Between the ages of 8-13(ish), my recipe for a perfect day would have been this: Watching a Clarissa Explains it All marathon while wearing moon-shoes on a trampoline and having my sister serve me frequent meals of orange popsicles and Bonne Bell chapsticks. I consumed that lady’s goods, and I don’t mean I swiped them daintily across my lips until – two or three months later – they were all used up. That’s the way a healthy person “consumes” something that is meant to medicate dry skin. No, not me.
I ate them.
But what else is a pre-tween supposed to with lip products that smelled (and tasted) like cookie dough, orange dreamsicles, and vanilla icing? The real stuff was like crack. Crack that I had to fake a bout of whopping cough in order to be allowed within 500 feet of. But in chapstick form, it was streamlined in one easy-to-carry tube. Talk about predatory marketing: Dr. Pepper in my pocket? Game over.
I gave up my crack-stick habits around the time I started being able to buy my own (real) Dr. Pepper and cookie dough. But when I was home a few weeks ago, I unearthed the secret stash of tubes I’d hoarded from my older sister fifteen years ago. Those things preserve amazingly well, which was actually disgusting to think about, because I probably consumed 10 whole sticks back in my heady days. Of course, back then, I didn’t have the Internet to turn on when I needed proof that there was someone, somewhere out there, who shared my weird, dark habits.
Today, Bonne-Bell loving girls and other afflicted persons only have to turn as far as Google to find solutions and a supportive community. If you didn’t already find out on your own, “Chapstick Addiction” is real, sort of. Though maybe not so much eating it (I am weird, but a whole bunch of YouTube videos prove I’m not the only one). At first, I thought websites like Lipbalmanonymous.com and Chapstickaddiction.org were just a couple of poorly designed humor sites. But they actually seem genuine. Lip Balm Anonymous is especially earnest in its discussion of the…condition (?):
“By the definition, we are addicted. We use (or used) the substance habitually, often not realizing we were actually applying it since it was such a daily routine. Anyone who has tried to quit can readily attest that when you stop using, your lips become negatively affected for several days or weeks. The physiological dependency is there!”
Can’t argue with that. I remember the scratchy, sore itch that came after devouring a Watermelon Lip Smacker, and that urge to go for the Strawberry Banana right away. Like I said, heady days. Thankfully, the website offers a variation of the familiar 12-step approach to recovery. Maybe I was lucky to have a sister who stole them from me, after all?
Do you have unhealthy chapstick habits? Or any other seemingly innocent addictions that you discovered a community for online?
Picture of chapsticks [via]
Angelina and Brad [via]
