Ten-year-old Sam first heard about the drug his friends were taking from voice messages they sent him. Messages of feral laughter, wild and uproarious.
It sounded like a lot of fun to the impressionable youth, he wanted to join in. After finding out how easy it was to acquire the 'hippy crack', even during lockdown, Sam went out and bought a box of nitrous oxide canisters (£5), commonly used in making whipped cream.
Except Sam didn't make whipped cream. He didn't tell his parents what he was up to, nor his little sister. He snuck out the house, went down to his local park and swallowed 12 canisters in a confused attempt at chasing the high his friends had found.
"I heard their laughs in the back of my mind and I wanted to laugh too," said the boy from his hospital bed two days later. "I didn't know exactly how to do it, I just knew that you had to get it in you."
Instead of inhaling the nitrous oxide gas within each canister or filling a balloon with the gas and huffing on that, Sam dipped each one in ice-cream and swallowed the canisters as if they were giant pills.
He waited a full 15 minutes before messaging his best friend saying that he couldn't feel any effects. The reply from his 'mate' who did not realise that Sam was doing it all wrong, was a recommendation to take more until he was 'laughing like a mentalist' but by the end of that morning, no one was laughing.
A dog walker found Sam on a park bench, clutching his stomach in agony. She called an ambulance and his parents were alerted.
Whilst Sam's day didn't descend into savage laughter, it didn't end in death tears either. Surgeons were able to remove the canisters and help him recover from what could have been an explosive accident.
"He's a lucky boy," said Dr. Chaundrahanty. "The canisters could have leaked and this would have released an inordinate amount of N2O into the body. His whole digestion system would have swelled with gas eventually seeping into all the other cells, expanding with laughter. Everything laughing, burping laughs, farting laughs until there was too much and the skin would have torn from the expansion. Can you imagine parents watching their child laugh and swell up until he ruptures and dies all of a sudden? Horrible, but it can happen."
Standing in a sombre row on the steps of Brennidge Hospital yesterday, doctors and public health officials held a banner warning all parents: DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN BREATHE HIPPY CRACK
Hippy crack, noz, balloonies, LOLs, chargers, laugh clouds, birthday candles, birthday lungs, shelium, choofers, hufflepuff, lockdowners. If you hear your children using any of these terms they may be indulging in the drug, now only second to cannabis in daily use across the UK.
As the parents of Sam found out, the consequences of misuse and a lack of education can be near fatal.
Learn, talk and be prepared for some uncomfortable confrontations and even legal battles as one couple found that they could not legally obstruct their teenager's purchase of the gas canisters. The trial is expected to conclude later this year with far-reaching consequences for children and the compressed gas industry.
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