CONSEQUENCES: MY EXPERIENCE W/ DRUGS
disclaimer: im not your mom or the feds, this is not advice. turns out drugs have consequences. you can't ever win with drugs, there's always a consequence of gigafucking your neurotransmitters with chemicals. one time i got drunk and bam, hangover. tried vape? mentally for a whole week was NEED VAPE NEED VAPE NEED VAPE but luckily i won out. weed was bad cause i broke down crying for 2 hours and got super fucking hungry after i woke up. the most interesting one is poppers, which is the subject of this rant. see poppers are usually alkyl nitrites, which are an alkyl (CnH2n) attached to a NITRITE group (O-N=O otherwise written as ONO) not a NITRATE (NO2). poppers are sex drugs that cause a brief sense of euphoria coinciding with an increase in heart rate and drop in blood pressure due to vasodilation but also relaxation of smooth muscles like the anal sphincter (if you can't put two and two together, get your head checked out). so i used poppers over winter break cause im bored and a little high is always nice but i don't get hungry or depressed or anxious like with other drugs so ideally no consequences. WRONG. its an inhalant, so that causes problems, you're overdoing it if you can feel stinging in your respiratory tract. but the dangerous part comes with the fact that it can oxidize the Fe2+ and O2 bond in hemoglobin into Fe3+ and O2-, which is a HUGE problem because that makes your hemoglobin not fucking work, first off, but then it also throws off the balance of the hemoglobin oxidation state: normally hemoglobin is oxidized partially in equilibrium so the O2 sticks to the Fe but because of they nitrites, it oxidizes it fully, thereby making your hemoglobin useless and releasing dangerous superoxides into your bloodstream. I was afraid of gettingGod methemoglobemia (hemoglobin oxidized to the point of being useless) and after one particulary intense binge, i noticed very mild cyanosis in my lips and fingertips, making me extremely concerned. the next time i'd use poppers, i would use a pulse oximeter to monitor my oxygen saturation in blood, it was 99% resting, and while doing the poppers i saw the number rapidly drop to 96% which meant that roughly 3% of my blood was oxidized, and after I stopped, the number slowly rose back to 99% after half an hour. it is medically documented that long term abuse of alkyl nitrites can cause methemoglobemia, which makes sense. I learned about hemoglobin in my chemistry class the semester prior, and it was wild that i could see the chemistry in action by abusing inhalants, though this did scare me into not going overboard in using poppers, since that binge was like once or twice every night for like a few days. now I know moderation because watching my blood O2 saturation drop was a little terrifying but also viscerally transfixing. i was thinking about abusing different kinds of drugs but having fucked with my hemoglobin, i decided against further messing with my head and body. drugs have consequences but it's not up to me to tell you what you can and can't put in your body. God Bless America, and as Nancy "Throat Goat" Reagan said: "say no to drugs."