My name is Chelsea Ivan but I go by my middle name, Virginia. This is my story. Many years ago I was married to a man named Jeremiah Ivan. Together we would casually use the legal substance nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, also known as whippets. Totally legal to buy at the vape shop so long as everybody pretends you are using it to make whipped cream. Gives you an incredibly short high, makes you laugh, and some feelings of euphoria. It hasn’t felt like that for me for a very long time. I ended up hospitalized in Minneapolis I think in 2018. My gait had suddenly changed and I couldn’t seem to walk right. I kept falling and had a lot of trouble balancing myself. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was happening to me even though I am always honest with medical staff about using drugs. They diagnosed me with Guillian-Barre, even though the results of lumbar spinal puncture and other tests were inconclusive. After I was released, I fully relied on a walker mobility aid to get around. I did recover about 90% of my leg function and balance but it took about a year. I still relied on a cane for things like uneven ground, or going up stairs or curbs without a railing. That was the first time.
When my husband died, I began to abuse nitrous to levels I hadn’t before. I couldn’t really explain it but it gave me some relief and the fact that it was legal helped my paranoia. Mostly I would just sit and watch tv and for a certain amount of time, I wouldn’t be so focused on all the negative feelings. It was a form of escape from my life and my thoughts. I used the money my husband left me from the life insurance and stuff to move myself to Pittsburgh and try to go to college to become a mortician. I made it through one semester with great grades and new friends. I had enough money to enjoy my life and not worry about bills and go out to eat and just live like a normal human being. I treated my friends to dinners and gifts and paid a few people’s rent and was happy to do so because I had the resources. I met my Rain and we quickly became very close. I had already been continuing the nitrous use and it was starting to affect my life. I would miss class or not study enough for tests. And it began affecting my body again. During the middle of my second semester of mortuary school I dropped out because I couldn’t keep up having missed so many classes. This meant I didn’t really have any outside life or responsibilities to balance the times I would be abusing nitrous. I rarely left the apartment, I started using nitrous almost constantly, and Rain moved in with me. I don’t think she had ever done nitrous before I introduced it to her. And I will hold that guilt inside me for the rest of my life.
Now we come to the end of 2021. Things got to a point where my body stopped working again. But it was much worse this time. I couldn’t get out of bed and I couldn’t move my legs at all. I went to the hospital and we 100% knew this time that it was the nitrous causing these effects. The treatment was the same as before. 5 days on an IV drip with a high dose of the vitamin B12. They were able to tell me that nitrous causes B12 deficiency which is what your nerves need to function. Basically my nerves were starving and started eating themselves. This caused the level of nerve damage that caused me to become permanently disabled.
I moved in with my mom and stepdad and they supported me while I recovered. I used a wheelchair full time at this point and managed to get a job at Ulta in Alabama. I actually enjoyed it a lot and made some friends and stayed off the nitrous for some time. I went to physical therapy and got to a point I could walk with a walker again for increasing distances. Eventually I could use a walker to get around in the house, get from the car to the table at a restaurant or something like that. I still relied on my wheelchair for my shifts at Ulta and if I was going to be out and about or to do tasks like cooking or doing the dishes. And eventually, due to the nature of my addiction…. I started using nitrous again.
I moved back to Pittburgh and got an apartment with Rain. We had talked every day and texted constantly while I was in Alabama. We were deeply in love at that point. We had two cats, Mouse and Brillat. We cooked together, went on dates, played a ton of Mario Kart. We talked about getting married someday but we didn’t want to rush into it. We thought we had so much time. She took on the role of my physical caregiver and helped me take care of my body. I paid for everything because I still had the resources to do so. She was worried all the time to leave me alone in the apartment for too long because she knew I would either be unsafe because I can’t take care of myself very well physically, and because I would absolutely have some nitrous brought to the apartment while she was gone. I was trying to quit or at least wean myself off and had very little self control. I started doing nitrous more often and, because she had an addictive personality too, the presence of the nitrous in the apartment made her want to join in. We tried to set rules for ourselves. Only do nitrous if we got a hotel room, and don’t bring it into the apartment. Only buy a certain amount at a time. Many attempts to quit cold turkey, which would end up with either one of us begging the other for permission to have just a little bit. Many times I went to the ER begging for help for my addiction to which they basically told me there’s not much they can do. Many hospitals stays at Western Psych to use it as a rehab to try to get treatment for my addiction, or I would end up there due to the incredibly terrifying mental and psychotic effects long term nitrous use can cause. Many times trying to get accepted into a rehab when nitrous addiction is not a priority for people, nobody understands it, and they literally will tell me it is not addicting.
Almost a year ago, were the worst couple days of my life. Rain and I were on a bender. Somehow, in the middle of the night, I fell on the floor. I don’t remember it happening. I just woke up on the floor. Rain said I had fallen out of bed and she had tried to get me back up but couldn’t. Again I have no memory of it. And we were still on the bender. We kept getting more nitrous delivered. There were so many empty tanks and trash in the bedroom that it was hard for her to find a pathway in and out of the bed. I was on the floor, unable to get up to go to the bathroom, surrounded by empty metal tanks, barely able to move and in severe pain, laying in piss and shit with no water and no food. My phone was dead and I couldn’t move my body enough to charge it. Rain was, for the first time, starting to lose the use of her legs. I would always run out of nitrous before Rain and I remember screaming and crying and pleading and begging for hours one night for her to hand me one of her tanks so I could experience some relief. She never responded even though I could hear her mumbling gibberish to herself on occasion and I could hear her using the nitrous. I could not physically see her from my position on the floor. The fact is, when you use that much nitrous you start to experience times where you are still awake but your mind is basically unconscious. She could not hear me. She was not aware of my screams. She couldn’t remember it at all. But her physical body was still using the nitrous. Eventually sometime early the next morning she came to and asked me to call an ambulance. I was able to throw my phone on the bed, she was able to charge it for a couple minutes, she was able to throw it back to me. She was very confused. I called 911 and told them to break the door down if they had to. Neither of us were capable of letting them in. They came with a team of people and two ambulances. They managed to get Rain into my wheelchair and into one ambulance. That’s the last time I saw her alive.
