For some young people, a popular method for getting a quick high is by misusing laughing gas – and lately, that’s in the form of nitrous oxide from products sold by the company Galaxy Gas.
Those products are the Atlanta-based company’s whipped cream chargers that are solely intended for culinary uses, including cold brew coffees, desserts, sauces and more. A whipped cream charger is a nitrous oxide-filled, stainless-steel cartridge that, upon dispensing, helps cream and other ingredients transform into a whipped state, according to the company. But without a food ingredient in the canister, dispensing the charger emits just the nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide misuse – or “doing whippets,” as older adults may call it – isn’t new, said Dr. Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University and associate attending psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
But the practice has been “rapidly …