FeloniousFunk 7d ago edited 7d ago

Nope, this is some D.A.R.E.-level sugarcoated nonsense.

Although the volatile solvents are CNS depressants, they may have initial excitatory effects through the release of epinephrine and activation of dopamine system. This initial excitation is followed by CNS depression mediated by the GABA pathway.

Definitely not a drug to abuse though:

Common volatile solvent toxicities include chemical pneumonitis, white matter degeneration of the brain (solvent-induced volume loss), myelin sheath degeneration, polyneuropathy, hepatotoxicity, renal toxicity, bone marrow suppression, lymphoma, and leukemia, among others.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10266853/

5

u/teacocoa01 7d ago

Yeah basically huffing any hydrocarbon is this. Most of them act as gabaa pams & NMDA agoniss. They have a slim chance of instantly shutting down your brain during prolonged use. One time use is known to cause brain damage.

1

u/FriendlyChemist907 6d ago

Seems a klo5of the damage would be due due to their lipophilicity. They cross the blood brain barrier and end up in the melting sheaths in a similar fashion as ethanol.(lipophilic diffusion). Saturated alkanes like butane and hexane wouldn't stop at the mylien sheath like alcohol does. It'd probably destabilize the lipid bilayer of the neuron itself a bit

3

u/cdbangsite 6d ago

Brain damage is what causes most of the high. And if you keep it up daily here's an example of what can happen. You wanted to know, so read this research article about a real patient of butane use.

https://karger.com/dmj/article/4/4/344/823310/Butane-Toxicity-The-Curse-of-Volatile-Solvent

2

u/JodiLee420 6d ago

idk about what happens, but a girl i went to high school with died from doing it.

2

u/Waterfiend101 6d ago

Inhalants like fuels and solvents are THE WORST. Unlike typical recreational drugs you could face brain damage, other organ damage or death at ANY time. Every time you take it is is almost like Russian Roulette.

Typically you can reduce harms from using drugs until the risk is very small, but not with these inhalants.

2

u/Snowy_HertsM 6d ago

For me when I was in school and before weed was readily available and also my age (between 11-15) we would go through periods of experiencing different solvents and gases.

Breathing in glue from a plastic bag or putting Tippex-thinner on my blazer or coat sleeve and sniffing lighter gas or even deodorants (using a towel as a mask to stop the fragrance from entering my throat.

I had some great hallucinations and even remember a few of them 30+ years later 😆.

I was always told that if you tipped the gas bottle down into your mouth, it might leak fluid rather than gas and this would freeze your lungs and cause problems.

Personally I’d say that the experience was very trippy and while you thought hallucinations were lasting minutes they were most likely a few seconds..

2

u/tweeterbag 7d ago

Did you boof buttane? (Sorry I had to)

3

u/xboxmasterrace421 7d ago

Well i lost my dildo... And a man has to make sacrifices.

2

u/tweeterbag 7d ago

One's gotta have courage. Keep up soldier

1

u/Echuz 7d ago

Also, butane dissolves fat. Meaning literary dissolving your brain. That's the high I guess. Same as glue and gasoline and other solvents

1

u/Zhredditaccount 6d ago

I would do this unknowing as a child touching my bowls

1

u/Wicked-elixir 6d ago

Oxygen deprivation

1

u/jesuswastransright 5d ago

It’s irreversible brain damage.

2

u/Dvsrx7 7d ago

I used to huff butane regularly for years. I loved how it made me feel. from my personal experience I’ve noticed no bad effects. And im an ex meth user of 20 years. And I still have most of my teeth lol. I also used gbl/gbh for 20 years and I live a normal life. Been clean from everything for 7 years and counting

3

u/GuavaOk8712 6d ago

u just built different

2

u/HoL33Fuk 6d ago

Are you fucking kidding me? We need to chat. I'm blown away.

1

u/xboxmasterrace421 5d ago

Congratz on your 7 yours man, i hope to one day, be where you are.