I had been on the floor for about four days. Rain and I both had our phones with us thankfully but I had no charger. The staff at the hospital finally located one for me but chose to charge my phone at the nurses station every time it needed charged instead of in my room. I missed so many calls from Rain because of this. She was calling over and over. When we would get to talk, we were both still in a state of confusion, but hers was worse than mine. She didn’t always seem to understand that she was in the hospital. She kept asking me where she was. She was scared she was going to die. All we could say to each other was I love you and I miss you and to stay on the phone as long as we could. I didn’t understand just how bad her condition was. She had been through the periods of confusion before and so had I. It always got better.
On the evening of June 27, 2024, Rain and I had been on the phone for several hours. Again, just offering each other comfort and love. Suddenly I heard her breathing change. She was gasping for air and making sounds I didn’t understand. I pressed my call bell but I didn’t know how to help. I didn’t even know what room she was in or if we were in the same hospital. After a few minutes I heard the medical staff on her side desperately attempting to save her life. They were preforming CPR for about 20 minutes or so and it wasn’t working. But they didn’t give up and eventually she ended up on life support. They did the best they could do. But she was functionally already dead at that point. The last words she ever heard were from me saying that I loved her.
They let me visit her the next day for about 45 minutes. She was unconscious, tubes sticking out of her face and body, blood gushing from every tube and every orifice. Being pumped with a high dose cocktail of meds to try to make her comfortable. I held her hand, I told her I loved her. I told her I was sorry. I told her I was there. The heart attack she had and subsequent organ failure was caused by the blood clots in her lungs. This is caused by the nitrous. I also had blood clots that were surgically removed from my leg before they reached my lungs. This was caused by the nitrous. My time was up and they took me back upstairs. Her body died about an hour later. I will never forgive myself.
After a month in the hospital under suicide watch and for them treating my pressure wounds that happened from the time on the floor, they transferred me to a skilled nursing facility/nursing home. I couldn’t move my legs. Eventually I got to the point where I had enough strength to use a walker to transfer myself from bed into a wheelchair. At that point my insurance denied me any more coverage and I had to leave. The nursing home was out of network and was the only place out of the 60+ facilities my social worker tried that was willing to accept me. Most places like that don’t want to accept drug addicts, you see. I still owe them over $7,000 for an approximately one month stay.
And what do you know, as soon as I was out I went straight back to the nitrous use. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I died. I wanted to die. And if the nitrous didn’t kill me, I had several plans on how to kill myself as soon as I ran out.
That’s where am today. The nitrous hasn’t killed me. But I no longer want to kill myself. My bank account is in the negatives. Everything my husband left me is wasted and I can never get it back. I don’t trust myself with money. My mom has agreed to help me handle my money for the future so I don’t have access to it. I am in a skilled nursing facility in Ohio after about a month in the hospital going through a multi step procedure involving multiple surgeries to heal the burns on my legs (skin grafts using skin they took from my thigh) caused by a frozen nitrous container. They start to freeze while you use them. I always have blankets in between the canister and my skin but it doesn’t matter. You can’t feel the burn forming. I usually notice them a day or two later once I start feeling the pain. Probably more accurately described as frostbite. I’ll be here until my wounds heal to a point that I can go home and home care nurses can help me from there. I’ll be here until my legs gain enough strength again that I can use a walker to transfer myself from my bed into a wheelchair. I don’t know how long that will take… and I don’t know how long my insurance will agree to foot the bill.
I am asking for donations to help me take care of myself and get me over this hump. If I can pay my overdue phone bill, that would help me immensely. I haven’t had cell service in several months. I need personal supplies and I have no clothes here. I will need help with groceries and bills while I work with the social worker here to apply for as many benefits as I qualify for. This includes SSI, rental assistance, food stamps, etc. This will take time. They actually have a drug addiction program here at the nursing facility which I will be doing every day. I am currently being evicted from my apartment but there are resources I am working with for that. I am hoping to renew my lease but I don’t have much more time. If I am able to pay next months rent (RentHelpPGH will hopefully help me pay my debt) or my landlords are willing to work with me on a payment plan, I might be able to keep my apartment. If I do get evicted, having the money to put my belongings in storage would help too while I live in a shelter or something. Things like that.
At the same time, I have made the decision to seek legal council and take down the entire nitrous industry and all the shop owners who took advantage of me while I was at my lowest. Allowing a clearly severely addicted person to spend thousands of dollars a day at their establishments, personally delivering the nitrous to mine and rains apartment and seeing the living conditions there, seeing me on the couch or in bed surrounded by tanks, absolutely filthy, trash everywhere. reeking of urine. Watching my body deteriorate in real time as an effect of the nitrous, which I have been honest about, and continuing to sell me more and take me for everything that I have. Seeing me so high out of my mind that they convinced me I owed them over $25,000 dollars, taking the check out my checkbook, having me sign it, and filling it out themselves. Which I don’t even remember doing. But that check sure did get deposited. This is just a few examples.
This is why I am asking you for help. I don’t know what else to do. To my friends, to their friends, to anyone I’ve ever met. To my family. To any random stranger that’s been affected by addiction. To the addicts out there. To anyone with a heart. Please share my story. Even if you don’t donate, please share my story.
