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Paris. Date night. A quick kiosk stop on the way to a wine bar. Matthew Hearle spots a tiny “energy shot” bottle with loud words like RUSH, STRENGTH, POWER right by the candy and next to Red Bull. Language barrier and all, he double-checks with the clerk: “Is this energy? Can you drink it?” They nod. He pays. He downs it.
Instant alarm: it tastes like nail-polish remover. Minutes later, he is dizzy, clammy, and collapsing — paramedics, oxygen, ambulance, intensive care unit. In the emergency room, he is given methylene blue, the antidote doctors use when blood cannot carry oxygen properly after ingesting certain chemicals. He stabilizes, spends the night under observation, and gets one very fair piece of discharge advice: do not ever drink poppers. He tells his story online, it goes viral, and here we are.
Now, while some comments blame Matthew for not knowing what poppers are, we do not put any blame on the consumer here. Place a tiny brown bottle with “rush/power/strength” branding next to caffeine shots, add a language gap and untrained staff, and this is exactly the outcome you craft.
Poppers are alkyl nitrites. If you swallow them (do not), they can oxidize hemoglobin into methemoglobin (fig. 1), which cannot carry oxygen. You can be on oxygen and still be starved of it at the tissue level. Hospitals treat this with methylene blue, which chemically flips hemoglobin back into its oxygen-carrying form; when recognized promptly, patients often improve fast. Knowing the words poppers ingestion, alkyl nitrite ingestion, or methemoglobinemia helps emergency teams move quickly because it points straight to the antidote protocol.
Fig. 1: Venous blood sample with brown coloration from a patient with poppers-induced methemoglobinemia.
Source: https://www.cureus.com/articles/316607-do-not-drink-poppers-a-case-report-of-near-fatal-methemoglobinemia-after-ingestion-of-alkyl-nitrite#!/
This is not theoretical. Case reports keep landing in the literature: people who drank poppers developed severe or near-fatal methemoglobinemia and required methylene blue to recover. In other words, ingestion is dangerous.
Let us be honest: the single biggest threat to poppers’ availability and sensible regulation is people drinking them because they were sold or presented like energy shots. A 2025 UK review of deaths linked to alkyl nitrites notes that several fatalities involved swallowing — exactly the confusion we are talking about.
And we finally have retail data that puts numbers to the gut feeling. In 2025, investigators visited 98 New York City stores; 86 were actively selling alkyl nitrites. Asked “how do you use it?”, 44% of vendors did not know or would not answer, 48% said “inhalation,” and 8% told customers to ingest. Over half also stocked energy shots, and in 39% of those stores, the nitrites sat right next to the energy shots — same shelf, same cabinet (fig. 2). If you wanted to design a confusion machine, this is it.
Fig. 2: Poppers on display right next to energy shots – an alarming example of how easily the customer can be confused.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15563650.2025.2455531
Meanwhile, regulators keep warning that ingesting nitrite “poppers” can cause severe injury or death. The pressure often lands on the product itself rather than where and how it is sold — but route of exposure and retail context are the real story here.
This is where the who/where really matters. Specialty shops and reputable online retailers (like ours) are equipped to keep poppers away from look-alike products, explain what poppers are (and are not), and answer basic safety questions. Kiosks and convenience stores juggle hundreds of items, staff turnover is high, training is thin, and product placement is chaotic. Given the number of daily transactions, interrogating each customer would be both impractical and intrusive. But if you place a tiny bottle with “RUSH” branding next to 5-hour Energy® shots — with their wide mouths designed to be downed in one gulp — while poppers bottles typically have narrow openings (a built-in hint that they are not for drinking), you have set the stage for a very predictable emergency.
Our position is simple and non-negotiable: keep poppers out of kiosks and convenience stores where staff cannot explain them. Call products what they are — poppers, not “leather cleaner,” or “nail polish remover.” Clear language prevents dangerous mix-ups with energy shots. And sell poppers only in specialized shops or offline stores with trained teams who can educate and advise. That is not gatekeeping; it is basic harm reduction and consumer protection.
We will keep teaching this, again and again: maybe you have heard it a hundred times, but your straight cousin, your coworker, or the tourist at the kiosk has not — do not drink poppers. Share it. Say it plainly. Normalize the correct language so people who do not know are not set up to fail.
If you are buying anything in a tiny bottle, take two seconds to look. Energy shots have wide mouths because they are meant to be “gulped.” Poppers usually have narrow openings. Scan the label: if you see nitrite, do not ingest. And if ingestion does happen: call emergency services immediately and say “alkyl nitrite ingestion, possible methemoglobinemia.” Those words help emergency room teams go straight to methylene blue where appropriate.
Education beats bans, every single time. Mislabeling, gimmicky branding, and sloppy placement are turning a decades-old product into a modern emergency room problem, and that is on all of us — manufacturers, distributors, retailers, platforms, and yes, those of us who know better — to fix. Stop blaming the customer. Many people outside queer and nightlife circles have never handled poppers and do not speak in nitrites and methemoglobin. If a product is sold like a shot, many will treat it like a shot. That is on the point of sale.
Keep poppers where they belong: with trained staff who can answer basic questions and keep them away from energy shots. Keep saying the quiet part out loud: DO NOT. DRINK. POPPERS.
If you are curious about Matthew’s story, see it here:
