Gay guy’s mum finds his poppers and mistakes them for smelling salts – and we can’t look away

A mother nearly too pure for this world stumbled onto her son's bottle of poppers and mistook them for "smelling salts". (Screen captures via TikTok)

Our parents or guardians stumbling onto our more, uh, private possessions is a fear known by countless teens across the world.

Thankfully, the art of being a homosexual means that, at times, straight parents just have no clue what these strange bottles and oddly-shaped rubber toys actually are.

And that’s exactly what happened to the mother of Jed, from Sheffield, England.

Mum finds poppers in son’s room and mistakes them for ‘smelling salts’.

He uploaded footage captured on his mobile phone on March 30 to Twitter of himself stumbling onto his mother holding his bottle of poppers.

In the footage, which has been welcomed by many as a brief intermission from the relentless existential dread of the current climate, it seems Jed’s innocent mum – too pure for this world – describe what she thought the bottle was.

“What are you doing?” he wonders as he walks into the room, with his mum holding the poppers in one hand and her phone in the other.

“I picked ’em up,” she says, gesturing towards the bottle of poppers, “after I tidied your bedroom up.

“I can’t see no label, so I thought, ‘What’s this then?'”

She then says that she thought the poppers – a party drug popular among the LGBT+ community – were smelling salts, before gesturing that she deeply inhaled the poppers straight from the bottle.

And her reaction – “F***ing hell” – has absolved all sin from this planet. It’s all gone. Eradicated. Jesus can close up shop for the day. Goodbye.

OK, but what are these ‘smelling salts’?

For starters, 100 per cent not smelling salts.

“Poppers” is the slang term for alkyl nitrites. It is a chemical drug that is often inhaled for euphoric and sexually productive effects.
Originally used for chest pains, alkyl nitrites were then used recreationally during gay disco in the 1970s.

The drug loosens muscles – such as the throat and anus. It’s therefore popular among gay men as it helps to relax the anal sphincter muscles for anal sex.

They are usually sold in small bottles in liquid form that produces vapour for people to inhale.

Partygoers use it for sex as well as the pleasurable high, though some people find it to be disorientating causing a feeling of dizziness and nausea.