Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Poppers

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

*WARNING There are adult themes and explicit descriptions of drug use in this episode. All drugs come with their own risks and legal implications. For more information please see the links below*Angina treatments, room aromas and leather cleaners: amyl nitrite has had a wide range of reported uses over the years.But in reality the substance, better known as poppers, is usually used as something entirely different: a recreational drug.But when did people start using them, why are they called poppers and how did they come to be so intrinsic to gay culture?Kate is joined by Adam Zmith, author of ‘Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queers Futures’ to discuss the history of poppers, from its discovery and use as medicine in the Victorian age, through its height of popularity in the clubs of the 1970s and the moral panic surrounding it in the 1980s, to today.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.This episode includes music by Epidemic Sound.https://www.talktofrank.com/drug/poppers#how-it-looks-tastes-and-smellshttps://www.release.org.uk/drugs/alkyl-nitrites-poppers/law#:~:text=The%20Medicines%20Control%20Agency%20say,attempt%20to%20circumvents%20the%20law Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Warning, warning, warning, if you've come to this podcast thinking it's a spirited debate about interior design and bedding in particular, you are wrong. Betwixt the sheets is a discussion of sex, history, scandal, all kinds of smutty-notiness.

And today we're throwing drugs into the mix as well. It's a fascinating history and one that I hope that you're going to enjoy listening to, but we do need to say that drugs always have risks and if you need more information about them, we have got links down below. Stay safe. What are poppers? No, no, not the poppy buttons on your clothes

or those loud paper cannons that someone always sets off our kid's birthday party. I'm talking about the drug poppers. So what are they? When do people first start to take them and how did they become so connected with gay communities? Join me, Kate Lister, betwixt the sheets to find out.

What do you look for on a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the money. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, with me, Kate Lister.

Thumping music, naked bodies, flashing lights, and poppers? Well, they're an integral part to queer space. and have been since the 60s and 70s. For this episode, I had the absolute treat of speaking to Adam Smith, author of Deep Sniff, The History of Poppers, about the birth of the popper, and it's meandering history and intersection with identities and culture. Take a deep breath, kids, we're going in. So, hello, Adam Smith.

Thank you so much for joining me betwixt the sheets. I'm just thrilled that you're here. Thanks, Kay. It's very warm and cozy in here. Thanks for having me. me. It is. It is. Well, that's because my understanding is that we're both northern, so we know how to keep each other warm of the long winter night. And it's June, but it's still cold up north. Exactly. And appropriately enough, now that we're snuggled down, our topic of conversation today is

poppers. Yes, let's talk about poppers. I'm ready. Let's talk about poppers. Yeah. What do you want to know? Well, it's like one of the things as a historian and maybe you're the same is that like you sort of forget everything has a history. Like it's infinite. Of course everything has a history. And when I saw your book, Deep Sniff, the History of Poppers and Queer Futures, I was like, someone's written a book about pop. Of course someone's written a book about poppers. Yeah. Yeah. Of course they'd have. And why's that never been done before? It was one of those things where I was like, what is this thing? Yeah. And where does it come from? And I realized that when you ask people that people didn't really know and they just find the subject funny. Like you can literally just say the word poppers and people start laughing at you. And partly that's because they remember being 15 years old and sniffing them under the pier or whatever. That's me. That was my first encounter. Someone saying sniff this and then someone going, now you're gay. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I know. That's what turned me. That's my story

That's it That is a medical scientific fact that one But it's of course So they are You're right They're like a fantastic punchline For reasons

They are very much associated With gay subculture and gay sex Although I did see an episode of Colombo On Sunday Where somebody gets away with murder Because they fake a heart attack That's right Yeah

Poppers Or Amol Nitrite Turns up in quite a lot of detective fiction actually because it's a good poison. In that Columbus episode, it's like a decoy. Yeah, the person that fakes in a heart attack. So they can get into the hospital bed on a boat. That's exactly it.

It's a cruise ship, right? Yeah, it's a cruise ship, but it's their alibi. But often they turn up in detective fiction as a poison as well, because you can kill someone if you want to. But it's also an antidote to cyanide. So if someone, that's another plot device. That's, I didn't know. Well, we're getting too far ahead.

So many questions. We need to take this down a notch. What are poppers? Poppers, there's the name now that we use for this substance, this liquid, that is probably one of several substances now. And the first ever substance was called amyl nitrite. It was synthesized in the 19th century by French chemist. As early as that?

