Inside the Strange World of Lip Balm Addiction

This article was written by Kelsey Miller and repurposed with permission from Refinery29.

Kerri’s crisis hit in the middle of a meeting. Until then, nobody knew she had a problem. “I could put some on very quickly and they wouldn’t notice,” she told me. But in reality, she was using lip balm up to 300 times per day.

Lip balm “addiction” is frequently debated in dermatology and psychology. Although it’s not a clinically defined addiction, there’s evidence of what might cause lip balm’s overuse on the skin-care side of things. It’s true that certain ingredients used in some brands of lip balm can actually dry out your lips and create a cycle of dryness and application, but for some people, the physical symptoms trigger a psychological reaction that can spiral out of control. In an online community called Lip Balm Anonymous, which supports users seeking help to quit, lip balm is treated as though it were a controlled substance. The comments and message boards are filled with embarrassment, anxiety, and anger:

“I’ve been fired from my job at the call center. Every time I pick up the phone, I smear Chapstick on my face and the telephone. Struggling with this problem for all of my life has led me to accept that a day without [lip balm] could kill me. After trying to go cold turkey last week, I found myself running to a store at 2 a.m., unable to bear it any longer.”

“If I don’t use it, I become extremely uncomfortable and can’t think about anything else. I make sure I always have it on me…I worry about what it would be like if there were some kind of event that…disrupts distribution and availability of goods.”

“It’s so bad that I will stuff Chapstick in my bra when I don’t have pockets so that I can have some on me at all times…I’d like to be free, but I don’t know if I can handle it.”

Burt’s Bees Original Peppermint was Kerri Doherty’s preferred brand when her lip balm usage went off the rails.

“I remember putting it on my lips and putting the tube down. I found myself absentmindedly reaching for the tube later,” she says. “It was so bizarre. I thought, ‘Wait, I just put on Chapstick multiple times in the last few minutes and that’s all I can remember.’ I was suddenly aware I had this problem.”

Kerri never had an issue with substance abuse. As a teenager, she avoided drugs and alcohol, but she recognized that something about her lip balm usage wasn’t entirely normal: “If it became absorbed into my lips even a little bit, I would have to reapply. If I didn’t, I would start licking, licking, licking my lips. I felt anxious and sick. It was all I could think about until I got some more.”

Kerri kept multiple tubes with her, constantly in fear of running out. “When I put it on my lips, this orgasmic wave washed over me, but it was a shameful orgasmic feeling,” she says.

At the time, Kerri worked at an advertising agency and managed to hide the behavior from coworkers by sneaking into the bathroom or pretending to tie her shoe. One day, during a stressful client presentation, Kerri’s lip balm ran out—and she panicked.

Click HERE to read the rest of Kerri’s story from Refinery29!

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