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From Laughing gas – nitrous oxide – edited by Michael Shedlin and David Wallechinsky
The effects of nitrous oxide – T J Logan

I first inhaled laughing gas on the 16^th of August 1968, while visiting some friends in Berkeley. The couple at whose home I was staying extolled the virtues of the gas for hours in an attempt to overcome my reluctance to take anything chemical into my body. Finally I agreed to try it and my friends put me on a bed between stereo headphones and the sound of Cream playing "Spoonful".

Before trying the gas I had been thinking about the fact that every time I tried a new drug, the change of consciousness scared me at first and made me worry that I wouldn't come down. But I always came down.

For a few seconds after my first Iungful, I thought that the laughing gas wasn't going to effect me. Then I felt a tremendous rush, a tremendous change, and I quickly reached my self-doubt stage. I tried to make things negative, but I couldn't. By the time I realised this, the effects of the gas were already wearing off and I delighted in the revelation that my fears and bummers were self caused and didn't have to happen. I had already understood this intellectually, but feeling it, was an entirely different experience. I realised that the only reason I would be turned off by nitrous oxide and by extension, life, would be by clinging insecurely to my traditional conditioning.

Having gone through all this after the first inhalation, I was free to settle back and enjoy my second and third inhalations. I concentrated on the sound of Cream and found that it became sounds of Cream. Each instrument became clear to me (I had never experienced this before) and at one point I found myself in awe of the beauty of a single note.

Trying it without music, I found that my friends’ voices reverberated when they spoke to me and instead of worrying about this, I enjoyed it. The evening's experience exhilarated me well into the next day and despite the bad moods and tensions of other people who I encountered, all that I could express was happiness and tolerance. A big step had been made in clearing my mind of irrational worries.

I inhaled laughing gas thrice more the following month and each time felt that I had had the happiest experience of my life. I wanted to turn on everyone I knew and everyone I met, but my supply was limited and I was afraid that giving someone just one hit would frustrate them. I decided that if gas was actually harmless, I would like an every ready supply....................

.................As a rule I have found large gas parties to be less enjoyable and less satisfying than taking gas alone or in a small group, but that is the way I feel about large gatherings in general. However, I have had some remarkably positive experiences at gas celebrations of twelve to twenty-five people because communal consciousness can develop and everyone becomes equally your closest friend. The group functions as a single, living organism.

Rather than being aware of it being my turn to fill up balloons, I am aware of being an organ which naturally performs its function in keeping the organism alive. There have been times when I have found myself in a mass of bodies, holding or stroking another body or bodies and being held or stroked by others. I have had no idea which people belonged to which bodies and not only did I not mind this, but I was relieved by it because it banished ego worries and personal relationship conflicts.