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Inhalants misuse - who and why?

Compared with what we know about other drug use and drug users, research on numbers of people using inhalants, and their patterns of use (what products, when, where, with whom?)  is poor. From statistical and anecdotal records, young people aged from 12-16 years old appear to be the largest population of users; however it is suggested that this age group is expanding to include both younger and older users. 
  
Geographically, while inhalants abuse is more prevalent in some areas of Australia than others, it is not restricted to any particular region and occurs in urban, regional and remote settings.

Some of the reasons users choose and use inhalants include a wide range of factors including:

• Ease of access - price, availability, not illegal, easily stolen
• Experimentation
• Peer group pressure
• Enjoyment
• Escapism from a wide range of complex issues:
  • Family and personal dysfunction.
  • Low socioeconomic status – poor housing & education.
  • Physical / sexual abuse.
  • Depression.
  • Lack of employment.
  • Boredom / lack of activities.
  • Hunger.

Inhalants abuse affects not only the user but also their families and the wider community.  Health issues, vandalism, theft and violence are some of the flow on effects from inhalants abuse.  As a result, chronic inhalants users are often in trouble with the law.  

Inhalant users are generally categorised into 3 groups

•    Experimental users - try and don't like.
•    Occasional users - social, recreational use.
•    Chronic users - long term use.

Source:

d'Abbs P. & MacLean S. (2008), Volatile substance misuse: a review of interventions, Monograph Series(National Drug Strategy (Australia)), No. 65, Canberra: Australian Government, Dept. of Health and Ageing.

National Inhalant Abuse Taskforce (2006), National directions on inhalant abuse, final report. Melbourne: Victorian Government Department of Human Services  [website]

Victoria. Parliament. Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee (2002), Inquiry into the inhalation of volatile substances: final report. Melbourne: Govt. Printer for the State of Victoria  [website]

User Stories

Chrome World, Chrome Magic

By Sarah MacLean
Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre

My PhD study (with the same title as this article) investigated how people talk about the experience of chroming (paint sniffing) in Melbourne. I conducted 37 interviews involving 28 young people aged 13–24 years who had experience of inhalant use and were engaged with treatment or welfare agencies, and an additional 10 interviews youth and drug workers. Some of the young people’s discussions of chroming are included as quotes below.

Most people know very little about chroming and find it hard to understand why people would use these substances as drugs other than out of sheer desperation. Many of the young people I spoke with talked of chroming as an effective means of escaping intolerable life circumstances such as homelessness. As one young woman put it:  

“It’s like you’re not even there. Like you don’t exist. It’s unbelievable ... I mean literally, [you’ve got] no mind, no body, you’re gone. You’re not there.”

Yet young people involved in the research also spoke of actively managing how intensively they inhaled paint fumes to experience their lives in new and (at least temporarily) exciting ways. Most spoke of repeatedly enjoying an intense physical rush. Some reported inhaling less intensively to enjoy vivid hallucinations, with many referring to hallucinatory states as ‘chrome world’. In this world they found themselves imbued with ‘chrome magic’: the effect of spray paint intoxication to make anything they imagined feel real – like being in a movie or on TV. One young man explained that he could imagine being a part of his favourite television programs while intoxicated with paint:

“You close your eyes and then you just say something out. And then you’re in the TV. You’re really in TV.”

Many chromers played hallucinatory games with friends, inspired by characters, images and storylines drawn from popular culture. Some felt their bodies become as strong as those of superheroes. Others loved traveling across Melbourne on trains while intoxicated on spray paint:

“The good thing about the trains was, you know graffiti and that? When we were buzzing off our heads we’d see the colours just stream past. It was sort of, just the colours, just seeing the colours just go past. And like when you’re straight you won’t be able to see it. But when you’re like full buzzing it’s like a little stream of light just going ‘pshhhttt’, ‘pshhhttt’, ‘pshhhttt’.”

Like other forms of prolonged and intensive drug use, over time young people who chromed found that they no longer enjoyed the experience as much, but rather continued out of habit or a desire to become intoxicated. At this point chroming generally became less of a fun group activity and much more isolating and stigmatising: ‘it [chrome] makes young people want to do it with their friends. But soon their friends will leave them and they’ll just be doing it on their own’.

Indeed young people who had chromed for some years spoke of a debilitating sense of shame related to chroming and even of abuse and derision from other drug users. They spoke of embarrassment at the smell and sight of being covered with paint and remorse about being violent to others while intoxicated. Some felt they had ruined their future lives through damaging their brains and bodies.  ‘It’s disgusting, I’m disgusted by it and I wish I never done it’, lamented one young man.

Inhalant users frequently told me that chroming is reasonably acceptable for young people in protective care until they reach their late-teens. Those who continued past this time became increasingly despairing about themselves and their capacity to alter drug use. Surprisingly a number of ex-chromers observed that witnessing someone else chrome made them so angry they would assault that person. For instance, as a young woman told me:

“I’ve been violent. Very violent. When I see a chromer I turn off. I see red actually. It’s like I want to attack. I remember hitting. I bashed my sister because she come to my house chromed off her head. I couldn’t help it.”

For a young woman who had chromed for many years, being abused or berated for chroming intensified her sense of failure and isolation and made it even harder to stop:

“It makes you feel really low. And you feel like you’re not worth shit because people do that. Unless you’re really comfortable it quite often makes you chrome more because you can’t, you can’t hack what people have said. And it makes you want to hide ... Like when [a friend] said some horrible things a couple of years back, I was just, it really made me feel like I was a dickhead when I’m not. I felt sick, I was crying. I chromed a hell of a lot more after that.”

Some ex-users in my study spoke of how gaining a sense of social inclusion helped them reduce their drug use. Three participants told me they stopped chroming immediately when grandparents or a sibling) let them move into a family home and took an interest in their welfare. Others without family support valued ongoing contact with workers very highly. One young man told me that when workers made repeated efforts to contact young people, ‘they feel like they’re needed or they’re good enough to stop’.  Moving onto other drug use was another factor in ceasing regular inhalant use for participants in my study.

Responding to inhalant use is difficult and controversial. It is a very complex task, but drug workers and policy makers need to take care to acknowledge the various pleasures of inhalant use and to offer a mix of interventions. Responses should offer attractive alternative activities and assist people to develop a sense of inclusion as well as altering the life circumstances (homelessness, poverty loneliness or abuse) that appear to make chroming attractive for some people.

Sarah MacLean
Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre
sarah.maclean@turningpoint.org.au

This research was supported by VicHealth and by the Alcohol, Education and Rehabilitation Foundation.

Download Chrome world, chrome magic here.  [pdf - 26 kB]

Find other user stories at Somazone.  [website]

Special Interest Groups

Pregnancy
Inhalants contain many toxic substances which are harmful to both you and your baby. It is believed that nearly all inhalants cross the placenta and enter the baby's blood stream. For this reason, it is important you cease using inhalants during pregnancy.  Some of the known effects on the baby are early delivery, breathing problems and an increased risk of infection. It is also suggested that the unborn baby can experience periods of reduced oxygen, which can effect brain development. This has the potential to impact on a child's life long learning ability.

source:  The Royal Women’s Hospital. Inhalants  [website]

Culturally And Linguistically Diverse
The Australian Greek Welfare Society have produced a range of pamphlets about drug use.
Their inhalants pamphlet can be found here.  [pdf - 171 kB]

Youth mental heath
headspace, the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, have produced a range of pamphlets about drug use.
Their inhalants pamphlet can be found here.  [pdf - 66 kB]

 { page updated: 3 December 2009}