A Cautionary Tale Against Quitting Zyn—or Anything—Cold Turkey
This story is part of our ‘Habits to Embrace—and Ditch—in 2026’ series. Read the whole list here.
A couple months ago, on a Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, I sat cross-legged on a shit-stained sidewalk, staring at my hands, uncertain of where I was, or even if I was.
According to my brain, I knew I was in Echo Park, the LA neighborhood that’s home to Dodgers Stadium. But whether it was the real Echo Park or a simulation, a convincing-enough mix of new highrises and grungy cottages in imitation of Echo Park, I wasn’t sure. For several hours, I’d been haunted by yellow-tinted hallucinations, sweeping in and out of my mind like searchlights, which told me I might’ve slipped between worlds. The street was quiet and empty. I knew I shouldn’t stand, let alone go anywhere, in case the situation got worse. Meanwhile, the idea of running into somebody, having a conversation, was terrifying. I touched the ground with my hands, unmoved by the dog shit, and wondered if maybe this square of concrete was my new home.
Perhaps the oddest part: I wasn’t on drugs. I soon learned that was the problem.
Quitting a bad habit cold turkey—going from regular intake to zero—can sound like a good idea on paper. It suggests backbone, a firm spirit. Especially now, in January, turning the page from bad to good, it has a clarity that’s invigorating. Telling yourself, I’m done drinking. Or, no more sugar. Or, I’ll never look at hentai porn again. Underneath it all, an unconscious voice murmuring, finally, irreversibly, I’ll be a person who…then insert appropriate clause here: my partner desires; my mother would approve of; can look at himself in the mirror.
In my case, it backfired. It was a lack of drugs—one specific drug that happens to be among the most popular on the planet and has recently made a comeback in the United States in the form of tiny sachets—that I believe caused what my therapist later described as a severe panic attack and I’ve taken to call a withdrawal-induced, full-on freak-out.
Zyns are tiny nicotine pouches you tuck inside your lip for a quick hit. Crucially, and likely crucial to their popularity, they’re thought to be less harmful than cigarettes or vapes for the fact they contain no tobacco. The Swedish brand arrived in the US in 2014. Between 2019 and 2022, unit sales of Zyn grew more than sixfold, and Philip Morris went on to acquire Zyn’s parent company for roughly $16 billion. If you read GQ, this is likely familiar territory. Though frankly, if you’ve glanced lately at a sidewalk around a college campus, or inside the duffel bags of folks at the gym, you know how omnipresent they’ve become.
I started using Zyn the year it became available in the US. Originally, my camping buddy and I would tuck one in during the long drive from Los Angeles to the Sierra Nevada. After that, I’d have one with a beer at a party, or with coffee when I was sitting down to write. Zyn’s format wasn’t so unfamiliar. In my early twenties, a Swedish friend turned me on to Snus, Zyn’s progenitor: little pouches filled with tobacco, similar to the Kodiak we stuffed in our lips during high school. Still, with Snus or dip, you were forever spitting out brown saliva, with the specter of gum cancer in the back of your mind. That’s where Zyn proved a breakthrough: nicotine sans tobacco, and no dip can in your hand.
