I initially believed all the horror stories of CO2 but upon first use they were shot to heck. The only thing I've found an issue is if you let the CO2 flow too quick, you might risk freezing the tube near the valve and damaging it as it tries to stretch and inflate. But that hasn't happened to me yet. So it's just a supposed thing. For certain, even the most basic inflators I've used which you simply screw in to puncture the cartridge, require me to unscrew them a little to get the CO2 flowing. So you can control how fast the tube inflates and then when full, tighten the cartridge up and have some CO2 for topping off later if the patch job wasn't so good and you have a slow leak.

So my advice to any is whatever you carry, practice with it. Otherwise you might not use it correctly when you need it.