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Watching the CBS morning show yesterday (not by choice), I had the misfortune to find out about a new menace to society. If the general state of America, or my life for that matter, wasn’t enough to make it difficult to sleep the knowledge CBS news dropped yesterday was enough to ensure months of insomnia. Was it a realistic look at the American economy, and where it is headed? No. An update on our rapidly disappearing civil liberties? Worse. War coverage, with in depth analysis of the damage to ourselves and others? Sorry, if it were only that simple. This new nightmare has the power to destroy individuals, tear families apart and further widen the hole in the American social fabric. Can you handle the truth?! I’m about to drop it, hardcore style, so stop reading here if you want to spare yourself the horror.

Chapstick Addiction.

You read that right. That innocent tube sitting in your pocket that isn’t saying you are happy to see me is a dynamo of destruction. Heroin’s cute little sister. A gateway drug we dispense freely to our children. A salve that will steal any hope of salvation!

It got me thinking. I was recently in Manhattan, it was cold and windy. I had lost my chapstick and was too lazy or absent minded to get some. After three days of this, what was one of the first things I did when I returned home? I didn’t finish my novel. I didn’t make crazy love. I didn’t even check my email, which I was unable to access while gone! No, brothers and sisters, I went and grabbed that goddamn tube of chapstick and went overboard applying it. The first step to recovery is recognizing you have a problem.

Thankfully there are many resources on the web. Two relevant stories are here and here. The original, Lip Balm Anonymous, has many collected on one page. Links on the home page include:

-Chap Stick Conspiracy

-Sex Sells

-Lip Balm Drug Connection

-The Nightmare Never Ends

-Addict Denial Page

The page also mentions that the site was rated #327 in the book 505 Unbelievably Stupid Web Pages, but thankfully the author notes LBA is considering taking legal action against the author and publisher of the book. The book that is linked to and has a banner ad. I bet Carmex secretly funded the publication!

I know first hand the nightmare of addiction. I’ve been Straight Edge for over fifteen years, long since it fell out of fashion. As an old, clean Straight Edger, let me tell you–you don’t want to go down this path. It was over two years before I started to feel comfortable in my own skin. Now I find out I was really using, and my drug of choice was chapstick. I’ve been lying to myself all these years.

I was at a party a couple of years ago, and a teacher was hilariously referring to his students as “the Helmet Generation”. He recounted how these kids do nothing without a helmet, eat their shitty lunchables for lunch, play sports where there is no winner to protect esteem and generally are just coddled and soft. This Helmitification, if you will, is spreading across our entire society, and this “chapstick addiction” is as perfect an example as I’m likely to come across.

What are the costs of this addiction? The downside I’ve read is that it costs consumers about one hundred dollars a year. Your habit is stealing a movie and cheap dinner right out from under you! I live in Detroit. It gets very cold here for part of the year. My lips dry out, crack and bleed. That is why I use chapstick. Maybe I am buying into a conspiracy, but it really feels like I’m just putting something on my lips that makes them feel better. It really is an insult to people whose lives have been damaged by the ravages of addiction to lump chapstick usage in with crystal meth.

We are living in a dark time in America. Darker days are on the horizon. If anything, this news story will serve as a marker for a more innocent time. When most of the world is starving we worry about addiction to lip balm. Welcome to the home of the free and the brave. Can I get you a gallon of soda and a triple cheese burger?