What are the effects of sniffing aerosols?

I myself used to sniff aerosols (only occasionally) in my teen years, and for about 10 or 15 years after that, I used to cough up little things from my lungs that, when I took one to a doctor, I was told were "mucous plugs" caused by lung infection. I also once read an article in Reader's Digest (I don't remember the year or month) about a boy who sniffed aerosols and he ended up dead, and an autopsy revealed that MOST of his brain was turned LITERALLY to liquid. The article said the doctors did not understand how the boy was able to do anything at all, with so little of his brain left. He had gotten to the point before his death where he could no longer do schoolwork at all, had dropped out of school, and rarely spoke at all to his family, possibly because he was no longer ABLE to speak to them by that time. He only sniffed aerosols for a year I believe it was, before he died.