Ask Beastly: I Rely on Poppers to Bottom—Is That a Problem?

Pain is a teacher, not a cue for another sniff.

hi, Alexander.

I hope Berlin is fun and educational. I was hoping you'd give me some insight on poppers. I love using them when I get fucked, but so often, I buy a bottle that just doesn't do the trick, even if I've gotten the same brand that's worked for me in the past.

Do you have any tips on the best places to get poppers that are consistently effective, and what other tips might you have about how to increase the effect of a sniff? So many times, I'm about to take a dick up my ass, and the deep whiff of poppers I take has no effect, and I'm frantically trying to get another whiff in before my butthole is wracked with pain. Thanks for your advice!

Brad

Howdy,

If your sex is reliant on poppers, finding better poppers is not the problem, Brad. If you need poppers to bottom, and it sounds like you, here’s my advice: Take a break from them and spend a few months (or more) working on your hole so you can enjoy sex without them. Poppers should never be mandatory.

That’s a good way to think of all drugs. Don’t use them to make a party happen that’s not happening without them—just use them to enchance the party that’s already going down. In sex, that means: Only use poppers (and all sex drugs) when you’re already in it and enjoying it. If you use them to create the good time that’s not happening without them, you don’t really enjoy sex—you just enjoy poppers.

There are many posts on this site about training your butt. Read them. Read this article I wrote in The Advocate. Read this one in Out Magazine. Read this one in Them. If you come here often, you have probably read my answers to bottoming questions.

Poppers are not a substitute for the mental and physical work of training your hole. If your butthole is “wracked with pain” without a strong hit, your sex sounds unpleasant and potentially dangerous. In sex, pain is something to listen to, not overpower—it can be a sign of real injury.

My best friend—a pig after my own heart, my brother in hedonism—puts the sensations we encounter during bottoming into four categories and calls them the “Four P’s”. When getting fucked, he asks himself, “What am I feeling?” If the answer is Pleasure, he does nothing—keep going. If it’s Pressure, do a small hit of poppers (or a small dose of whatever drug you are doing). If the answer is Panic, DO NOT do drugs. Instead, take big, deep breaths. Focus on your breathing, and maybe take a pause. And lastly, if the answer is Pain, stop. Pain means the sex is over.

Those are the Four P’s: Pleasure, Pressure, Panic, and Pain. It helps sometimes to label what you’re feeling in order to know how to best respond to it.

Pain is important. It tells us something is hurt. Now, this only applies to butt stuff—this rule does not apply to kinks and fetishes where pain is pleasurable. In kinks that involve physical pain, we make a distinction between Pain and Injury. In kink, injury means stop. And obviously, as in all sex, saying "stop,” no matter what anyone’s body is feeling, means the sex is stop—otherwise it becomes assault. The Four P's are just a mental guide for bottoms to distinguish the things we feel in our butts.

We experience all these four sensations at various times on our bottoming journeys, especially in fisting, toy play, and so on. Pleasure: Keep going. Pressure: Get some chemical help. Panic: Take deep breaths. Pain: Stop.

We often mislabel Pressure or Panic as Pain. It is important to be attentive to your body and focus on what you are feeling so you can label it correctly. Likewise, it is important to not be so fucked up (on poppers or any other drug) that you cannot register pain. Drugs are fun, but I do not use them to the point that I cannot discern pain in my body. Many people do, and this is how injuries happen.

The process of labelling thoughts and feelings is part of many meditation practices (useful for anyone who wants to bottom well). Only use poppers when you feel Pressure. Poppers will help you release tension and gas as they relax smooth muscle tissue, like in your anus. Leave poppers alone during the other P’s. Do not use them when you feel Panic. Poppers will not ease anxiety. In fact, they can worsen it.

I have written about poppers on this site, but if anyone needs a refresher, here it is: “Popper” or “poppers” is a slang term for a class of drugs called alkyl nitrites. Poppers are inhaled through the nose or mouth. Most poppers sold in sex shops, smoke shops, and elsewhere are made of isoamyl nitrite, isopentyl nitrite, or isopropyl nitrite. Isobutyl nitrite is also widely used, but banned in the E.U.

