SMEAR CAMPAIGN: What’s all this talk about lip balm addiction?

The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) March 3, 2003 | Richard Chin ST. PAUL, Minn. – We’re talking to Linda Wiedmaier about whether she could stop cold turkey from using lip balm when she announces that the conversation is starting to make her lips feel uncomfortable.

“They really feel dry,” she says over the telephone from her office in Kansas City, Mo. go to web site cold sore remedies

You’re going to put on some lip balm now?

“I want to,” she admits. “OK, I’m going to.” We hear an oily metallic rasp – a jar of Carmex being unscrewed.

Ahh, the rush.

Lip balm addiction: It’s an urban legend, an Internet myth. There’s nothing addictive about lip balm, insist manufacturers and doctors.

And yet, there are people like Wiedmaier who smear their lips so compulsively that they – or their friends and family – wonder if they have a Blistex jones, if they’ve got Suzy Chap Stick on their backs, if they’ve slid down the slippery slope from social balming to Carmex dependency.

“What is supposed to heal cracked lips, lip balm, turns out to be a form of lip crack,” according to Wiedmaier.

The 43-year-old marketing representative estimates that she applies lip balm 20 to 30 times a day. Talking, driving, eating, sleeping. They’re all opportunities to take a hit.

“I put a container of Chap Stick on the table beside my dessert fork,” she says. “I will probably apply it maybe three times in a meal.” She puts it on before she goes to bed and reaches for it again if she wakes up in the middle of the night.

“That’s the absolute most critical time,” agrees Eric Trettel, a native Minnesotan now living in Kearney, Neb. The heavy-duty Carmex user says he can’t go to sleep without a coating of balm. He would rather go to bed without brushing his teeth. “I know I sound like some kind of junkie.” Hard balmers can’t imagine life without lubricated lips. They get edgy if they don’t have a container near them at all times. They’re uneasy when they run low on their favorite brand. They cache balm containers like squirrels hiding nuts.

“I probably have three kinds in my purse right now. Yes, I do,” says Minneapolis resident Kathryn Selmo.

Julia Bohnen, a horticulturalist at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, says she stations Blistex tubes at her work desk, in her wallet, in her living room, in her kitchen, in her bedroom, in her home office, in her car and in her fanny pack.

“I almost can’t have too many of them,” she says. “If there was some world [lip balm] crisis, I might start hoarding it.” Trettel says his ever-present container of Carmex once ruined a set of family portraits. “The Carmex tin looked like a hockey puck in my front pocket.” “If I find myself somewhere without some sort of balm and can’t bum some from someone – such as when I’m driving alone – I suffer anxiety and obsess over my lips, which feel like they’re on the verge of completely shriveling up,” Wiedmaier says.

That’s when balm users resort to desperate measures, like applying hand lotion to their mouths.

Trettel once had to call a cab and go on a lip balm hunt when he couldn’t get a fix at the hotel where he was staying.

“If I ran out of Chap Stick, I would dig [into the container] with a toothpick to get whatever was left,” says Jim Zuleger, a St. Paul law student and recovering balm user. site cold sore remedies

Feeding the idea that you can get hooked on lip balm is the Lip Balm Anonymous Web site (www.kevdo.com/lipbalm), “the world’s leading lib balm addiction Web site.” Kevin Crossman admits that he started the Web site in 1995 as a tongue-in-cheek take on the urban legend of lip balm addiction. But he believes there’s truth behind the humor.

“It’s certainly not heroin,” he says. But “to say it’s a nonexistent phenomenon is not true, either.” Doing balm can draw ridicule, heavy users report.

“Instead of causing concern among my friends and family, my addiction only serves to amuse them,” Wiedmaier says.

“An ex-boyfriend used to say I was addicted,” Bohnen says. “He hated the taste of [Carmex]. That was a problem for him.” “There’ve been times when I’ve thought this is kind of stupid,” Trettel says of his Carmex use. “But it costs me 40 cents a month. What’s the incentive for me to get rid of it?” Crossman says he’s never heard from balm companies. But at least two of them address the issue of supposed addiction on their Web sites.

“There is no such thing as physical addiction to lip balm,” assures Blistex (www.blistex.com) in its FAQ page.

Under the page titled “Myths,” Carmex maker Carma Laboratories (www.carma-labs.com) says its product contains no addictive ingredients, doesn’t cause cancer and doesn’t contain ground-up fiberglass or harmful acid.

Such rumors apparently haven’t hurt sales. “We’re experiencing nice growth,” said Paul Woelbing, grandson of Carmex inventor Alfred Woelbing.

According to one survey of supermarkets, drugstores and discount stores, excluding Wal-Mart, Americans spent $281 million on lip balm and cold sore remedies in the 12 months ending last October. That’s up nearly 8 percent from the previous year.

“I think it’s not an addiction, but it’s a habit,” said Dr. Anna Guanche, a University of Minnesota dermatologist. Heavy users get used to having well-moistened lips and may feel uncomfortable unless their lips are coated with something.

But lip skin normally isn’t that moist, according to Brad Rodu, an oral pathologist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He’s not saying don’t use lip balm. But “don’t get it into your head that [lips] need to be wet all the time,” he says.

Guanche says lip balms can provide valuable protection as a sunscreen, especially for men. She says men have higher rates of squamous cell cancer on their lips than women. That may be because women use lipstick, which often contains sun-blocking zinc oxide.

Some of the ingredients in a lip balm like Carmex – menthol, camphor, phenol and salicylic acid – cause a pleasurable tingling or cooling sensation. But they also can irritate the lips of some people, Guanche says. Once the oily part of the lip balm wears off, the lips feel dry and irritated and users want to reapply.

Guanche also says lip balm may cause people to lick their lips. The saliva washes off the lip balm and the natural oils in the skin, drying it out. That again may lead users to get into a cycle of putting on more lip balm.

In a news release issued by his school, Rodu cautions that, in rare cases, balms and lip licking may create a crust that traps bacteria or fungus.

Something like that apparently happened to Zuleger. He went one smear over the line in the spring of 2001, when his lips started to get irritated and swollen. Switching brands of balm didn’t help. His bad lip trip ended only after he gave up balm cold turkey.

“Now, I pretty much refuse to put anything on my lips,” he says.

Richard Chin