Inhalants

Usually when you talk to kids about why they started abusing a particular substance, the answers are somewhat vague and usually "hover" around the the real issue. Typically you get answers like "I wanted to see what it would feel like," or "everyone else was doing it," or "I thought it would be cool to see what it felt like."

But with inhalants, most kids are completely candid in saying that they initially tried it and often continued to do it because "it made them feel nothing," or "it let them escape from their reality," or "It made me stop thinking about bad stuff." We know that this is the underlying reason why most people continue to abuse alcohol or drugs to addictive levels, but it's unusual for such a large percentage of kids to admit to the concept of escaping emotional pain right up front. There are some fairly logical reasons for this which are discussed a little further down.

Inhalants are often the first drugs kids abuse. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6% of children in the United States have tried inhalants of some kind by the fourth grade, while one in five eighth graders have abused inhalants at least once. Other statistics state that over the past three years in the U.S., 1.8 million kids used inhalants, with 30% of those falling into the age category of 12 or 13 years old. In the vast majority of cases, this use will be experimental in nature and short-lived.

Recent studies indicate the majority of kids who have recently used inhalants are Caucasian and come from homes well above the poverty line. And although kids from every strata of society might experiment with inhalants, chronic use is most often found in highly impoverished or remote areas.

And we want to make the distinction between the "first" drug kids use and the concept of a "gateway" drug that theoretically leads to other drugs. With the exception of Oxycontin being a "gateway" drug to heroin, we don't believe in the concept of " gateway" drugs. And we feel this way because when you focus on one drug being a "gateway" to another drug, you lose focus of what the real gateways are to all substance abuse. And those "gateways" aren't other drugs. They're feelings of not being good enough, feelings of not fitting in, feelngs of hopelessness, or feelings of wanting to blot out bad memories.

So don't let anyone kid you. Whether someone has a three hundred dollar a day heroin habit, or they're spending twenty hours a day on a chat-line, the "gateway" wasn't another drug or behavior. The real "gateway" was a feeling inside that they want to avoid dealing with, or a problem deep inside that they don't know how to solve. Feelings are the gateways to all substance abuse and maladaptive behaviors.

In Canada, inhalants are a huge problem for remote Native communities, who typically suffer from crippling unemployment, thereby creating the environment of hopelessness where addiction flourishes. More than half the school-aged children in Pauingassi, a remote, fly-in reserve northeast of Winnipeg are addicted to sniffing gasoline. Of the 450 people who call it home, one in five is considered a chronic solvent addict.

So when seen in proper context, it's not hard to see why so many kids from such environments and communities talk about drugs, alcohol and inhalants as "pain relievers," because hardship and pain are endemic to the communities in which they live. Mexico also reports a very high per capita rate of inhalant abuse, again owing to the concentration of abject poverty and hopelessness, which for all intents and purposes, is like a prison with no physical escape. As a result, mental or psychological escape becomes a very viable and attractive alternative.

Given the horrendous side-effects and after-effects of inhalant use, it's doubtful that any kid would continue to use inhalants if they had some realistic expectation that the "landscape of life" that they look at day in and day out was going to change. But they don't have that expectation, and if you can't change or escape your environment physically, then you have to change how you feel within your environment via psychological escape, if only for a few minutes or hours.

And to one degree or another, this feeling of hopelessness and feeling that you have no control over your circumstances is an active ingredient in almost all addictions. People who are enjoying their "reality" and have a reasonable expectation that it might get even better, do not tend to want to alter it artificially by holding a gassoaked rag to their face. It's thought that in most regions throughout North America, inhalant use peaks between Grades Seven and Nine. At that peak usage year (Grade Eight), girls seem to abuse as frequently as boys, but males are more frequent abusers before and after the peak year.

When we use the term "inhalant," we're talking about a diverse group of volatile, (evaporates when exposed to air) psychoactive substances found in a number of common products such as gasoline, nail-polish remover, spot remover, lighter fluid, "liquid paper," (also known as WhiteOut) paint stripper, paint lacquer, paint thinner, marking pencils, hair spray, air freshener, non-stick cooking spray, liquid shoe polish, many types of adhesive glues, and a variety of solvents. There are literally hundreds of substances that can be used as an inhalant and many are commonly found in the average household.

Most inhalants are relatively simple hydrocarbon compounds that are taken by sniffing through the nose, or breathing in the fumes a substance-soaked rag stuffed into the mouth ("huffing") or inhaling the fumes when the substance is placed in a bag and held tightly around the mouth. (bagging) The amount of the substance will peak in the blood system within minutes and the compounds are quickly absorbed into the central nervous system.

On the next page, we look at the different effects various inhalants produce, as well as withdrawal from these substances and treatment considerations.