ON ETHER

ETHER
Related Chloroform, CHCI3; nitrous oxide, N2O; ethylene, CH2CH2; ethyl chloride, Substances C2H<;C1; halothane, CF3CHClBr.
Neither ethylene nor ethyl chloride is much used today as a general anesthetic, although ethyl chloride is still used as a local anesthetic. Chloroform is more toxic than ether, having a therapeutic index (margin of safety) of about three, an overdose causing cardiac arrest. Halothane also has a relatively low margin of safety, but has largely replaced ether as a general anesthetic because it is nonflammable. Ethylene is more than flammable: mixed with oxygen, as it must be for use as an anesthetic, it is explosive. a plant hormone, ripener of fruit and deadener of mind: a neurotransmitter straddling two kingdoms . . .
Chemistry
Ethyl ether, or diethyl ether, (C2H5)2Q Two short alkyl chains, an oxygen between them, forming a symmetrical molecule of very low polarity. At room temperature, ether is a highly volatile liquid; as a gas it is heavier than air and highly flammable. Ethyl ether is an important organic solvent, but in most cases methylene dichloride is a safer and adequate substitute. Ether is notorious for forming explosive peroxides if left around the lab for too long. Ether is prepared by using concentrated sulfuric acid to dehydrate alcohol at an atomic level. The acid's thirst for water is so great that it can strip hydrogen and oxygen atoms right off the ethanol molecules. The resulting liquid is lighter and subtler than its parent: an alchemical poison, the refinement of the refinement of the poisons in the plant. An angel is boiled in satanic acid. But the vapor that arises must be the atmosphere of heaven, not of hell. In hell, with all the sparks and flames, ether would explode instantly. Ether is to alcohol as alcohol is to water: if alcohol is water and fire, ether is water, fire, and air.
How Taken
The vapor is inhaled. Ether may also be imbibed. Like from a shot glass. If recipes for mixed drinks exist, I haven't seen them. Besides, water and ether are immiscible, so if you are going to drink it, I think you have to drink it neat. A teaspoonful is adequate for beginners, especially along with some inhalation. In the last century people would swallow six or eight drops on a cube of sugar and wash it down with a little water. Eternal recurrence.
Effects There is no truth so profound it cannot be obtained with the inebriants . . .
Pharmacology
A general anesthetic, producing unconsciousness. Four stages are customarily recognized, but only the second is of much interest to us. The stages are:
1. local irritation: bad taste, choking, sometimes ringing or hissing sounds;
2. excitement: giggling, or shouting — the religious sing hymns, the abusive fight — some of us need to write;
3. unconsciousness: pulse rapid and strong, breathing deep and regular, muscles relaxed;
4. coma: all vital centers repressed, blue face, shallow or gasping breathing, dilated pupils that don't react to light. Ether coma should be treated by immediately removing the mask and giving artificial respiration. Stretching the sphincter of the rectum can help induce breathing. Give respiratory stimulants such as caffeine or atropine. Ether has a lower safety margin than alcohol does: about three to one for ether, and five to one for alcohol. Comparisons of the chronic toxicity of ether with the chronic toxicity of alcohol are mixed. Some people maintain that alcohol is more dangerous, others state that the "degeneration of character" proceeds more quickly with ether than with alcohol. As ether is not metabolized, liver damage is unlikely. More likely problems are gastritis, irritation of the kidneys, albumin in the blood, anemia, or pneumonia as a result of mucus in the lungs. Ether interacts synergistically with tetrahydrocannabinol. Effects
 The trick is you can't pay attention to the smell or the taste, or be concerned that you'll go around smelling like ether for a day or two.
like a glockenspiel —
colored bells, cold stars, a woozy ringing,
great spaces opening between: the Abyss

How Taken
The best description is in John Irving's rather satisfying novel, The Cider House Rules, about an orphanage doctor and abortionist who is an ether addict:
Dr. Larch was an open-drop-method man. With one hand he held a cone over his mouth and nose; he made this mask himself (by wrapping many layers oj gauze around a cone of stiff paper); with his other hand, he wet the cone. He used a quarter-pound ether can punctured with a safety pin; the drops that fell from the elbow ofthe safety pin fell in exactly the correct size and at exactly the correct rate. . . . When the hand that held the ether can felt unsteady, he put it down; when the hand that held the cone over his mouth and nose dropped to his side; the cone fell off his face.
The good doctor visits the starry realm of ether nightly. Consequently, he always smells of ether, but the smell of ether was not so unexpected on a doctor in that era. For nondoctors, the lingering excretion of ether through the lungs is a dead giveaway, and is detectable for twenty-four or even thirty-six hours after a session. Irving calls ether "the perfect addiction for a conservative," and there are many references to the "light, tasty liquid" throughout the book. '
Effects
One might think that the last vestige of consciousness would be interested in monitoring the proximity of danger, in one's own margin of safety. But no. The last thread of consciousness is used to deliver a few more drops of the ether; all else is disregarded. Perhaps, you might say, the subject already is secure and in any real emergency invisible, submerged parts ofthe mind would come forth to signal and take charge. Perhaps. Perhaps, but in my experience, the faintest, least glimmer of volition is immediately directed to the ether bottle. Let us not, out ojhand, reject those arguments based on purely quantitative considerations, that in x-i occurrences the conclusion is based on extraordinary circumstances. That is, that there is a basic difference between leisurely decisions and those based on duress or boundary conditions. Decisions based on boundary conditions do occur, and they are invariably to apply more solvent.
