# What Are the REAL Effects of Inhaling Chloroform?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 19, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571 "2003-01-19T02:25:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@abba149](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abba149)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2012, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/21 "2012-07-23T18:40:58Z")
i used to abuse it
i could not hide my lips
i just told people i burnt it on tea in the microwave
first time I tried it i put a tea spoon on my tongue
i now have a lump on that spot i keep biting
At one point i tried to kill my self with 500Ml
the jars arrived broken
but it all was contained in the Safety bag the company sent them in
So i got a trash bag a pair of scissors put the bag of broken glass and chloroform in the trash bag
put the trash bag on my desk
poked a hole in the chloro bag
everyone in the hospital kept saying
" i do not want to offend but what happend to your face "
Im amaized how fast my face got better or even the fact it kind went back to looking like the way it was
also im astonished that i am not blind
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### Author:  [@Pokestar\_X](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pokestar_X)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/22 "2015-04-05T05:56:50Z")
**"Recovery generally occurs as soon as the chloroform is removed"**
What do you mean removed? like surgically?
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### Author:  [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/23 "2015-04-05T06:26:49Z")
> [@Pokestar\_X](#):
>
> **“Recovery generally occurs as soon as the chloroform is removed”**
>
> What do you mean removed? like surgically?
What in the world could you have googled that led you to this thread?
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### Author:  [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/24 "2015-04-05T06:41:44Z")
Repetitive hallucinations. For every inhalation, you think “hey, what is that - I’ve seen somethin like it before” - and then utter your new comment. Which will, subsequently, be added to the stack. And relived.
And I speak from my own old experience.
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### Author:  [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/25 "2015-04-05T11:25:36Z")
> [@md2000](#):
>
> he inhaled too much chloroform and ended up with liver damage.
Permanent liver damage? I thought the liver could regenerate from most insults. This is why it takes so long for it to fail even for an alcoholic (apparently it takes about 10 years for cirrhosis to kill you, and if you stop drinking at year 8 it will apparently regenerate)
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### Author:  [@FluffyBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FluffyBob)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/26 "2015-04-05T14:00:16Z")
Am I the only one that finds abba’s tragic poem/story jaw dropping?
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/27 "2015-04-05T14:54:54Z")
> [@FluffyBob](#):
>
> Am I the only one that finds abba’s tragic poem/story jaw dropping?
Zombies are like that. They sorta drip jaws and other minor body parts as they shamble along after revival after revival forever into the future.
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### Author:  [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/28 "2015-04-05T15:00:37Z")
Zombie or no…
The subject reminded me of [this guy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Mors), who allegedly increased the throughput of the nursing home he worked at in NYC by poisoning the patients in 1915.
His method of choice was chloroform. He had tried arsenic but they didn’t die nicely, so he changed to the alternate (and hard to detect) treatment.
NPR has posted the relevant chapter from “The Poisoner’s Handbook’: CSI’s Jazz Age Roots” by Deborah Blum.
This seems to corroborate the caustic angle, though no Indiana-Jones face melting, still it seems a relevant side effect…
[From Chapter 1: Chloroform](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124472649)
> [@](#):
>
> Mors had told police that he’d put too much chloroform on the rag used to kill one elderly man. The caustic liquid left raw red marks around the man’s mouth. The embalmer alarmed him by asking about the marks of injury. From then on, according to Mors’s confession, he’d spread Vaseline around the patients’ mouths before applying chloroform.
>
> The embalmer promptly corroborated Mors’s statement. He remembered being startled by that uneven red scoring of the skin. He’d seen chloroform burns on the faces of patients who’d died during surgery. Mors had told him a cloth used to tie the man’s mouth shut after death had rubbed the face raw. That had puzzled the embalmer. The home had never done that before. The marks didn’t really seem to match with a cloth burn. But after all, it was just another old man dead. And the next body showed no such signs of damage, so he’d let it go.
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### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/29 "2015-04-05T15:08:28Z")
> [@FluffyBob](#):
>
> Am I the only one that finds abba’s tragic poem/story jaw dropping?
Nope. It was quite chilling, in fact.
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### Author:  [@albino\_manatee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/albino_manatee)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/30 "2015-04-05T18:16:28Z")
28 replies
225,315 views
now that’s scary!
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/31 "2015-04-05T20:24:04Z")
> [@albino\_manatee](#):
>
> 28 replies
> 225,315 views
>
> now that’s scary!
Spread over the 12 years this thread has been sitting here, and given we’re talking about a drug of potential abuse, it seems like a reasonable number. I wonder how many views were search engines just cataloging the page?
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### Author:  [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/32 "2015-04-05T20:27:35Z")
Why do they put cloroform in cough syrup?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/33 "2015-04-05T20:51:35Z")
> [@FluffyBob](#):
>
> Am I the only one that finds abba’s tragic poem/story jaw dropping?
I was trying to work out what tune it fits to.
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/34 "2015-04-05T22:07:12Z")
> [@grude](#):
>
> Why do they put cloroform in cough syrup?
Back in the old days, some formulas did contain it. My guess is that it was to make it smell and taste bad; back in the day, many people believed that the worse a medicine tasted, the better it worked.
