system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I saw a video of someone breathing in a rag of chloroform and getting instantly knocked out. I don’t think that’s real, but it made me curious. How does chloroform work? And what exactly does it do?
gpt
Using chloroform to knock someone out in a matter of seconds is entirely fiction.

Chloroform is basically an anesthetic--but one that is no longer used due to the fact that it can seriously damage your liver and heart. Even with perfect dosing, it would take at least 5 minutes of breathing it to knock someone unconscious. 

There are two parts to explaining how it works:
1) Chloroform is a volatile liquid that is very lipid soluble. This means that it wants to evaporate into a gas very quickly (and thus you inhale it). It's also lipid-soluble, which means it likes to dissolve in fats. Ever try and add water and oil together? They don't mix. But if you try and mix different oils together, they mix quite well. Your brain's structure has a very high concentration of fats and thus chloroform likes to dissolve there better than most other places in your body.

2) When in the brain, it activates something called a GABA receptor. These receptors are basically off-switches for neurons. When chloroform attaches to a GABA receptor, you can think of it as turning off a light switch. When enough light switches get turned off in the right areas of the brain--boom-- lights out.