Help, I’m addicted to lip balm

It’s time to come clean (and shiny).

“My name’s Ciaran. I’m 20, and I’m addicted to lip balm.”

…is what I would be saying if there was a meeting of ‘LBAA’ – Lib Balm Addicts Annoymous. It’s taken me years to finally come to terms with my crippling addiction and I am in desperate need of help. I’m a very a handsome, but tortured and troubled, soul.

Why is my condition not taken as seriously as addiction to alcohol or crack? I am genuinely addicted to this sweet liquid gold, and the fact that I’m able to finally admit it’s an addiction is the first step to me conquering it. Well, that’s what my therapist tells me anyway.

Carmex is the one x

It was my mum that got me hooked to the stuff. I was only 13. So young, so naive, so full of hope. From the first dab I was hooked and have never looked back since. I can’t imagine a night out in the ‘pool without having my precious lip balm on me. How else will I get all the boys to kiss me in Heebies??

I now go through 1 tub or 1 tube per week and being a poor student, I have to decide whether to not eat for a day or continue my addiction. Although I have found that Bodycare in St John’s sells Carmex for £1.29 as opposed to the expensive Superdrug price of just under £3, sometimes it’s just beans on toast for me. But as long as I have my lip balm, I’m happy.

It seems to me that when I am most stressed – be it during exam season, or when they go to deadlock on X Factor – that I apply the most product. I dab and dab and dab until I have calmed down, and got my kick. I’ve even noticed I start holding it like a cigarette, between two fingers, often playing with it when I get anxious. I’ve never been this low.

My smooth lips gain me friends like this x

It’s gotten to the laughable point that now, when I run out of a pot, I still continue to dab away, even though there is nothing left. Simply the process of applying the lip balm is enough to keep my addiction at bay. Good ol’ muscle memory.

Admittedly, I’ve had a few low points in my life time. I can’t decide whether stealing over 10 in one go from an unnamed Smithdown supermarket when I ran out of money because “I needed to stock up over winter”, or stealing lip balm from my house mates to fund my addiction is worse…. Just a lot of stealing to be honest.

It was when I had to get physically removed from a Slovakian club when I was travelling, because after 2 hours of searching for my lost lip-balm, I got angry when none of the bar stuff would help me find my precious, that I realised I had to get help.

Supposed to last me 4 months, will literally last me 6 weeks!

With the help of forum ‘Lip Balm Anonymous’, I’m getting through this problem slowly and surely. I’m now down to 1 pot over 2 weeks and when I run out, I go cold turkey or painfully sink down to a softer form of the drug – Vaseline, for example. I’m getting there, but I am terrified of withdrawal.

Hearing all the stories of lip-balm-related horrors, like a woman being late for their own wedding because they left their lip balm at home, to people missing the birth of their own child as they had to ‘quickly nip’ to the local store to get their next kick, and being told that life gets better once you go cold turkey, has helped me come to terms with my problem.

I don’t think I’ll ever be normal. People who know me know that I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t constantly applying lip balm, or being the last to leave pre’s because I have to run back in and get my chapstick. But hey, what’s great about normal anyway? I’ll always have fabulous lips! I hope I don’t starting using to the same degree as I used to in the past year.

I’ve written this article as a warning. There is a cost for moisture. And that cost is addiction.