What Are Inhalants?

Substance abuse comes in all forms, including some very surprising ones. Inhalants are a group of extremely toxic drugs that can make you high when you breathe them in. The best way to avoid the danger is to be aware of the consequences.

The first time the public ever heard of inhalant abuse was in the 1950s, when the news media reported that young people were seeking a cheap high by sniffing glue. The phrase “sniffing glue” is still sometimes used today to indicate the abuse of many different kinds of inhalants.

Types of Inhalants

Inhalants are often categorized in four different groups—solvents, aerosols, anesthetics, and nitrites. Solvents include paint thinner, gasoline, glue, and felt-tip marker fluid. Aerosols are sprays that contain propellants as well as solvents; this includes spray paint, deodorant, hair sprays, and cooking and fabric sprays. Anesthetics are gases used in medicine such as ether, chloroform, halothane, and nitrous oxide, commonly referred to as laughing gas. Nitrates, also known as “poppers,” include chemicals found in room deodorizers and chemicals used during heart exams.

Inhalants are often the first drugs that young people try. In fact, inhalants are unlike all other illegal drugs, in that they are more likely to be used by younger adolescents, in part because the products that contain the poisons that make you high are readily available and inexpensive. The percentage of young people using inhalants decreases as they get older, which “reflects [inhalants] coming to be seen as ‘kid’s drugs,’” according to the 2023 Monitoring the Future survey of secondary school students in the United States. The sharpest decline was among eighth graders, who had previously shown the highest rate of use.

The report also noted that abuse of nitrous oxide and other inhalants has declined greatly since the mid-1990s. In 1995 over 19 percent of eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students combined had used inhalants in their lifetime, but by 2021, that number had dropped to 8 percent. The 2021 National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH) made similar findings, noting that only 2.4 percent of young people aged twelve to seventeen had used inhalants in the past year, 1.5 percent of young adults aged eighteen to twenty-five had used them, while just 0.5 percent of adults over age 25 used inhalants in the past year.

Inhalant abusers come from all different social and ethnic backgrounds. They can be rich or poor. Inhalants are abused in major cities and in rural areas. In the past, most inhalant users were male, but recently more females have begun to abuse inhalants.

Inhalants are usually abused by children who want to experiment with their effects. This experimentation commonly decreases as people grow older. The NSDUH has reported that approximately 85 percent of inhalant users are less than twenty-five years old.

Even though so many children try inhalants, the abuse of inhalants is not innocent, and it’s certainly not safe. Inhalants are addictive drugs that can do serious damage to your brain and your body, and can even kill you.

Ways to Inhale

Common model glue is an example of an inhalant. A person can get high on glue in a few different ways. “Sniffing” is inhaling fumes through the nose, “huffing” is breathing fumes through the mouth, and “bagging” is breathing inhalants through the mouth and nose from a bag. Inhaling glue makes you feel giddy and uncoordinated, and makes you slur your speech. The poisons in the glue, in the form of solvents, change the way the brain works. The effect can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours and can produce a quick, powerful, and extremely dangerous high.

The high from inhalants is often described as second only to intravenous injection in its speed and effectiveness. However, because the high normally lasts only for several minutes, many young people sniff or huff on a continual basis, increasing damage to the brain and body.

Sniffing, snorting, huffing, or bagging may make you feel cool, outgoing, or happy, but only for a little while. Remember that every time you get high, you are harming your brain. The damage you do may be permanent, and although you may feel cool, you don’t look or act cool when you abuse drugs.