Inhalants Kill
It may shock parents to realize that their children don’t have to raid the medicine chest or find a drug dealer to kill themselves as a result of substance abuse. The deadly substances are all around them.
There are six ways that inhalants can kill a person.
- They may die of suffocation after inhaling from a plastic bag.
- A person can have his breathing stop because solvent gases replaced all the oxygen in his lungs
- If a user vomits and is not conscious, he can choke on his own vomit.
- Depression often results when someone comes down from an inhalant high and this has led some people to commit suicide.
- Aggressive or careless behaviors after using inhalants have led some people to take risks that resulted in fatal injuries
- Some chemicals make the heart beat very fast and irregularly, resulting in cardiac arrest. This is called “Sudden Sniffing Death.”
More than half the deaths related to inhalant abuse result from Sudden Sniffing Death. This type of death is most often associated with butane, propane and aerosol can abuse. Abusing inhalants can result in death the first time a person tries it.
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