Yeah, 1844. He was just, like, combining different chemicals, the sort of stereotypical idea of like a mad scientist in a garret. He did live in a garret, and he was a pharmacist as well. And so he was just creating different substances and seeing what happens. And he created this one Amyl Nitrite and it made him blush. But he thought, well, what's the point in that? It's not really doing anything.

It's just making me blush. He didn't really write any more effects than that. And then other scientists started to use it as well to experiment with. They like put rabbits in boxes and pumped the air with the vapour of Amel Nitrite and stuff like that. Being a scientist in the 19th century is wild. It's quite an adventure. So a lot of them wrote papers about their experiments with this substance and they noticed the various effects that it does,

which is where a person sniffs it or an animal sniffs it, then the vapour that is not drinking the liquid. Then it relaxes the muscles. It lowers the blood pressure by opening the blood vessels, which means that the blood is moving faster and you get a rush to your head because you have more oxygen because your blood is moving. And yeah, your muscles are relaxed.

And a doctor who was seeing patients with angina in Edinburgh, a doctor called Thomas Louda Brunton found that his patients with angina, they was suffering when their blood wasn't getting to their heart enough because their veins, their arteries were constricted around the heart. So he had read these papers that there was the substance which, when sniffed, can actually dilate the blood vessels. And so in 1867, he gave it to one of his patients to sniff and it relieved his pain. So that's how it became Amyl nitrite became a medicine. And it was a medicine for many, many years prescribed for that reason. And it was prescribed in a way, which they used to prescribe it because it's the vapour that

you want, but it has to be carried in a liquid. They used to prescribe it in a little glass ampule, which you would crush between your hands, and that would make a pop sound. And so that's how we get the name poppers. And that's where poppers comes from. That's where the name poppers comes from. Because then kind of in the middle to late 20th century, when basically the gays had taken it over and it was no longer a medicine, they were still buying it as if it was a medicine from

pharmacies, like in the 60s and 70s, there was like these young healthy men who were going into pharmacies saying, I've got angina. And the pharmacists were sometimes selling it and sometimes not. And so, yeah, so that's how it became Poppers. And then it became a product in its own right. And so is it still used medically today? Are there still young men turn up at pharmacists going, I've got these terrible chestace. Well, actually, do you know what? They did. They have been doing that in Australia in recent years because Poppers is banned in Australia as a recreational thing. And so there have been some men, I only know of the men. I don't know if there's other genders as well who've been doing this, but like people going to their doctors and saying to a sympathetic doctor, look, I know you can

prescribe me this. I really like to have sex in my bum and it's really hard for me to do it. And so I know that there's this thing that can relax my muscles so it can give me pleasure in my bum if I have sex there. So can you prescribe this thing for me? I'm not trying to convince you that I've got angina. I'm trying to say that. Actually, it's part of my health and well-being that I have sex in my bum. And so some doctors have actually prescribed, I've heard, on that basis in Australia where it's banned. But generally it's not really a medicine anymore. Sometimes hospitals stock amyl nitrite. Okay. Okay. But you said it's an antidote to cyanide as well. That's why some hospitals do stock it. They stock it in their poisons cabinet because you need

to know when someone comes in and they've been poisoned, then you need to know what you have on hand immediately to reverse the effect. And so sometimes people get cyanide poisoning because of an industrial accident. It's not usually because, you know, like your, like, father-in-law is trying to poison the great auntie so that he can take all of her money in her pearls or whatever. Although, you know, that's the sort of Agatha Christie thing. Yeah, cyanide poisoning can happen in an industrial accident. Okay, okay. And so it's good to have poppers on hand. So, right, okay, so I can see this. Yeah. And there are lots of descriptions of the 19th century of pharmacists literally just sitting around making shit up and then trying it. Yeah. I think that's how

Ether was discovered as well. Yeah. But at what point do we go from, well, that helps with heart troubles to, it's also really good for anal sex. Yeah. Do you know what, Kate, we don't know. I think there are rumours that some medical students in Boston in the US, like at the Harvard Medical School, were starting to experiment with this in the 1930s.

There are rumours about that. Okay. But I haven't been able to find that particular moment. For sure, like in the 50s, when you had like a growing concentration of gay people around places like New York, London, San Francisco, and a better, the starts of better communication, you know, newsletters, meetup groups and things like that. When you have the concentration there, people would be talking more. That's when it definitely started to, like, grow in the gay subculture just because of word of mouth and because people were able to make contact. But the first time a person sniff poppers, we just don't know. And I think that's wonderful, because it probably happened in lots of places around about the same time in lots of different ways.

