My mom was thoroughly convinced when I was a kid that I was huffing glue day in and day out because I liked building models. I hated the stinky stuff and never tried that little bit of teenage rebellion.
So now I wonder: what kind of high does huffing glue give? Is it just a matter of being dizzy like asphxiation, or an actual pleasurable sensation or what?
I always wondered that. Like you I hated the sensation of accidentally inhaling glue fumes. I guess my evolved sense of “This is poison. Avoid” was working at full capacity*.
*Alas, not in later life - for alcohol.
Some people find the dizzy sensation (from sniffing glue or asphyxiation) to be euphoric. It’s like some people enjoy the rolls and G-forces of a roller coaster and to others its just vomit inducing.
That said, the solvents in glue/paint can do serious damage to your membranes. Don’t do it.
I have also wondered this.
I also found the smell of permanent markers, gasoline, acetone, paint thinner pleasurable but I never dared take more than one close smell due to all the warnings from my folks.
I haven’t thought of this iin decades, but the OP spurs a memory from when I was a young teenager, about 40 years ago. A friend told me, excitedly, that he had tried sniffing glue, and “it felt like my teeth were dropping out.”
Today, I don’t quite see why this would be desirable, and I guess I didn’t at the time, either, because I never tried it.
Sniffing glue has been mostly a punch line for decades, but in the days before the wide availability of pot, bored and dimwitted teenagers had to make do with what they had.
According to wikipedia, “The effects of inhalants range from an alcohol-like intoxication and intense euphoria to vivid hallucinations, depending on the substance and the dosage. Some inhalant users are injured due to the harmful effects of the solvents or gases, or due to other chemicals used in the products that they are inhaling… In some cases, users have died from hypoxia (lack of oxygen), pneumonia, cardiac failure or arrest[2], or aspiration of vomit.” That sounds fun. Over at erowid.org this guy reports his 23 year experiences with glue sniffing. If I’m understanding him correctly, he doesn’t think that his hallucinations are a result of the solvents’ effects on his brain. All the same, he can’t seem to stop. In the 1970s Newsweek enticed us with sensationalist reports of hallucinations.
More importantly, they’ll do serious damage to your brain. It’s insane to put this stuff in your body. Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain.
In 8th grade (16 years ago) some friends and I gave “huffing” a try. Never tried model glue, but the rubber cement cans in art class packed a bit of a buzz. Nothing too exciting, but it made you feel goofy and numbed your lips. Gasoline and scotch guard were the favorites. No doubt the stuff was doing damage… it’s quite obvious based on the effect. Light headed, auditory hallucinations, numb face, fun at the time and in small doses. Canned air or “duster” was the best, or at least what we considered to be the best. Enough huffing on that stuff and you could dream up little scenarios in your head and it took a few minutes to realize they hadn’t really happened. Weird shit, and definitely not recommended by this past experimenter.
In 9th grade a kid I didn’t know died from huffing Scotchguard in a plastic bag. At least, that was the story that everyone told. It’s possible that it was just a rumor, but no one ever said anything contradictory.
In my early years I worked part time in a hobby shop. We were told not to sell more than two tubes of glue at a time to kids. Testors was the major manufacturer of model building glue. During the time I was working at the store, Testors changed the formula by adding a strong garlic smell to the glue. It was really foul smelling, but then, druggies are a desperate lot.
As an anecdotal example of desperation I knew a guy that did 7 days in the county lockup for his 3rd DWI. He told me how one day the guards tore the place apart because some inmate didn’t turn in his Styrofoam coffee cup. The reason was that some of these losers would melt the Styrofoam and inject it for some kind of “high”. Hard to believe but I have no reason to doubt the anecdote.
Don’t try sniffing glue ,you might stick with it.