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### Author:  [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/35 "2015-04-06T07:59:59Z")
> [@Habeed](#):
>
> Permanent liver damage? I thought the liver could regenerate from most insults. This is why it takes so long for it to fail even for an alcoholic (apparently it takes about 10 years for cirrhosis to kill you, and if you stop drinking at year 8 it will apparently regenerate)
Nope. Once you get scarring in the liver, it stays. The liver can recover some function with care and management, but the scar tissue does not revert to functional liver.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
Generally, liver damage from cirrhosis cannot be reversed, but treatment could stop or delay further progression and reduce complications. A healthy diet is encouraged, as cirrhosis may be an energy-consuming process.
> **[Cirrhosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrhosis#Management)**
>
> Cirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease, is a condition of the liver in which the normal functioning tissue, or parenchyma, is replaced with scar tissue (fibrosis) and regenerative nodules as a result of chronic liver disease. Damage to the liver leads to repair of liver tissue and subsequent formation of scar tissue. Over time, scar tissue and nodules of regenerating hepatocytes can replace the parenchyma, causing increased resistance Stages...
[/QUOTE]
The liver can regrow from some forms of physical damage, but scarring due to chemical damage (such as toxic chemicals, alcohol or fat buildup) isn’t one of them.
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### Author:  [@marcvs\_cassivs\_erebvs\_anicetvs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marcvs_cassivs_erebvs_anicetvs)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2017, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/36 "2017-10-26T10:40:57Z")
Just being a solvent means nothing. A solvent is simply something that is used to dissolve things. Water is a solvent when you make tea. There are different types of solvents though. Water is a polar inorganic solvent and will readily dissolve polar things like salts be it sodium chloride (table salt), potassium iodide, sodium hydroxide, etc. Non polar organic things will not readily mix with or dissolve in water or solutions like it. This is why oil and water do not mix. Water is polar meaning it has ends that are slightly charged which causes the positive ends of one water molecule to be attracted to the negative side of another. This means they act sort of like a giant tub of little magnetic balls constantly stirring about. If that were to be mixed with a bunch of non magnetic balls and stirred about the magnetic ones would cling together and push the other to either the top or bottom depending on which is the most dense of the two. This is what happens when oil and water are mixed. Oil is non polar, water is quite polar. Dichloromethane (a substance near identical to chloroform) will not mix with water nor dissolve many of the things water does but will dissolve many non polar organic substances which is why it is used in paint strippers. Soap works by being both. Soap is a long organic molecule with one polar end and one non polar end. The non polar end of the soap molecules are attracted to and surround the non polar organic oils on your skin (which do not mix with water making it hard for water to wash it off thus exposing and pushing off the dirt beneath). They surround the micro droplet of oil and form a pin cushion like thing called a micelle with the oil droplet trapped inside and the polar water loving ends of the soap on the outside. This means the whole micelle will be attracted to the water you use to rinse; thus taking the trapped oil with it. The membranes of cells take advantage of this difference in solubility as well. One end loves water the other does not. The outside of much of your cells, for the most part, don’t like polar inorganic liquids like water. If they did much of you would dissolve every time you took a drink. Chloroform’s most common use today is as an organic solvent. This is why it may hurt to have chloroform on certain parts of your body for prolonged periods of time. It will dissolve parts of your cells. How long it takes will depend on where it is applied and how much. Either way, it will be complete nor “melt your face off.” Though it will not be good for you.
Chloroform takes a while to work when inhaled. It will not knock you out in 10-15 seconds like someone in this thread previously said. You are looking at a period of time of at least five minutes of continuous inhalation. If some cunt tried knocking some poor soul out by holding a chloroform soaked rag over their mouth they would likely be unconscious in about half that time but that would be due to a lack of oxygen as a fucking rag is being held over their face. Plus the chloroform would likely evaporate either completely or to an ineffective amount before the effects could take hold.
Chloroform inhalation results in effects such as feeling light head, very slight audible hallucinations (mostly just a light pulsating hum), slight pain relief, slight euphoria, and eventually unconsciousness. It only takes a few milliliters to achieve these effects, a few more to achieve unconsciousness, a few more and you have death due to repository depression. This is why it is not used today. It is a very effective general anesthetic. It works quickly and results in no pain but there is a small difference between an effective dose and a lethal dose and it is difficult to accurately determine which is which for each patient.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2017, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/37 "2017-10-26T11:11:31Z")
Wow. That’s the edited version?
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### Author:  [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2017, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/38 "2017-10-26T11:44:33Z")
Yeah, the line breaks have been edited out comprehensively
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2017, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/39 "2017-10-26T12:42:29Z")
Is “repository depression” the bad mood you get into when you try and rob a bank and the teller says sorry, there are insufficient funds?
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2017, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-real-effects-of-inhaling-chloroform/149571/40 "2017-10-26T13:45:57Z")
> [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](#):
>
> Does Ether do the same thing?
Back in my wayward youth, I occasionally used ether recreationally. It was like being extremely drunk, with vivid hallucinations. Also, I’ve done LSD and mushrooms, and ether was by far the most hallucinogenic of the three. I can’t imagine how much you would have to give someone to actually knock them out, but it wouldn’t be quick or easy.
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