GOTHENBURG Father was supporting under one arm, mother under the other, when Christine Svärd went to the emergency room. He couldn’t walk by himself.
A few months earlier, the 37-year-old busy consultant had started using nitrous oxide on weekends and at parties. Svärd liked the feeling, the quick moment when the sense of time and place disappeared. When you inhaled the gas, you felt calm, Svärd describes.
In June 2022, Svärd started having strange symptoms, which the doctor first diagnosed as stress. When the parents helped their daughter to the hospital, all the limbs had lost feeling. Soon the body was numb from the neck down, and Svärd was bedridden.
– I could barely eat and I didn’t know when I had a toilet emergency. I was afraid I would become brain dead, he says.
I was a successful business management consultant who had ended up in diapers.
Christine Svärd
The most frightening thing was the uncertainty. In the end, the doctors understood that the reason was the laughing gas Svärd used. It hindered the functioning of vitamin B12 in Svärd’s body, which had damaged the nerves.
The local memory did not work and Svärd was bedridden.
– I was a successful business management consultant who had ended up in diapers and catheterized. I had to be fed. No one knew if I would ever get back to normal, he says.
Selling to minors is completely legal
In the last four years, 11 people have died in Sweden from causes related to the misuse of nitrous oxide, says Swedish Radio in its extensive documentary.
The real number may be even higher, as the intoxicating use of nitrous oxide can lead to death in an accident or a cardiac arrest that is not registered as caused by it.
We’ve never seen anything like this.
Johanna Nordmark Grass, chief physician of the Swedish Poison Information Center
The use and sale of nitrous oxide is legal in Sweden. There are no age limits.
The official way of use in households is to froth the cream with a cream siphon. In health care, gas is used to relieve pain, for example in childbirth.
When used correctly, gas is not dangerous, but the risk lies in long-term and abundant use. In recreational use, however, the risk of getting hooked already exists the first time.
The number of requests for help multiplied
During the last couple of years, the use of nitrous oxide as an intoxicant has grown explosively, says the chief physician of the Swedish Poison Information Center Johanna Nordmark Grass.
– We have never seen anything like this, he says.
The number of calls to the Swedish Poison Information Center shows how quickly the use of the substance has increased.
According to Nordmark Grass, a large part of the calls concern users in their twenties and thirties, but there are also many minors among them.
There have been fifteen hundred cases in the hospital this year. Most of the cases have involved people who have used nitrous oxide a lot or for a longer period of time and suffer from severe, prolonged symptoms.
Most often it is nerve damage. There is numbness in the hands, clumsiness, difficulty walking and the inability to feel the need to urinate, Nordmark Grass lists. Exactly such symptoms that Christine Svärd suffered from.
In Finland, Sweden’s example is worrying
In Finland, the chief physician of the Poison Information Center Tuomas Lilius has followed the situation in Sweden with concern.
There was a lot of talk about the intoxicant use of nitrous oxide in Finland in the early 2010s, when the authorities warned about the sudden dangers of using nitrous oxide and intervened in marketing. After that, the situation calmed down a bit, Lilius says in a video call.
When cases of nerve damage started to become more common in Sweden a couple of years ago, Lilius wanted to find out if a similar phenomenon can be seen in the special care of the capital region.
The answer was that in recent years, about ten patients with nerve damage related to nitrous oxide have been treated at HUS. According to Lilius, hardly any cases have been registered in the rest of the country.
– The situation here is not the same as in Sweden, but it is worrying and downright tragic that a young person loses the ability to walk because of such a substance, he says.
Lilius points out that sales of ilogas are much more aggressive in Sweden than in Finland. The use and possession of gas is also legal in Finland, but selling it for intoxicants is punishable.
In ‘s test in January, it was still easy to order joy gas.
Exhilarating gas quickly delivered home
In Sweden, ilogas is prominently marketed online. Gas is sold in large bottles of around 600 grams, which can be ordered in multipacks. Cream siphons use small eight-gram cartridges.
For intoxicating purposes, laughing gas is usually used through balloons. The effect evaporates quickly and you get many balls from a large package.
Buying and selling Ilogas is completely legal, but we wanted to find out how easy it is to order Ilogas.
There are several online stores and we chose one that promised delivery in less than an hour. Express delivery was available from three in the afternoon, until three in the morning on weekends.
We pretended to be buyers and filmed the moment of purchase. This is how the test went:
The Swedish government is currently preparing a law amendment that would set an age limit for the purchase of recreational gas and ban giant packages. Individuals could be sold no more than two gas cartridges, which could contain no more than nine grams of gas. Sale for the purpose of intoxication would be prohibited.
According to Christine Svärd, the change is progressing too slowly. Before the law enters into force, too many people will suffer, he says.
– I feel sick when I see how openly ilogas is marketed online. Every morning on my walk I come across empty nitrous oxide bottles, he says.
“I decided not to give up”
Svärd, who just turned 40, is still not completely healthy. He gets tired more easily than before and the sense of touch in his limbs has decreased. He works, but not with the same efficiency as before. He must eat vitamin B12 daily.
The rehabilitation took months and required guts. When doing the first exercises, the hands did not obey the brain. Finally, he got out of bed and into a wheelchair and learned to walk first with the help of a support, then finally on his own.
– I decided not to give up, he says.
How can you, a grown man, do something so stupid.
Feedback received by Christine Svärd
The mind also needed treatment. I caused this to myself, Svärd says he thought. It was an arresting situation.
Svärd has spoken publicly on the subject and told his story openly in the Swedish media. Some of the feedback has been unpleasant. People have asked how a grown man could do something so stupid.
– I don’t get anything from this. I put myself in a really vulnerable position, but if I can prevent even one young person from having to experience something similar, it’s all worth it, says Svärd.