I didn't plan for this to happen.
When I started popping an occasional Altoid a few years back, I never thought it would become an addiction. Heck, I've always claimed to be immune to addiction. OK, there is that little "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" problem -- but that's it.But now, here I am at my first AA -- Altoids Anonymous -- meeting. We have one thing in common: lethally minty-fresh breath.
There are all types of people here: corporate suits, homemakers, blue-collar workers, grandmothers. There's even a teenage girl with barrette-laden hair donning a Korn concert T-shirt. She's shaking, totally jonesin' for her little metal tin of Curiously Strong Peppermints.
One guy stands up to offer salvation: not-so-curiously-strong mints from Certs, Starbucks and even some in an expensive and trendy little tin by Neiman Marcus. He's quickly removed. After all, we're here to bond with other Altoidsholics.
I stand up to tell my story:
I was a Tic Tacs person. You can gulp about 10 of those at one time, and the container is easier to carry. You can buy those packs of 10 for a couple of bucks. A few years ago, a friend was carrying an Altoids tin around with him. He was without vehicle, and I was his primary means of transportation. One day, he left a nearly full tin in my glove compartment. I popped one.
Wow. The sensation from the minty fumes as they infiltrated the nasal passage and the gullet. It was a brief rush that I can only compare with . . . well, the time I accidentally caught a whiff from a bottle of video-head cleaner. The tin was emptied in a few weeks.
Now I buy Altoids in two-packs, about one package every three weeks or so. Curiously, one Altoid is no longer strong enough -- I must throw back four or five at a time, and do this several times a day. I think the epidermal layer on the roof of my mouth is slowly disintegrating. I had a friend calculate my increasing immunity to their power; he estimates that, by July, I'll need to pop 19 at a time to achieve my desired level of breath freshness.
Granted, lately I've been doing the wintergreen flavor, which is a little less potent than the original. Still, it does its job.
If -- heaven forbid -- I run out at work, I bum from my co-workers. It's OK, because they bum off me, too. (Of course, they only take one. I grab three or four, five or six.)
I carry the tin in my back left pocket. One pair of jeans is starting to show a faded outline of a rectangle with rounded corners, just like the circle that cowboys get on their Wranglers from the can of chewing tobacco. This means I may need to buy new jeans as often as I do Altoids tins. Now that's addiction.