When Humphry Got High (Part 2)
Davy's giant nitrous oxide box took him to "a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas"
The following is an excerpt from p. 67-69 of Chapter 1, “Precious Crystals: What Salt Teaches Us About Drugs” from my book, Drugism (2022):
[Note: today’s excerpt picks up where “When Humphry Got High (Part 1)” left off.]
On one occasion, Humphry Davy sat in his nitrous oxide box for more than an hour and breathed dozens of quarts of the gas. Upon emerging from the box, he inhaled even more nitrous oxide. Describing his experience, Davy wrote, “my visible impressions were dazzling and apparently magnified. I heard distinctly every sound in the room and was perfectly aware of my situation.” This struck me—I recall personal experiences with DMT that felt very similar, as though my perception had been magnified and I was made utterly aware of everything around me. After the N2O magnified Davy’s perceptions, “trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through” his mind. He wrote that the experienced produced “perceptions perfectly novel,” thoughts and ideas entirely new to him. He continued, “I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorised; I imagined that I made discoveries.”[i]
In an effort to explain the experience to his colleague, Davy exclaimed “the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains!”[ii] Did these perceptions in any way inspire his later atomic discoveries? Did Davy’s early experiments with N2O grant him perceptual insight into molecular physics? Judging by his own descriptions of the experiences, I would not be surprised at all. Davy soon found that the “impressions” of which the “universe is composed” actually have very specific physical forms, which lead to his discovery of the atomic structures of sodium, chlorine, etc.
Davy also wondered whether some of N2O’s effects might be related to its oxygen content.[iii] This shows he was aware of molecular science during his early experiments. He was clearly thinking at the atomic level. In speculating how oxygen might affect our consciousness, Davy showed an acute understanding of the power of molecules. He clearly carried this understanding with him throughout his life and later discoveries.
Davy’s life serves as a wonderful reminder that one can be a habitual drug user and still make meaningful contributions to society, and to history. Davy maintained cravings for nitrous throughout his life, yet obviously this did not prevent him from achieving success. I actually argue on the contrary; I cannot help but suspect that some of Davy’s discoveries were influenced by his experiences with nitrous oxide.
How do we know that Davy craved nitrous oxide? He admitted as much in his book about the gas. He very frankly noted, “I ought to have observed that a desire to breathe the gas is always awakened in me by the sight of a person breathing, or even by that of an air-bag or air-holder.”[iv] Indeed, that the mere sight of someone breathing gave Davy the urge to use reveals the intensity of his relationship with the drug.
Some of Davy’s work with N2O also prefigures the work of later drug scholars such like Terence McKenna and Alexander and Ann Shulgin. In one passage of Davy’s book on nitrous oxide, he wrote that he particularly enjoyed “breathing it alone, in darkness and silence, occupied only by ideal existence.”[v] This is strikingly similar to McKenna’s advice on eating psilocybin mushrooms: he notoriously insisted on doing so alone, in silent darkness.[vi]
Davy’s practice of recruiting his friends for nitrous oxide experiments and recording the results in detail prefigures the work of Alexander and Ann Shulgin. They did much the same thing, but with their own chemical inventions rather than with nitrous oxide. The resulting experiences were documented in books coauthored together by the Shulgins.
Finally, we can appreciate Davy as early anti-drugist. In his descriptions of his N2O experiences, he was reluctant to attribute specific effects to the drug rather than his own mind state or environment (i.e., set and setting). He maintained an impressively open mind about the effects that nitrous oxide may or may not generate, and freely admitted that numerous factors impact our perception. Despite countless inhalations and the urge to write hundreds of pages about the gas, Davy still refused to “discriminate between its agency and that of other physical and moral causes,” insisting that its effects are rather variable and “extremely difficult” to describe.[vii]
Great post. Looking forward to the whole book.