The Great Popper Shortage of 2013

[bat1]

a little story of a guy using poppers..

I'm getting really really worried and anxious... I'm beginning to think I've damaged my eyes using poppers?? I'm not sure though, but its got to be that... I was on X-Tube the other night having a wank and using poppers and the next morning when I woke up my eyesight still had that "flashy" side-effect that poppers sometimes gives you when you use them... It's a bit like when someone has taken a flash photograph of you, and for a few minutes afterwards you get a white flash in your eyes that gradually fades away... know what I mean? (or the same as the beginnings of a migraine)...

Well anyway, its now Tuesday, (this happened at the weekend), and the "flash" in my eyes is still kind of there... It's hard to explain.. Its effecting the part of my eyesight that 'looks' at things, ie, as I'm typing this with the black type against the white screen some of the letters are kind of disappearing as if I've got a tiny blind spot or something? And if I stare at the white screen and blind repeatedly I can see a kind of dark round blob in the middle of my vision... I noticed that at lunchtime when I went down town peoples faces were a tiny bit bleached out... as if I'd looked at the sun and then looked at there faces...

Can poppers burn your retina? I'm really worried... Has anyone else had this before?? I'm also on anti-depressants so do you think maybe I shouldn't be using poppers as well?? Has anyone heard of poppers damaging eyesight before? I'm dead worried... I couldn't bear it if my eyesight got damaged.... Its in both eyes by the way...

Study links vision loss and retinal damage to use of 'poppers'

Poppers" may cause lasting vision loss
BY LEIGH KRIETSCH BOERNER
NEW YORK Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:32pm EST
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(Reuters Health) - Inhaling the vapors from "poppers" to get high even once can cause eye damage, but habitual huffing may lead to months-long vision loss, French doctors say.



The study was small, only involving six HIV-positive men with a history of other drug use. The men had been using poppers at least once a week for months or years before going to see eye doctors because of vision problems in both eyes.

In the men who kept using poppers, visual disturbances continued, co-author Dr. Michel Paques from the Quinze-Vingts Hospital in Paris told Reuters Health by email.

In men who stopped, vision improved after several months - but Paques and his colleagues aren't sure whether that will always be the case.

Poppers are small vials of a type of chemical called alkyl nitrates that are crushed or "popped" to release the fumes. These compounds give off nitric oxide, which produces a quick, short-lived high.

The men in the study all had damage to the retina -- the part of the eye that detects light. The severity of the damage was not linked to how long the men were using the poppers, Paques said.

Last October, writing about a different set of patients, Paques and colleagues reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that just a single use of poppers can damage vision. (See Reuters story of October 13, 2010, at reut.rs/eEajjr.)

Even though the compound that produces the high doesn't stay in the body for very long, "its effects remain for months," Paques told Reuters Health in an email.

Animal studies have shown the compound is involved in vision, but researchers don't know the effect of large doses, Paques said.

Some of the men in this study already suspected the poppers were to blame when they went to the eye doctors. In all cases, doctors advised them to stop using poppers - and those who did saw their vision improve after a few months.

Even so, most of the patients did not stop taking the drug, Paques said - so he and his colleagues don't know if vision coming back is the general rule or not.

This is an important study because it shows that there are additional risks to using these drugs, said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of HIV prevention and research at San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Popper use has been associated with an increased risk of contracting HIV, Colfax told Reuters Health. He was not part of the study.

"From a public health perspective, it's critical that people are informed and understand the risk of using poppers," he said. "Many people think that they're harmless and don't even consider them drugs."

Inhalants like poppers tend to be used by people experimenting with substance use, like teenagers, Colfax said.

Just shy of one in five teenagers in the US used poppers in 2008, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In major urban centers, about the same number of gay men have used poppers in the last 6 to 12 months, Colfax told Reuters Health.

"Poppers have aphrodisiac effects in some subjects, and in most cases do not have side effects," Paques said. "You can go to work the next day, unlike after heavy drinking."

The use of poppers has held steady over the past 30 years, Colfax said. The sale of alkyl nitrates is legal; they're easily available both online and in stores that sell drug paraphernalia. Sold as video head cleaner or leather cleaner, common brand names are Jungle Juice, Rush, and Man Scent. A one-ounce bottle costs between 8 and 15 dollars.

A limitation of this study, published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, was that it was very small, Colfax said. With this in mind, we "have to wait and see what the evidence bears out."

The subjects in Paques's earlier study - the one reported last October -- were not homosexual and didn't use other drugs. The current study only looked at HIV-positive gay men who did use other drugs. However, when the findings from both studies are combined, it suggests that they can apply to everyone who uses the inhalants, Paques said.

Part of the reason that the study was small is that some eye doctors don't know about the condition, according to Paques. Patients develop a yellow spot in the middle of the retina that can be hard to detect, he said. But as doctors become aware, they notice more cases.

The few cases he's reported so far are "the tip of the iceberg," Paques said. But, he added, these few cases "helped us to identify a quite important problem."

SOURCE: bit.ly/dKnBe6 Archives of Ophthalmology, online February 14, 2011.

[Westheangelino]

"Just shy of one in five teenagers in the US used poppers in 2008, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration."


^ I find that HIGHLY specious on merely a colloquial level. Aside from my gay friends, I have met ONE person who knew what the fuck I was talking about when talking about poppers. And I know some sick fucking heteros.

[Chuck]

"Just shy of one in five teenagers in the US used poppers in 2008, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration."


^ I find that HIGHLY specious on merely a colloquial level. Aside from my gay friends, I have met ONE person who knew what the fuck I was talking about when talking about poppers. And I know some sick fucking heteros.

Agreed. Kids might be inhaling a few things but poppers aren't one of them.

[Westheangelino]

Perhaps the reporter got some facts mixed up. Perhaps the study was including all inhalants in that teen usage stat. That would be my guess. Poppers are a very specific thing. As far as I know, huffing gasoline doesn't make your asshole turn into a hungry man cunt.

[Ms.Stepford]

I took them when I was a teen, and not since.

Never underestimate the drug savvy of the youth.

[sukumvit boy]

It is sometimes marketed as such because it illegal to sell them as aphrodisiacs. You will also see them sold as video head cleaner and leather cleaner. It is highly astringent, so I wouldn't doubt that it could accomplish all of these goals.

'Nail polish remover' ,' L-Argenine' ? The innocence astounds me. I actually find it charming.
And yes , it can be harmful to your health!
We're adults here , this is a sex forum ,what's the problem?
Me and my boys , hell , we done snorted gallons of that shit ,never hurt us none...

[sukumvit boy]

Nice post bat1 , lots of good info. , especially the vision related studies seem to be on to something.

[robertlouis]

I think that if you are really into sex the best way is without the aid of chemicals. Try it sometime Westheangelino

If you have to enhance it you probably won't remember it as clearly as you'd like to.

[Westheangelino]

mmmm, no I remember it all quite well.

[darkko]

my wife enjoys them with me