Inhalant abuse is a serious problem

Inhalant abuse, com­monly called “huff­ing,” is the pur­pose­ful inhala­tion of chem­i­cal vapors to obtain a high. Inhalant abusers will often use house­hold chem­i­cals to obtain their high. The inhalant prob­lem came to pub­lic atten­tion in the 1950s when news media began report­ing on young peo­ple sniff­ing model air­plane glue to get a cheap high. Since then, young peo­ple have dis­cov­ered most any house­hold chem­i­cal — from nail pol­ish remover to air fresh­en­ers — can give them the euphoric effect they are seeking.

A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion about inhalant abuse is that it is an exper­i­men­tal and child­ish fad. But inhalant abuse is a seri­ous prob­lem and one of the most dan­ger­ous of the so-called “exper­i­men­tal behav­iors.” Sniff­ing chem­i­cal vapors can starve the body of oxy­gen which can lead to severe brain dam­age and dam­age to the ner­vous sys­tem. Many “huf­fers” die the very first time they use inhalants because they have replaced the oxy­gen in their lungs with the chem­i­cal vapors and depleted the oxy­gen in the blood stream. Many oth­ers have suf­fo­cated to death by plac­ing a plas­tic bag over their head and then pass­ing out from inhal­ing the vapors.

Most of us under­stand the dan­gers of inhal­ing harm­ful chem­i­cal vapors but do not under­stand its seri­ous­ness. We have all prob­a­bly at one time or another taken a bal­loon filled with helium and sucked in some of the gas so we can make our friends and fam­ily laugh at our high squeaky voice, and may have even allowed our kids to do the same. The worst side effect we expe­ri­enced from this prac­tice might be slight light head­ed­ness or maybe even a slight headache. The risks we take doing this are very low and any seri­ous harm­ful effects are very rare. There is a newer trend of inhal­ing helium with deadly results.

Teens are now huff­ing helium directly from the pres­sur­ized tanks that bal­loon and party stores use to fill bal­loons. Breath­ing in pure helium can deprive the lungs of oxy­gen or can cause hem­or­rhag­ing in the lungs and breath­ing in the gas from a high pres­sure tank can cause the lungs to burst. Med­ical experts report there have been cases where helium bub­bles have got­ten into the arter­ies that lead to the brain, caus­ing stroke-like symp­toms and some­times death.

The dan­gers of inhal­ing a small amount of helium gas from a bal­loon are very min­i­mal and our voice does sound funny after the gas is inhaled. But, if our kids see us inhal­ing the gas with no side effects they will believe the gas is safe. Talk to your kids about the dan­gers and set a good exam­ple by not suck­ing in the gas from a bal­loon, and help keep our kids safe.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Mar 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.