Nitrous Oxide
Nitrous Oxide (N2O or N=N=O) is a pretty important greenhouse gas that is also used in whipped cream. It's also known as laughing gas, and present in rocket fuel.
Interestingly, the process of making it from ammonium nitrate looks not too terribly hard.
Anyways, I got to breathe some of it at my dentist appointment today while getting some fillings. From my review, at the beginning it was sorta hard to breathe (Oxygen) and I tried to ignore the laughing gas and focus on my breath which was hard. Right before I got knocked out, I could smell the chemicalesqueness of the laughing gas. Just for a PSA: Don't take laughing gas because
- it's very dangerous
- it's not even that good bruh
- u r polluting the world even more by releasing it to the atmosphere
Anyways, it did smell slightly good and euphoric, but ultimately it's like vanilla extract; it smells tasty and yummy but if you smell it enough the smell almost hurts more than it smells good.
Part 2: what happened after
For a bit, I remember them drilling my tooth. It was painful, despite them already numbing part of my mouth. I somehow managed to embrace the pain and bask in it, and my whole body ended up feeling like static afterwards -- I could still move my arms/legs or whatever but all I could feel was like the painfulness everywhere.
What happened next can only be described as strange and partly irrational as I tried to apply rational logic to my situation.
Firstly, after they stopped drilling or whatever, my legs and arms (not my chest) still felt static-y but also like they were asleep. Given that I was tired and probably just woke up (this is in hindsight), I determined that I was probably asleep -- the dentists also kept on working like nothing was wrong so I concluded something was 'wrong' or off within my own body. I then moved my legs a bit, trying to wake them up and get them to move around, and I could move them, but nothing really changed. I ended up just raising my hand and after that tooth was finished, the dentist told me that this was all supposed to be normal and what I was experiencing was not me suffering from anything -- besides lots of nitrous oxide.
After that brief scare, the rest of the operation went well (evidenced by the fact that I am writing this), and although I was dizzy and I heard the drill and bla bla bla, overall I recovered (am recovering) pretty easily and life seems to be going alright.
Still magic that all of that happened in an hour. We'll see if I need Nitrous Oxide when I go get my wisdom teeth removed later.