Happy & Healthy
I am Kalinka and I was addicted to nasal drops
Last night I didn't sleep a wink again. Not even because I was worrying about the state of the world or my own condition, but because of a stuffy nose. Nothing annoys me more than the feeling of not being able to breathe freely, with my own wheezing as a fantastic runner-up on the annoyance scale. Luckily, thank god, praise be to heaven: I found salvation in my toiletry bag. Nasal drops. 0.5% xylometazoline. I love xylometazoline. One spray and it was as if the heavens opened up.
After the little bit of sleep that I had left to enjoy, I was full of wisdom again. A rare moment of clarity that you all get to benefit from, I must say. I'm going to make something public here. And that is this: I am Kalinka and I was addicted to nasal drops for many years. My temporary relapse last night was therefore a dangerous and life-threatening misfortune.
Seriously. I have been addicted to nasal drops for over ten years. I went through at least one bottle of nasal drops (active ingredient 1% xylometazoline – handy to remember that and not the brand name, in case you find yourself without a stash abroad, the horror) per week. At least five pumps a day, in each nostril. And sometimes an extra spray if my nose asked for it. I was going completely crazy from that stuffy nose of mine. But just like with other drugs, you need a little more of this stuff each time to feel good. Or at least normal; you should damn well expect that you can breathe with such a gamble, why else is it there?
”I could tell beautiful stories about it”
With this fun over-the-counter addiction, I was of course a huge amusing addition to any group of friends – a crazy person with a silly quirk. I could tell beautiful stories about it. For example, about that time I was interviewing singer/hottie Craig David and I was really ‘bonding’ over our love for the nasal spray. His assistant walked in during the interview with a new bottle of nasal spray, and he reacted as if the savior had entered the room. I jumped up with joy and exclaimed: “You too?”, after which we wasted a good five minutes of interview time expressing our love for the nasal spray. But I also felt in my gut that pumping my nose full of mucus-thinning agents couldn't really be the intention. And that realization hit me especially hard when I started experiencing severe pain in my nose, sinuses, and around my eye. Stabbing, boy, as if the Sopranos saw gold in the macaroni in my head. And how alone I felt in my addiction. It was a sad time.
And then I started googling. It turned out I wasn't the only one with that silly addiction. Silly me. It even has a name: otrivinism, named after the brand of the most famous nasal drops. If you use those drops for more than a week, the mucous membranes become irritated and sometimes damaged, causing them to remain swollen. And then you need more and more dope to not feel severely short of breath. Stopping that stuff is the advice. But yes, anyone who is also addicted to nasal drops knows that it's not easy to do. I stumbled upon a site of a former addict who was so good at sharing his withdrawal tips with the world (http://www.siepman.nl/neussprayverslaving/). And that helped me get off it.
”I was on the edge of hysterical for two days – and then I broke”
You can stop cold turkey, but I couldn't do that. What my family had to go through then, well, that's something no dog would want a piece of. I was on the edge of hysterical for two days – and then I broke. Failed. A clever boy who has the willpower for this. Another method is to dilute your beloved nasal spray more and more with a pathetic salt spray, until you're only pumping salt spray into your nose. Stopping with that is easy, it seems. Or well, I believe that too, because salt spray doesn't help a damn thing. But the method that helped me get rid of my addiction is withdrawal per nostril. Cold turkey on the left and riding it out with an artificially kept open nostril on the right. And if the left is healed after a week or two, then you struggle on with the withdrawal of the right.
Fortunately, I succeeded. I have now been nasal spray-free for over four years, but I'm not done with the aftershocks yet. Sometimes it feels like the air is ‘coming in too hard’, an extremely unpleasant feeling that I really can't describe any other way. And now and then I have nasal cavity pain, especially when pollen and fluff in the air seem to sharpen everything up again, it seems. Like this week. A week in which my nose is once again old-fashioned stuffy. And then you reach for old acquaintances. Because once a xylometazoline addict, always a xylometazoline addict – it turns out.
Written by Kalinka Hählen
