Really good info on those chargers! That’s a game changer potentially
Apparently for recreation drug use, people buy a box of N2O whipped cream charger cylinders, and then they transfer the N2O gas to a balloon using a cheap device called a "cracker". Lots of websites sell these crackers for around $10. Perhaps you already know about crackers, but I'd not heard about them before.
The cracker pierces the seal on the cylinder, and lets the gas escape into the balloon. You cannot breathe in the N2O gas from the cylinder directly, as it is released at high a pressure, and also the gas comes out very cold, which can burn the throat. So that's why you first transfer to a balloon.
The worst part for me has been severe brain fog in tandem with a horrible, horrible depressive/hopeless and very variable head space that changes by the hour all day long. If I didn’t have a host of other CFS symptoms then I’d say I have some sort of severe bipolar depression or something.
The virus I caught (coxsackievirus B4) triggered a ton of mental health symptoms in me, even before I developed ME/CFS from it: depression, anhedonia, blunted emotions (blunted affect), generalized anxiety disorder, some mild psychosis-type symptoms. These were actually worse than my ME/CFS symptoms.
If you have pure ME/CFS without any mental health comorbidities, then provided you don't have the terrible muscle pains of ME/CFS, there's no direct immediate suffering involved in ME/CFS. On days when my mental health symptoms are not too bad, then I don't find any direct suffering from ME/CFS (I am lucky not to have any pain). Sure, if you think about the limitations it creates in life, then you might get annoyed or despondent. But no direct suffering.
But it's very common to have depression, anxiety, and other mental heath symptoms appearing alongside ME/CFS. Not surprising really, if we assume ME/CFS is due to a virus in the brain.
So if you are experiencing depression and hopelessness, that can be considered separate to ME/CFS, and might be treatable with antidepressants. Myself, I take the MAOI antidepressant moclobemide daily (this has one of the lowest incidences of sexual dysfunction, which is a very common side effect of SSRI and even TCA antidepressants).
I will also add amitriptyline and saffron to this on days when my depression gets worse. Saffron has been shown in numerous studies to be as effective as standard antidepressant drugs.
When you first get ME/CFS, it's very hard to understand where one symptom ends and the next begins, because there are so many different symptoms. And this is made even more difficult if you have mental health comorbidities. But after some time, you get a better handle on the individual symptoms.