Student did so much laughing gas she damaged her spinal cord(Picture: ABC News Australia)

An Australian university student may never walk again after she inhaled 360 canisters of nitrous oxide in one week.

The woman, aged in her 20s, has damaged nerves in her spinal cord which doctors say may never recover.

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She is now being rehabilitated to learn how to walk again after repeatedly using the recreational drug, known as laughing gas.

Hundreds of thousands of canisters of nitrous oxide are inhaled every year, and are often discarded in parks and public places.


The student’s story was featured on ABC’s 7.30 programme to discourage other users from taking the popular drug, which has been linked to a number of deaths of young people.

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Hundreds of thousands of people use the drug recreationally (Picture: Getty)

Toxicologist Dr Andrew Dawson told the programme: ‘Very recently I had a 20-year-old patient whose brain appeared to have the same level of damage as an alcoholic who had been drinking for 40 years.



‘We have had a doubling of the number of calls from hospitals about significantly affected people from nitrous oxide exposure.

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‘Those effects are severe nerve injury, or sometimes brain injury. There has been a real spike over the last two years.

‘Those deaths can relate to anything from the exploding of the small cylinders, to people becoming hypoxic – that is, short of oxygen – from overuse.’

Selling the drug was made illegal in the UK in 2015, but following the collapse of two court cases the law is being reviewed.

The loophole revolved around the gas, which is used by doctors as pain relief, being exempt from the new law because it is actually a medicine.

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