Poppers and the ‘60s

From Over-the-Counter to the Counterculture.

The history of poppers in the 1960s. Part two of The Bottom Molecule series. Researched and written by Leo Herrera over the span of 2 years. Audio for paid members only. Read about Poppers First 100 Years in Part One.

San Francisco, New Year’s Eve

A few hours after the clock strikes 1968, you leave the party with the handsome older man, the one with the southern accent who asked you to dance as if it were a cotillion, who blushed when you said “OK Prom King, let’s dance.” He grabbed you by the waist just right and you grinded to The Ronettes in a sea of faeries, hippies and hustlers from The Polk. Regal attire in a dive bar. The Prom King pinned you to Spector's Wall of Sound and drunkenly whispered “I’m going to fuck you.” You teleported to the taxi, the icy ocean wind through your long hair.

Now you’re in his hotel, buzzed off the champagne and grass. You’re nervous. Sure,“Free Love,” but the baggage of the 1950s is still on your back. Police beatdowns at the park, electroshock therapy to “cure you,” sodomy laws. He throws you on the bed, trying to be rough, even as he rearranges the pillows behind your head. You tense up. Here it comes…when he’ll find out you can’t be fucked. You’ve tried, but you have no control over that delicate orifice. You’re too tight. You fill with shame at the thought of disappointing him. You go through the motions of kisses and gropes, your legs going up in the air. “You ready?” he asks gently, his dick pressing against you. Your nod is more of a prayer than passion. He pauses with a gentle peck on your forehead then reaches into his nightstand, pulls out a yellow tin box. You recognize it from the drugstore, next to the aspirin. He takes the ampoule between his fingers, breaking it in half. Pop! He puts the popper under your nose. “Breathe boy.” 

You’re not sure what you’re waiting for but then your body goes limp. You can feel your heartbeat through your eyes. There’s sparks on the ceiling and your mind travels high, higher than the roof, the clouds, the city, this country, with its wars against other countries, against its people, against you…but you’re here, safe. A joy fills your veins. He devours you. When you come down, he’s already inside you. By dawn, he’ll have gotten up to his wrist in there, breaking barrier after barrier. 

Far out. 

Next week, you’ll go to the drugstore looking for the yellow tin box of amyl nitrite. Daddy’s little helper. How had it been out in the open for so long and you didn’t know it? But it’s no longer next to the aspirin. The pharmacist, a weasley little man, tells you “Sweetie, you need a prescription for those again. Too many healthy young men with…chest pains.” He looks you up and down with pity and envy. 

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The sexual liberation of the 1960s required deprogramming and chemistry. A cheap, legal hallucinogenic aphrodisiac like amyl nitrite dovetailed perfectly with that process. For 100 years, the vasodilator was prescribed for chest pains, cyanide poisoning, fainting, menstrual cramps and childbirth. It was packed in soldier and EMT first-aid kits. In the early ‘60s, nitroglycerin tablets replaced amyl nitrite as a more effective and less toxic treatment. In 1960, the FDA lifted the prescription requirement for amyl nitrite. The tin box of ampoules became over-the-counter, a gift for the counterculture. 

The first official record of recreational use of amyl nitrite was from 1964 in a complaint to the FDA from Burroughs-Wellcome. The pharmaceutical company dominated the amyl nitrite market since the ‘20s. In the ‘40s, they patented their own inhalant. A family-owned, conservative company, they were not too pleased to be flooded with reports of healthy young men emptying out drugstores. Most likely fearing legal consequences, they asked the government to reinstate the prescription requirement. But by then, poppers were everywhere. 

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion described amyl nitrite in the pockets of ladies’ room attendants in Las Vegas. Her characters in Play It as It Lays use it during sex. A twelve-pack of amyl nitrite (in conjunction with “as many beers necessary”) was the hangover cure of Hunter S. Thompson. Poppers were popular with musicians, a favorite of Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones and Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of The Doors. In 1968, Ray got so high at a Whiskey A Go Go gig he had to be dragged away from the piano. A young Nile Rogers stole poppers from his high school PE class, where they were used like smelling salts. 

Poppers produce an effect called synesthesia, a euphoric scramble of the senses where music can have colors. This made a lovely companion on the dancefloor, which was transforming at the end of the ‘60s. Discotheques, the invention of the mixer, beatmatching disc jockeys, new mega clubs and Queer gatherings like Sanctuary and Mancuso’s Loft in New York City were taking nightlife a long way from the sock hop of the ‘50s and into the disco era. 

In 1968, the government put its foot down. A prescription would once again be needed, locking the tin box behind the pharmacy window. In this time of great change, poppers also underwent a chemical metamorphosis. 

The same baton passed down by chemists and physicians in the 1800s to transform amyl nitrite into “poppers” was now in the hands of a medical student in Los Angeles. Clifford Hassings synthesized a sister to amyl nitrite: isobutyl nitrite. The effects were nearly indistinguishable. Only a seasoned user missed the sweet, almond aroma of amyl. The high from isobutyl is shorter and not as smooth but it packs a faster punch. More importantly, the raw ingredient butyl was used in manufacturing dyes and fuel. Isobutyl nitrite could be sold as a solvent and not a medication, therefore outside the jurisdiction of the FDA. Like the Gay bars, bathhouses and drag shows of the time, poppers could exist in a legal limbo. 

And thus began a tradition of Queer people using medicine to facilitate sex and calm the anxiety from society’s neglect and oppression. Like antibiotics, HIV meds, PEP, PrEP, hormones, the monkeypox vaccine, amyl nitrite is as much a mental aid as it is a physical one. 

Isobutyl moved poppers from the ampoule to the brown bottle which houses them today. Clifford first produced it for his personal use and then sold bottles to friends. They were so popular he founded the company Hollywood’s West American Industries to manufacture and sell the brown bottle as a “liquid aroma” (laughable to anyone who has ever spilled a bottle). He called it “Locker Room.” Instructions: “Remove cap and place in desired location and the aroma of a locker room will develop.” 

This new rush got the attention of a man in San Francisco named Jay Freeze, who created his own copycat “Rush,” the iconic yellow and red bottle which is still the most sold and counterfeited brand. Jay Freeze founded Pacific West Distribution, PWD, still seen on bottle caps today. His deeper pockets and charisma would turn poppers from an open secret into a multi-million dollar industry in the ‘70s. If amyl nitrite had been for rockstars, hippies and Gays “in the know,” isobutyl would be for everybody. In less than a decade, Time magazine reported 5 million people regularly used poppers on the dancefloor and in the bedroom. 

For Queers, “Free Love” didn’t mean the soft-focus white hippie with flowers in her hair or drug-fueled promiscuity and polyamory to be abandoned in the ‘80s, when baby boomers “settled down.” Queers were in a long game, hundreds of years in the making. The hardcore, messy exploration of our body’s limits, sex which had not only been taboo, but illegal: Anal sex, fisting and S&M, leather bars, porn, circuit parties. For Queers, pleasure, not just as a sport, but as an industry, began as the 60s ended. Not so much a moral awakening but a legal shift, with the repeal of obscenity and sodomy laws and the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses. Poppers became an icon older than Stonewall and as recognizable as the rainbow flag. They’ll shine their brightest in the disco balls of the ‘70s and be blamed for a mysterious cancer in the 80s. Poppers always follow the views and legality of Queer sex, and posses an almost mystical ability to reflect their eras. 

Images by Dalle 3 on ChatGPT+