It’s been a minute, and in the past two years, both nursie poo and the castle have changed.

Let’s catch up.  

We were sorta of, kinda coming out of the more significant part of the pandemic. The pandemic screwed up life as we know it in ways, we are only now seeing two years later. The real long-term effects of the pandemic are physical and mental health-related. Here is one story.

March 17, 2020. The lockdown starts here in Utah. State employees that didn’t need to be in the office began working from home. My husband was one of them; he was an IT guy, so his job was fine to do remotely. A few weeks later, as they started bringing people back into the office, His boss decided he could stay as a remote-only worker. The decision to allow him to remain at home was the beginning of the end, so to speak.

My husband had a substance use problem. His drug of choice was nitrous oxide or whip-its. The use of whip-its was a chronic habit that took hold about 12 years ago at Burning Man. You buy boxes of the chargers, put them in a whipped cream dispenser, and inhale them. In case it became a costly habit. I am talking between 800 to 1500 dollars a week. It wrecked our joint bank account.

What are the side effects of Noz?

 The side effects of noz vary in severity. Also known as “hippie crack,” this drug causes short-term effects, such as:

• Difficulty breathing
• Temporary loss of motor control
• Decrease in blood pressure
• Changes in heart rate

When used directly from a tank or canister, noz has the potential to cause cold-related burns to the lips, throat, and skin because of the temperature of N2O. When used from a tank, the pressure can potentially damage the lungs.

From https://lagunatreatment.com/drug-abuse/nitrous-oxide/

Seems harmless, right? The effects that I observed were short-lived. Once he finished using whip-it after whip-it, he came down within an hour, although that was usually his cue to get more. It isn’t harmless again from Laguna Treatment.

Doing whip-its or abusing them in any other form can potentially cause long-term effects on a person’s health. It causes brain cells to die due to oxygen deprivation, known as hypoxia. The brain damage can be permanent.

 A person’s body requires vitamin B12 for normal brain and nervous system functions. It is vital in the formation of healthy red blood cells and DNA. Individuals who use noz regularly reduce their availability of B12. Nitrous oxide has an impact on the nerves in both the upper and lower extremities. It frequently results in numbers in the toes or fingers, which may or may not be permanent. Other nerve damage can occur, such as limb spasms.

Brain damage from noz use causes memory loss in some individuals. Although rare, psychological issues are possible, ranging from depression to psychosis. Other long-term effects of the drug include a ringing or buzzing sound in the ears, incontinence, or disruption to the reproductive system. Birth defects are possible when a woman uses nitrous oxide during pregnancy.

https://lagunatreatment.com/drug-abuse/nitrous-oxide/

Nitrous use was a constant theme in our home for 12 years, with a worse and worse habit. More and more costly, like I said above, up to 1,500 a week at times. His debt went sky-high, over $40,000 at the end.

While nitrous is not physically addictive, it is very psychologically addictive. To mitigate the psychological effect, we tried low-dose ketamine, hoping it would help lower or eliminate nitrous use. It worked as use decreased, although it is hard to say if it was the ketamine or the fact that he had run out of money. I started by trying to use harm reduction by supplementing him with Vitamin B12 in the hopes we could stave off the damage the nitrous was doing to his connective tissue. No matter how much we did, he was still walking with a cane in the end

I, of course, handled the addiction by doing everything a spouse shouldn’t. I was very much against it and was vocal at times. I organized friends to try and do interventions, which only resulted in him alienating or telling those friends to get out of his life. In the end, when he was short on cash, he would quickly get nitrous to be abusive. It was punishment, plain and simple. It brought out his narcissistic behavior with some histrionic side effects. It was going from bad to worse as he was also abusing ketamine on top of it and became very paranoid.

It Ended Poorly

On May 21, sometime after about 10 pm, he was intoxicated and chose to end his life with a 9mm pistol. I was at work doing what I do best. When I came home at 8 am, I walked into a quiet, dark house. I did as I always did in those situations and sat in the living room without looking in the bedroom. We had a rule if someone was sleeping, we left them alone. I didn’t hear his usual noise at work; he had told me before I left for work that he was probably calling out in the morning. So, I fumbled through mindless TikTok videos and then fired up the PlayStation. Then hit about 9 am, and I had two dogs in the living room, but where was Leonard, my third dog? Also, I would check to see if he decided not to work. I found Leonard. On the bed, I was looking at his lifeless body. The scene was gruesome. I immediately ran over to try “sternal nuggies,” as we call it, to determine if he was alert. That’s when I saw the gun and the pool of blood in his mouth. He was gone, and the massive process of picking up one’s life after the death of a spouse started.

In the next few days/weeks, I will take you through that process as an education in how oddly I handled it. I am doing better after multiple crises.

Be the kind of person your mom and your dog think you are/