The Ally
I'm not interested in just the,
you know, the run of the mill,
the run of the mill kind of profound thought.
Ahhh, drunk! And in public.
There must be some insistent repetition.
Repeating, even just repeating as fast as you can repeat, there is always at least some value in virtuosity, in perfection of craft. The preparation and chemical properties of ether were described by Basil Valentine and Valerius Cordus in the early fifteenth century. Paracelsus may have been the first to use ether on himself. Ether was first used as an anesthetic around 1840 at Massachusetts General Hospital. Humphrey Davy knew ether and used it as a psychoeuleptic, as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though both of them focused more attention on nitrous oxide. You can figure out from the basics that it is not an evil conspiracy, that it has more to do with the nature of things, the difficulty, the subtlety of self-knowledge, and that Evil is overrated. There is one class to whom reflection is a fault; is not only a fault, is a sin; is not only a sin, is an atrocity — who cannot bear to exist without their own existence dis-existencing somebody else's existence. That's the problem: there are those "who think that their own existence needs so much room they must grab all possible planes of existence before they have even begun to develop the plane that they themselves exist upon. That's the problem.
History
Ether became popular as a party drug in the late nineteenth century. Many used it as a substitute for alcohol. Oliver Wendell Holmes experimented "with it at Harvard, where there was much talk about ether's power to produce mystical and mind-expanding experiences.
déjà vu, anyone?
In northern and eastern Europe some people were consuming up to a liter a day. There are stories of entire villages drinking and sniffing ether, of the streets smelling like hospital rooms. One big advantage of ether over alcohol is the rapidity of the inebriation, which is nearly immediate, and the similarly rapid return of sobriety. Serious topers could get inebriated three or four times in a day and do business or errands in between, reportedly with minimal hangovers. In the United States, not surprisingly, ether's popularity peaked during Prohibition. Ether was allegedly used to spike drinks, perhaps mixed with alcohol, or just drunk by itself.
The Ally
What is the collateral damage of the pharmacist's pipette?
 Occasionally I have an insight that would lead me to despair of any nobility of human nature.
The difference between the ba-bd and the nothing is significant: there are political implications.
And that the difference between being and nothingness has political implications is astounding.
There are those who would repress the question of the difference between the ba-bd and the ba-bd ba-ba-bd as having any significance. ba-bd ba-ba-bd or ba-bd-ba ba-bd
History
Allen Ginsberg used a whole quart of ether pursuing his poem of the same name: a long, rolling poem, "Aether: 4 Sniffs & I'm High," begun at eleven-fifteen in the evening, Hotel Commercio, Lima, Peru, May 28, 1960.
All night, wl Ether,
wave after wave of magic understanding.
The poem not ended until the next day, questioning the One, questioning Death, questioning Keats's Nightingale:
What can be possible
in a minor universe
in which you can see God
by sniffing the gas in a cotton? — Allen Ginsberg, Reality Sandwiches
Laughter, Light, Pistol Shots, a Magic Universe slightly mad.
The Ally
It is the Fool who knocks at the door of Death: "Hey, asshole, open up!" And not surprisingly the door of Death opens: and Death steps out in a foul mood and wants to know who it is among the mortals who is so impatient to knock thus. And the Fool, the Fool, even with a cold sweat breaking all over his body, gestures, with that shit-eating grin, over his shoulder, and blames the guy behind him.
and if you think about it, who really cares:
I mean who cares that some creep
hiding around in the bushes behind a fool
gets creamed
on a case of misidentification?
But we do care. They deserve to live because they are like us — walking is not so different from creeping — they just don't understand. The way we do. Be tolerant, because tolerance is self-tolerance. Why root out one part of yourself as bad and self-destructive and cherish some other part as worthy and good?
In order for there to be something that something happens on
there has to be something like this fabric of the drum
there has to be a tympanum
there has to be an echoing
has to be a sounding board
be something that occurs
out of the mother womb
of nothingness . . .
So some heroes move to the other side, so that they can create, so that something happens here, so there's some kind of music, so that light scratches the sky. Someone must say OK, I'll move, I'll go,let's see, I'll dance,let's see what happens, let's see where this electricity goes, let's see what happens when we strike this match.
phosphorous, streaking black night —
 Lucifer, fire and light.
The here and the beyond are enough, but there were a few angels for whom it was not enough: who demanded a third dimension — who sought fusions, communes, who ate each other and created sex. They said even though the here and the beyond encompass everything and stretch everywhere, we wish to go further than the beyond, even if, even if that will mean that some here must die.
There would be enough in the here and the beyond if everybody stayed in the here and the beyond — but because we have ventured further, there is not enough: some must perish, and thus Death entered the world.
"Yet the experiments must continue!"
We must welcome Him with symposia. It is no other than the Other. and you of all men know the importance of the Other you of all men and women know the importance of the Other.