By Daniel Opasinis

Disclaimer: This article has explicit descriptions of sex. 

No more than two inches tall, the small brown vials hiss with built up fumes—the fresh ones at least. Anna* brings the bottle to her nose as a friend directs her to close the other nostril, she inhales. Then, a smell she says reminds her of acetone rushes into her airway. 

What comes next is quick. A lightheaded feeling, tightness, pressure, as if her heart beat is travelling through her chest and neck up into her head. Her face goes flush, not quite red but surely warm. And a dissociative pause to the world around her lasts just about 30 seconds—time she spends giggling with friends on the corner of the street.

Anna is in Bologna, Italy. It’s the summer after high school and she’s visiting her friend, an exchange student who she went to high school with, in her hometown. 

Her friends had pitched the idea of poppers as they walked past a local weed shop, where the inhalants are also sold in much of Europe. Anna hadn’t heard of the drug before. “For some reason, I thought that it would be similar to weed, because we bought it in a weed store…It was a very, very unique experience,” she says. 

Generally, poppers contain alkyl nitrites like amyl nitrite or isobutyl nitrite—chemicals that quickly evaporate, letting off the fumes that produce a high when inhaled.

According to a study from the University of British Columbia (UBC), a major crackdown on the sale and importing of poppers in 2013 threatened large fines and even imprisonment. Although written legislation was never set forward, the inhalants became classified as “drugs” under the Food and Drug Act, effectively banning them across the country.

This ended four decades of relaxed laws that left them in a grey area—where they were legal to sell, just not for human consumption. Manufacturers had got around the rules by marketing them under alternate names like “leather polisher” and “VCR head cleaner,” but the new law left no room for workarounds.

Nevertheless, there are still places to get your hands on the drug. 

Places like The Popper King, an online storefront for poppers based out of the U.S., or sellers within the country—like Robert*.

Over 20 years ago, Robert was hooking up with a guy and wanted to try fisting. “I heard that poppers were the way to relax your hole enough,” he says. 

“When I bought them from a local store at that time, you were able to just walk in and grab them…without any sort of backlash or under the table stuff,” he says.

While the poppers’ muscle-relaxing effects led to a successful backdoor entry, he couldn’t get over the feeling of losing control. “It felt like I was constantly falling, so I just stopped using them after that…the smell of them just made me sick,” he says.

While poppers are mostly considered safe, according to the UBC study, certain formulations of the drug do pose health risks, one being vision loss. Some of the most common side effects from poppers include headaches and dizziness, according to the Canadian Centre for Addictions.

Many risks with poppers come from doing them incorrectly. In 2023, the CBC reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was warning Americans not to confuse the drug with energy shots—like the popular and similarly packaged 5-Hour Energy—and that several people had reportedly died doing so.

Though Robert’s experience wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t his last run-in with the drug. 

While visiting a friend in Boston, he asked his circles back in Toronto if they needed anything from the U.S. He knew of the lighter laws around alkyl nitrites in the U.S. and naturally had a couple of orders come in from friends. 

“I found a store, grabbed a few that my friends wanted, and then while I was down there, I was like, ‘You know what? There’s a potential here,’ because you can’t get them in Canada,” Robert says. “So I decided to purchase a whole bunch of them.” 

The salesperson quickly clued into Robert’s plan and offered advice—to mail the vials across the border rather than taking them over himself. This way, there would be less chance of having them seized and being held back in the airport. 

His new business venture was a quick success with Toronto’s Queer community. “A lot of bottoms would use it to take dicks for hours, or fists or toys or whatever the case may be,” he says. “Because a lot of people know that it does relax a lot of muscles and leaves you inhibited.”

The ban on poppers however hasn’t led to any appreciable decline in their use. According to a 2020 study from the International Journal of Drug Policy, as much as 30 per cent of gay men in Canada had used poppers in the six months preceding the study.

Robert says this is what he’s seen among his own clientele. “It’s not just young, it’s not just old, it’s everybody.”

James* is one of those young people—a gay man who recently moved to Toronto. He considers himself versatile—someone who enjoys topping and bottoming during sex—and frequents the city’s gay clubbing scene. 

About a year ago, James was scrolling through Sniffies, a map-based gay hookup app, looking for a fun way to spend his night. After messaging back and forth with a guy, he agreed to meet at his place.  

Despite his anticipation, the hookup ended up taking place a few metres from the guy’s place, on the padded leather seats of his car in the front driveway. As James topped his new friend, he watched the man pull out that small brown vial. 

“He brought it out for himself because he was bottoming, I was like, okay, you do you,” James says. “And then I think I got curious. Because we were both verse, I was like, ‘girl, I want you to fuck me too.’” 

James hadn’t interacted with poppers before that moment, at least not outside seeing them in Troye Sivan’s “Rush” music video or other pop culture references. 

“I just felt way more horny…If this just makes it more fun and it feels better, then sure. Why not?” he says.

Regardless of the drugs’ notoriety and popularity among young Queer people, it remains heavily regulated across the country. So until something changes, Robert’s under-the-counter hustle will continue to thrive. 

“It’s still very much a taboo thing, right? But then again, some gay guys thrive on the taboo,” Robert says. 

*These sources have requested to remain anonymous. The Eye has verified this source. 

With files from Edward Lander.