It probably did, didn't it? And it's like these little moments in sex history that we just don't know. So if anyone has an interest in sexual adventure, write it down and send it off to the British Museum for posterity. Yeah, exactly. Because people need to know. And do you know what, like, for future generations? I mean, it is really, it's all people like you and I doing the work that we do. Like, we are always really interested in these questions and, like, we want to kind of like no answers. but I also think like the subject matter of what we're talking about is infinitely unknowable anyway.

True. Like, and so I think that there's, it's okay that there's a mystery about certain things like that. Also, if someone wants to give me a 10,000 pound grant to go and do that research, then I'm all ears. My DMs are open. I would fund that if I had that kind of money, definitely. But one of the things I'd like to know is it's not really necessarily about this kind of idea that it relaxes muscles so much as it's almost like a cultural thing. Yeah, I think so. And I think that that's one thing that has kind of surprised me after publishing the book last September in some of the conversations that I've had like this one, but other been doing book events and just seemingly like some of my friends, we've had more conversations about this. And what's been interesting is how like a part of the culture and community, how strong a part and how significant a part of the gay and queer culture and community people seem to think of poppers. And it's really to the extent that, every so often there's an article, like there was an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks

ago about party girls and models doing poppers and how that they had just like discovered poppers and like it was this cool hip thing that all the people backstage were doing at the New York fashion show. And people were texting me about it and going like, oh my God, poppers are over like the straights have got them or the like the cool kids or the young people have got them. And it's interesting how like people feel like a real sense of ownership of poppers within the gay subculture specifically. And I get that. It's like anything, you know, it's like drag or something. People say, like, oh, no, I don't watch RuPaul's Drag Race anymore because the straits have taken over what was drag, which was like a gay art form. It's this gentrification argument, which I do have a lot of time for it. I don't believe in the solidity of a culture or a cultural identity. Like, it is fluid. They always are. But I do believe in, like, the power of certain things, behaviors and objects and practices and all that stuff within a community. And Poppers is probably one of those. Does that mean I want to restrict other people from doing it and having pleasure? no way. But it's interesting. And I think that's also partly because of the history, because it was in the

1970s when the, in the US, in the UK, when this idealised male, gay body and culture kind of came about. And it was at that moment that Poppers was created as a sort of manufactured, commodified product, which was targeted at that group of people. So I think that's one of the reasons why there's such a strong connection there. That's really interesting. It's sort of in the 70s, where it starts to be commercialised and targeted specifically? Yeah. Or was it targeted specifically the gay community? Because whenever anything is sold for sexual enhancement,

there's a lot of smoke and mirrors that the advertisers have to do to get around it. So how was it marketed? You've seen the pictures. I've seen the pictures. I'm looking at a picture right now. I am looking at a poster from one that was called Bolt. Is Bolt still going? Yeah, I think it is.

It's one of the oldest ones. And they've always got like, well, not anymore, but they always used to have. And many of them still do, like, have these hyper-masculine names, like, Bolt. Yes. You know, iron horse, fist. That's another one. And this is, I'm looking at a bunch of very hyper-masculine men here on this poster. I've got one guy who looks like he's trying to fill up a car with petrol, but there's no car.

Oh, no, there's a guy in a motorcycle. Right, okay, I'm with you. So that's nice and suggestive. And it looks like there's a mechanic in the background. And they are ripped to fuck. They, their shirts seem to be falling off. They are super mussely and the tagline is the product specially manufactured for heavy duty. Oh yeah.

Oof. Yeah. Poor. Yeah. It's definitely clear that the three people depicted in this advert want to be identified as men, isn't it? Manly men. They're so macho.

There are 18 abs between them. Six dinner plate pecks and all of these body parts are completely busting out of their t-shirts, their shirts, their braces, and they've also got these big, very heavily defined bulges. I mean, you can, you know, you can see who's cut and who's not. I'll be back with Adam in a bit. Hi, it's Kate. I'm just barging in here for 30 seconds to tell you about a new podcast, which I think you might enjoy. When two Financial Times reporters started digging into the porn industry,

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And it's a kind of classic story of like American entrepreneurialism. What happened by the middle of the 70s was two things. On the one hand was the American and British drug regulatory authorities looking at what was going on in pharmacies and that some pharmacies were selling a lot of this medicine to people that looked like they didn't really need it. So they... These guys don't look like they've got heart problems. They don't know like they've got heart problems.

