Nose spray creates an addict

By Jessica Pickens

“Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air?” sing Jordan Sparks and Chris Brown in their hit “No Air.” But when I sing or hear these lyrics I don’t think about lost love, I think of not being able to breathe without nose spray.
Neo-synephrine. Afrin. Dristan. I’ve used them all.

Yes, I am what some people might call a “nose spray addict.”  Though some people might giggle at how silly that may sound, nose spray is indeed something people find increasingly hard to stop using once they start.

The active ingredients in nose spray that allow for relief are phenlephrine, xylometazoline and oxymetazoline. When a person is congested, the blood vessels in his or her nose are swollen and dilated. Nose spray shrinks the swollen vessels and allows for the stuffed up individual to breathe again, according to How Stuff Works.

However, when continuously used, the membranes in your nose will remain dilated until nose spray is taken. This is what has happened to me.

I probably started using nose spray back in early high school and continued to use it on a daily basis until now.

No, I don’t get any sort of high from nose spray. It isn’t pot or crack or whatever drugs people do. Nose spray simply offers temporary relief in order to breathe.

One day, while working at Book-A-Million, a co-worker talked about someone he knew who was addicted to nose spray, and it ate a hole through the lining of her nose. Needless to say, this startled me, and since then, I’ve tried to take steps to quit. Its easier said than done.

Unlike smoking, you can’t just quit cold turkey.  With smoking, you can replace the stick in your mouth with a sucker or a piece of gum. With nose spray, you just can’t breathe, which makes daily life incredibly hard.

Many of my friends say the addiction is just psychological. This may indeed be true, but for the time being, I need to find a way to dump the Dristan and breathe fresh air with non-dilated nostrils.