Oh, it's absofuckinglutely mind altering. There's just a threshold you haven't crossed yet. Were you huffing the gas out of whipped cream cans, or discharging tiny little whippet cartridges into balloons, or did you have a four-and-a-half foot industrial G cylinder and Hefty Contractor Load & Carry Extra Large Garbage Bags?

There's a point where you "pass in" instead of passing out. Just don't try it standing up. You'll try to brush something off your shoulder, then come to the profound realization that it's the floor.

Here's a classic book all about it, "Laughing Gas: Nitrous Oxide" ("HILK HILK"), which goes into much more detail than the article:

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780914171522

Look for the hissing U-Haul in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert.

There's a reason it's called "Hippie Crack".