So the health regulators started to require prescriptions in the early 70s for this. And so at the same time as that, there was this increasing concentration of like gay subculture and things like places like the Castro in San Francisco where it was like manifestly evident. There was a big market for gay people, a big market for gay products. You would have like magazines that catered to 100 different subsections of gay culture, like the leather ones and the rope ones. and all of that stuff. And then you had the products that came with that,

like leather products, for example. So a couple of entrepreneurs noticed this, and they noticed that they could manufacture poppers, and they could put them in these little bottles and sell them undernames like Bolt, with images like those supposedly, like extremely desirable hyper-masculine images, which is just the classic sex-cells, like, strategy

of, like, if we sell the product in this way, you know, if we use this image of this gorgeous, sexy, hunky man, then the people will buy it because they either think that they'll become like him or they'll feel like buying this product means that they get to possess him a little bit. Or if they do buy this product, it means that somebody like this person in this image will want to fuck them. You know, you can't go wrong. Like everyone wants at least one of those three things.

I guess that's the idea. Yes. I mean, I wouldn't mind going on a date with one of these three chaps here. They're in very good shape. They're clearly employed. They're earning an income. They are at the petrol pump. Yeah.

They're at the petrol pump. And were Popper's being sold as room deodorises at this point? Because it says here, liquid incense, and I know they're still sold as deodorit. Is that what they were trying to pretend that they were being sold for? That's right, because there has been a sort of pact in place in the US and the UK between the manufacturers and sellers and users and the government, basically since this moment when Poppers became a product. And the pact is basically like this. Like the state thinks that we don't really like this product, but we also know that it doesn't really have any like long-term harm that we know of and it doesn't cause any kind of like social problems in a way that like other drugs can do and other medical. But we can't really say like, oh yeah,

go nuts and that this is like a fully acceptable product in a way that like, I don't know, soda pop is. Although that's obviously it's got its own like issues about like health and stuff. But so sell it, but don't sell it for human consumption. Sell it as something else. Sell it as whatever you want. Liquid incense, room odouriser, leather cleaner. In the 80s, it was VHS cleaner, VHS head cleaner, all these things. So that's why Poppers are like, that's part of their iconography, actually, is the mislabeling of them.

And the way that the state and the manufacturers collude in the mislabeling. And the others users, we really enjoy it too. Because we're like, you know, oh, do you have your leather cleaner? Ha, ha, ha, ha. La, la. lot. So I think it's kind of like a fun thing. I also think that that's like a super queer thing, that it's like, it's everywhere and ubiquitous and you can literally walk into a shop and buy it here and loads of people use it. But like it's sort of under the radar a little bit historically

and still today. Like there's an interesting question there somewhere about like labeling and identity and the performance actually, the performance of something else. You know, like, oh, hello, I'm just a little room motorizer. Are you really like, I don't know, there's something queer about. that. All the Fabrese people just stood in the background going, guys, we're like, we're right here. Yeah, exactly. And what I love about the fact, if it's a room deodorizer, is it makes the adverts kind of even funnier. Yeah, that's true. Like these huge big macho ripped guys. The product is manufactured for heavy duty, air freshener. And they're also, they're dripping in petrol, these three guys. Does it work as a room deodorizer? Is there any reason? No. Has anyone ever tested that? Has anyone in the history of poppers bought a box?

and thought, God, the room just doesn't smell a different. Oh, yeah, I know someone called Barry that does that. Oh. My friend sent me a picture from his apartment saying like, Barry's actually using this as room motorizer, and the bottle was on the shelf, like, open. And he confronted Barry about this. And Barry said, yeah, my mom's coming to visit.

Oh, Barry, that's amazing. I love that. Oh, right. Yeah, someone needs to get a Maglade plugin. So we've got this kind of, like, it's emerging in the 70s as this sort of like, wink wink nudge, nudge, but quite central to sort of an emerging gay iconography, I suppose, the images. Can we talk a little bit about when the AIDS pandemic sort of hit in the 80s?

Yeah, so like really quickly people started to, when they noticed that this was an epidemic that was hitting men who had sex with men, they very quickly were trying to figure out, okay, well, what exactly is causing it? And so some scientists did research into like the lifestyles and behaviours of the men of the type that were getting sick. And they found that, yes, a lot of them were fucking a lot, and also a lot of them were sniff poppers. And obviously, if you sniff poppers a lot, then you're more likely to be fucking a lot.

