• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

Ether Addiction?

The standard for inhalant general anesthesia today is still the halogenated agents, like Halothane. Diethlyl ether fell out of use because it's horribly flammable, it dissolves tubing and too easily (making dose parameters drift over time), and it causes a great deal of emesis, both during and after administration.

These gases are ALL hepatotoxic.
 
Having consumed almost 7 L of ether to myself, I don't notice any brain damage. My mental functions seem to be exactly the same now as they did before I ever touched diethyl ether.

Never even vomited from the stuff. Only time I vomited was when I put in a giant wad of chewing tobacco after an ether binge. Spun out and threw up off my balcony.

The worst thing that happened from it was some nasty diarrhea, and that was because one of my liter bottles was only 99.0% pure versus 99.9% (god only knows what impurities were in there)
 
wungchow said:
Having consumed almost 7 L of ether to myself, I don't notice any brain damage.

Anecdotal evidence. Have you been examined by a physician? Ether and Ethyl Chloride are highly toxic organic solvents. They dissolve organic molecules which is what your brain is made out of. Don't use that shit.

Ether or Ethyl Chloride is not a drug to be fucked with
"Ether" is NOT Ethyl Chloride... "Ether" is "Ethyl Ether"

In other words, here is the danger scale:

Roughly as hazardous as common recreational drugs such as MDMA or Cocaine:

Nitrous Oxide

20X more dangerous:
Ethyl Ether

1000X more dangerous than Nitrous:
Butane
Xylene
Tolune

1000000X more dangerous (known carcinogens/neurotoxins):
Gasoline/Benzene
Alkyl Chlorides
Chloroform
Dichloromethane (DCM aka Methylene Chloride)
 
what exactly were the factors you were considering when making that list, and where did those numbers come from?
 
Pubmed and textbooks I have here.

Ethyl chloride is pretty much like halothane, isofuorane etc in that it can cause heart arrhythmias in combination with any beta adrenergic agonist (the combination can kill), and it sometimes gets used as a very short acting local anesthetic due to its cooling action in contact with the skin (latent heat of evaporation and all that...), but I think, again like halothane etc, it can cause an exposure hepatitis.

The only inhalant anybody should even consider is nitrous oxide, and even that can be dangerous (asphixia if you use a mask and forget to mix oxygen with it).
 
Hello paradox...

Halothane is not used commonly on humans now because of the hepatotoxicity issues (worse than ether), and true halogenated ethers like iso/sevoflurane are far more common. Even in veterinary medicine, there has been somewhat (though not entirely) of a switch to isoflurane and sevoflurane.

Having consumed almost 7 L of ether to myself, I don't notice any brain damage.

"Mild" brain damage is a very tricky thing for one to notice. However, I am not saying you did in fact encounter brain damage, I am simply saying, that if you did, it could be quite hard to tell. However, slightly more severe brain damage is a bit more obvious (memory probably being an initial indicator)...
 
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negrogesic said:
Halothane is not used commonly on humans now because of the hepatotoxicity issues (worse than ether), and true halogenated ethers like iso/sevoflurane are far more common. Even in veterinary medicine, there has been somewhat (though not entirely) of a switch to isoflurane and sevoflurane.

Yeah, like you said, there are definitely many factors play in selecting an inhaled anesthetic agent. They are pretty much are limited to the halogenated agents desflurane, halothane, isoflurane/sevoflurane because of their substantially greater potency than that of nitrous oxide.

Increases in heart rate usually are not a problem with isoflurane because concentrations that produce tachycardia are much higher than what are customarily used in practice. Halothane and sevoflurane, on the other hand, can decrease sympathetic nervous activity.
 
negrogesic said:
Hello paradox...

Halothane is not used commonly on humans now because of the hepatotoxicity issues (worse than ether), and true halogenated ethers like iso/sevoflurane are far more common. Even in veterinary medicine, there has been somewhat (though not entirely) of a switch to isoflurane and sevoflurane.



"Mild" brain damage is a very tricky thing for one to notice. However, I am not saying you did in fact encounter brain damage, I am simply saying, that if you did, it could be quite hard to tell. However, slightly more severe brain damage is a bit more obvious (memory probably being an initial indicator)...

No, you won't get any brain damage from ether, unless you get unconsciousness and can't get any oxygen so you go coma. On coma you may get brain damage, and usually it isn't even irreversible. This can happen also with N2O...
Maybe you should study some medicine...
 
Maybe you should study some medicine...

newbs don't get to be pricks.

hows about some studies showing what you're talking about? I see some information about ether and neurotoxicity, but it is a bit old (though I doubt there are many new studies on it)
 
Ne0 said:
No, you won't get any brain damage from ether, unless you get unconsciousness and can't get any oxygen so you go coma. On coma you may get brain damage, and usually it isn't even irreversible. This can happen also with N2O...
Maybe you should study some medicine...

When did I say anything about brain damage from ether? If you read what I wrote, I simply mentioned the difficulty of assessing brain damage, in general. The only thing I mentioned was hepatotoxicity.

Me said:
"Mild" brain damage is a very tricky thing for one to notice. However, I am not saying you did in fact encounter brain damage, I am simply saying, that if you did, it could be quite hard to tell. However, slightly more severe brain damage is a bit more obvious (memory probably being an initial indicator)...

Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension.

And like ham-milton said, where are the articles? Keep in mind, you are the one who characterized alkyl nitrites as safe, so we may have trouble believing your claims. Still, I am not saying the ethers necessarily cause brain damage, but I am also not comfortable saying that they can not or do not...
 
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There was a period back in '07 where I used to huff this stuff daily.

No long term damage from what I can tell. Still, not good to mess with... very addictive if you are doing it the right way...
 
I really love ether, its a wonderful drug, but that you smell like a barrel full of gasoline for 2 days really stops me from doing it all the time (which is good I suppose ^^)

I read somewhere that liek 95% are breathed out again teh other 5% are metabolized into ethanol
 
Diethyl ether was abused in Poland just before the WW II. It was drunk. Also people drank anodyne. It was mainly in Upper Silesia but it was also spread in many areas of the country. The problem was so big that a special conference was held on this, then the scale of the problem was seen. And imagine not only some drunkards drank it but children did too. Even church got into the problem (I suppose a lot of things are just gossip so I won't write more on this). Like I wrote it was mostly in Upper Silesia and there are a lot of mines there. The problem arose in miners too. It was smuggled from Germany and Czechoslovakia (Upper Silesia was close to Poland-Germany border at that time). You know Polish government put diethyl ether beside such drugs like morphine and cocaine and smuggling/storing it resulted in prison? And like there are terms for morphine-like addiction, there was a term for this, they called it "etheromania".

It's not popular now. Now it's considered better than smelling a type of glue for shoes (it had real narcotic properties when there was trichloroethene but now it's only acetone, toluene and hexane, a total brainwasher, considered a drug of people from dregs of society but some stupid idiots smell it too). Well, it's just based on toxicity and that's all. Nobody drinks it now, if it's used, it's poured on some kerchief/scarf and smelled.

I remembered when they told me to leave the lab at the university. I got mad like hell and a bottle with diethyl ether stood and everyone could use it because it was needed for a task. I took a handkerchief, took a bottle and inhaled it saying "good-bye" to other students. =D Keep in mind it was used in anesthetics years ago. It's really dangerous when someone uses it and falls asleep and suddenly vapors are everywhere.
 
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Once I had a 4 L jug of ether in my room, i guess it was leaking because soon the whole house smelled like it. And I wondered why I was so tired all the time?? 8)
 
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