Thanks to anti-drug laws, which vary by country, poppers are severely, dangerously unregulated. This is because poppers cannot be sold as what they are—inhalant drugs—so they are sold as “odours”, “nail polish remover”, "video tape cleaner", and other bullshit. Because of this, there is no oversight, no safety testing, and no accountability. Stores can legally sell poppers imported from shady and suspicious sources that have never been tested by a human and may contain toxic chemicals.

Poppers are so unregulated that over half the poppers in sex shops are fake: many “Rush” poppers out there are not Rush. I know from an old contact (someone who asked for anonymity in all my writing) that the major popper brands like Rush, Blue Boy, and Jungle Juice are all made by the same company. Experts like him can spot the fakes, but regular people cannot. I cannot.

This means that not only are your Rush poppers potentially not Rush, they may also contain chemicals that are simply not poppers. Poppers are a failure of drug criminalisation. In the U.S., amyl nitrite was marketed as a legal prescription drug in 1937 and remained so until 1960, when the Food and Drug Administration removed the prescription requirement because of poppers’ safety record (amyl nitrite on its own, without any extra chemicals, is pretty harmless). The F.D.A. reinstated the prescription requirement in 1969 when authorities saw the drug was being used recreationally, mostly by gay men.

Poppers broke into gay culture in the 1960s and changed it forever. We can thank poppers for the modern-day fisting scene (fisting can be directly linked to the advent of recreational, synthetic drugs becoming widely available to the American public). After the F.D.A. reinstated a prescription requirement for amyl nitrite, poppers made of butyl nitrite—a slightly different formula with similar effects—replaced the old formula, and their usage exploded.

Then, in 1988, butyl nitrites were outlawed by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Interestingly, this was the same year that The Saint, considered the greatest gay disco of its time, closed, only three years after bathhouses were banned in New York City. 1988 was one of the worst years on record for AIDS and saw many efforts by lawmakers to shutter, outlaw, and attack queer spaces and queer people.

In 1990, isopropyl nitrites and all other nitrites not yet banned were outlawed by the Crime Control Act of 1990. But both laws—the Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the Crime Control Act—made exceptions for “commercial purpose”, meaning poppers could be sold as anything other than inhalant drugs. So they simply had to be repackaged.

This is why there are no instructions, safety warnings, or ingredients listed on poppers bottles. You are ingesting something that is legally not meant to be ingested. Everyone knows how they are used, even lawmakers, but they prefer the pantomime of safety—drug bans—and do not care that some faggots die as a result.

Even though most poppers found in stores today are pretty harmless (they are all close variations of the chemicals listed above), some are not. You still have an unregulated, widely-available commercial product that is never tested for toxicity. The folks at Double Scorpio, who started their business because poppers are so scarily unregulated (the brand was founded by gay men who home-brewed their own poppers and turned their formulas into a major business), struggle to advertise their products without saying what their products actually are.

Because of no regulation, every poppers bottle you buy is a gamble. You could inhale something similar to the chemicals you expect and get that warm, familiar, buzzy head rush. Or you could inhale something that makes you pass out, causes retinal damage, kills you, or simply does nothing at all.

The more advanced I grow as a bottom, the less I use poppers. I still use them for fisting, but I practice a rule and never deviate from it: I only take a hit of poppers after the hand is inside me. I must get to that point on my own; poppers just boost me after the main work is done. I no longer use them for regular anal sex (with a cock) unless I am tired after a long night of fucking and my butt is sore. Poppers help me over fatigue humps—they do not start the night, and they are never mandatory.

Some years ago, my ex used poppers that caused grey floaters in his vision that lasted for months. Retinal damage from poppers is real and documented. And deaths happen all the time when men use poppers with erection pills like Viagra and Cialis. Poppers and Viagra both cause a drop in blood pressure. Combined, they can be fatal.

I do not mean to terrorise you with warnings and worst-case scenarios. I just mean to tell you the truth. We all must manage risks in ways that work best for us. Build a sex life apart from poppers and reserve them for when you need a little push.

Love, Beastly