And if you're fucking a lot, then you're more likely to get an STI, like HIV, which now we know it was HIV that was causing these age-related conditions. And so there was a paper published really early on, like 83 or something like that, that said, like, a lot of the people that are sick sniffed poppers, could poppers be a thing that's causing this? And on the one hand, that was like, that's decent science. You know, it's kind of like, you know, you're doing some research,

you're finding some evidence and you're, you know, you're posing the question. But obviously, that is a sort of early signal of what ended up happening with AIDS and HIV in general, which was like huge moral panic, for good reason, because this was like an awful thing that was happening. People making huge correlations and also the introduction of morality into what was basically a sexually transmitted disease epidemic. And so, and pandemic, really. So what happened was a bunch of people jumped on that finding of Poppers being a possible link and said, oh my God, poppers are bad and people sniffing poppers are bad and people having sex are bad. And so because there was so much fear about how awful this thing was,

even after the identification of the virus, HIV and the way that it's transmitted, you know, through bodily fluids, etc., that Poppers was still fingered, as it were, by some people who were trying to say, like, this is the thing. that's causing it. That sort of mini movement kind of also coincided with the AIDS denialist movement as a whole. It was a movement that said that people say like AIDS isn't even a real thing. And that carried on through the 90s and probably still today. It's the conspiracy theory thing. So into this sort of moral panic arena, speaking specifically about the UK, you also had Thatcher's government being pretty sex negative. And when it did start to talk about HIV and AIDS, it did do in a very moralistic way because at the same time there was this fear that like young people were being

converted into gays and that that famous children's book jenny lives with eric and martin which depicted a little girl spending the weekend with her dad and his boyfriend in photos that became like a huge moral panic about like basically the left is converting young people into being gays and then they're also going to get AIDS and die and so you had this fever pitch in the 80s and you know there was anti-gay legislation passed in 1988 by Thatcher's government. And at the same time, there were police were raiding bars in London and seizing poppers that were on sale behind the bar. And so that was just part of this huge wave of hysteria and morality that happened in the

80s that I think a lot of people probably still don't really know about, especially the placement of poppers within that. I think that we're in a sort of a process at the moment of starting to recover some of their history of the early pandemic. I think that when something that traumatic happens, it takes a while for people to go back to it. Need to be very careful drawing direct comparisons. But I was watching an interview with somebody who researched the Holocaust and they survived it. And they said that in the immediate aftermath, no one wanted to talk about it.

There was just this kind of idea of like, we just right, we need to sort of get on with it. And I sort of feel that now, obviously there's people been doing amazing work for a long time. But I think that sort of the idea of we're going to go back and look at what really happened in the detail that's. you're doing. We've needed a space to do that, I think. Yeah. And I think that that channel four drama last year, It's a Sin by Russell T. Davis was really good at, that was amazing. At sort of like opening up that huge wide conversation because it was such a mainstream show. A lot of gay people are like, oh, well, this is not a new story. But it's just the fact that yeah, but like 50 million people have actually watched it this time. And I think that that was a

real shift actually, culturally, nationally, in how we all know. think about HIV and AIDS and that part of the epidemic. And it was not complete. There were stories left untold and all of those things. But I think that that was part of the sort of, finally, it's like getting the mainstream attention. Yeah. Like, you know, the people have pioneered this history and people have lived through this history. But I think making people in the mainstream, because that's the history of HIV really, is because I'm not wanting to talk about it for a long time, just not. And even when Thatcher's government realized they had to do something, they didn't really talk to the gay community, did they? So do you think Poppers was stigmatized because of this?

I do think that there's definitely a stigma, has been a stigma attached to Poppers because it's a sex thing and it's a gay thing. And if you look at press cuttings from the 80s, you can, including things like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph and other papers as well, you can look at like how they moralise and stigmatize what is like an innocent pleasure, really. And I think that there's a part of that is, number one, like I think that generally people like do you like to stigmatize innocent pleasures full stop. But then number two, I think, especially if it's like to do with sex and even more so if it's to do with something queer. And if anything to do with sex that's sex for fun, that can't be directed towards sex for

babies is the danger of being stigmatized. Yeah, exactly. Isn't it? Like condoms have been heavily stigmatized and paupers and gay sex and all of those things. So what do you think is the future for paupers then? I think it's going to be really interesting to see, you know, because there has been quite a lot of interest in the past six to 12 months that has been, I've just seen it, I don't know, I'm not the person to ask in a way because I'm like, sort of like looking out for it. But I think that there has been more and more interest in it. There have been quite a lot of like podcasts and articles and stuff about Poppers and about

