This is a product review of on! brand nicotine pouches, 2 mg., citrus.
Immediate: gums burning, taste and texture of sweet broken glass creeping down my throat. I moved the pouch several times in the first couple of minutes.
Six minutes in…nausea, dizziness. I tried to both open my laptop to record this review in case I died AND check the timer on my watch at the same time.
I initially forgot how to do either one. Reaction time slowed. Mild panic.
Nine minutes after insertion: cold hands (this could be due to the nuclear-winter-grade levels of air conditioning levels inside a United States-style office), depersonalization symptoms (Who am I? Where am I? General glancing around, paranoia.)
Vague recollection that this was recommended to me by its gifter as a substitution for coffee and eating, and that he mentioned tech bros are using it “to cut that last percent of body fat.” Due to the broken glass consistency of my mouth, lip, and part of my tongue, paired with the wave of nausea and general panic, I do not, in fact, feel like eating. Which is very unlike me. I also want to lay down. The lights are very bright now. I decide to check my heart rate in case I am having some sort of episode.
I wonder if I will make it to the full 20 minutes with this death pouch up in my lip.
I try to fervently pray that nobody enters my cubicle to witness my fat lip experiment, requiring an explanation.
But I am unable to do anything fervently.
I don’t know how to talk with this thing in, nor do I feel like talking at all. I do not feel the sharpness of nicotine constricting my blood vessels to produce good ideas, as I had hoped.
My heart rate is 64, or normal for me sitting. So the elevation is a hallucination.
Perhaps another benefit of the pouch: you think you’re dying of a heart attack, but in fact you are not.
I touch the pouch with my tongue, and there is a mild salty ( I want to say sandy, but why?) burning.
I recall my gifter telling me that he stretched his use of the pouch to 45 minutes. It is already quite old beyond the date he’d provided it, and I decide to look for an expiration date.
In my last episode with experimental nicotine products, I’d had an eCigarette / vape product break in my mouth, belching the entire contents of its cartridge of nicotine into my mouth.
This broke me of my vaping / e-smoking habit, which I’d undertaken to quit good old fashioned combustion smoking.
So in a way, it worked.
At 1:41 left on the timer, I am speculating on keeping it in longer.
I’d forgotten to check the expiration date. None visible. I do see that the product was manufactured in Sweden, and my mistrust is piqued. And I see that sale is only permitted in the United States, which locks in a conspiracy hypothesis and I vow to investigate further.
Additional noticed unmentioned symptoms: A number of spelling errors produced in the writing of this document. Author made a number of atypical typing errors. For instance, typing ‘symptops’ instead of symptoms and then needing to change it later on.
At several seconds after recommended use, the pouch turns into a gelatinous goo. I put it on my tongue for fear of keeping it in my lip only to dissolve.
By :41 post-recommended-time I spit it out into my hand and look at it. It leaves a slimy, slug-like trail in my palm when I throw it in the trash can.
like broken glass in the mouth…on! brand nicotine pouches. There, I wrote some copy for it.
At 6:21 post-expulsion a colleague stops by my desk and I seem to make appropriate conversation.
I do not throw the other one in the trash can. I note on the side of the container that “Nicotine is an addictive chemical.” I spell chemical wrong while typing this: chamical.
Benefits are unclear.
At ten minutes post-use, the broken glass citrus taste and texture are gone.
This concludes my product review of on! brand nicotine pouches, 2 mg., citrus.