more about the history of Poppers and about what it is. There has been some like legislative attention. There was an election in Canada in September, a national election. And one of the parties said if you've, vote for us, we will investigate whether we should legalize poppers because in Canada there's a ban. Oh, okay. I think that was quite a cynical ploy to say like, hey, we're cool with the LGBTs. It was the conservative party. Oh, I see. And I think that was quite a cynical ploy. And that's what I've heard from Canadians as well, who've told me their analysis of it. And so, yeah, every so often

there might be like a bit more like attention like that. Or also, probably within the next 12 months, someone will drink a bottle of poppers and die and then there'll be another moral panic again about like what is this sex craze that's like sweeping the teenagers or something like that that tends to happen periodically anyway and then i just think we'll it can kill people can't it it can like if you drink it and especially if you've also taken cocaine diazepine metadron and lSD all at the same time like for example but i also think another thing that's going to happen is that yes we've seen because we've already seen it happening so like yes traditionally there are these like masculine things bolt iron horse but then also recently we've seen like

more kind of playful artisanal, like some of them literally call themselves artisanal poppers brands coming up. Artisanal poppers. Hipster poppers. Or like using different iconography and different branding, there's this one in Texas called Double Scorpio, which is still quite sort of like... Oh, I'm looking at a bottle of it. Hold that up again. Let's have a... I don't know. Yeah, this is Double Scorpio Emerald.

And they also do lots... This one's called tape cleaner. And they also... And it says not for human consumption. Do not use as an inhalant. which is exactly the way that you should use it. You should inhale the vapor. But anyway, so there's this one. And their iconography is like cool and hip and like disco. And, you know, I think that there's going to be more and more products like that.

And I've got to ask, like, there's so many different brands of poppers. Do they do different things? Or is it just basically the same product but with just a different label on it? Okay. I think it's basically the same. I mean, it's kind of like Cheetos and Wattsits, you know. So I think that, okay, so there are different subs. Amyl nitrite is the original one, but that is a banned substance in the UK and in some other places where it's not if you go to France.

If you buy poppers in France, they might be amyl nitrite. Butyl nitrate is another one which I think is banned in some places as well. And another one, often poppers now that you buy in the UK anyway are pentil nitrite and propyl nitrite. The point is, as always with these things, they are very, very, very similar chemical substances and there's been like one molecule changed or tweaked. in order to get away from a ban on the previous substance. So the manufacturers are literally trying to give you the same effect by just having a slightly different chemical structure so it doesn't fall foul of the regulation.

That said, they also do, they're very coy about what is actually in them and actually it's very interesting. They do have different smells, different aromas, different flavors, if you like. And so, I mean, I think actually Double Scorpio make a pumpkin spice line. one, actually. That's so millennial. Right. And so they do have different flavors and different smells, but they don't tell you on the bottle

what's in the ingredients. And I think that that's partly also a consequence of the pact, where the government's like, we don't really want to know. Just don't want to know. Just get on with it and don't tell us. You know, just say that it's not for human consumption. Don't tell us. This is really weird legal situation.

So, yeah, but people do claim definitely different, people have their favorites. And sometimes that's to do with the effect, like the strength of it. And sometimes it's to do with the flavor. So you can get stronger and weaker ones then? Yeah, but also they, once you've opened a bottle, the vapour is basically rising, you know, kind of constantly. So you keep the lid on the bottle when you're not sniffing from it to stop the vapor escaping. But nevertheless, once you've opened a bottle and you've used it a few times, you've opened it a few times, then more and more vapor has risen from the liquid.

And so a single bottle loses its strength anyway. Okay. Yeah. After it's been used a few times. Don't drink it. And if you spill any of the liquid on any part of your skin, then wash it off immediately because it can be quite caustic. See, you are just an absolute font of knowledge. This is fascinating. I love it. Thank you so much for talking to me about this day. It's been so fascinating. Thanks, Kate. I really enjoyed it.

I've loved it. Thanks for having me. I hope you've enjoyed joining us for that very quick history of animal nitrate. Thank you so much to Adam for joining me. You were an absolute hoot. Poppers are a very important part. part of gay history and gay culture and a fascinating subject to discuss, but we absolutely cannot let you go without saying that there are warnings involved and dangers involved, and please, please, please don't be taken them because you think that we've told you to. Look it up. There are links down below. Make sure that you are informed and that you are safe at all times.

If you've liked what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please do this because if you don't, Dan Snow will lock us into a cupboard. In the next few weeks, we've got episodes on the men who rocked Victorian England in women's dresses, the Museum of Sex Objects, and the Empire Bashing Queen of Angola. Join me again betwixt the sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.