Equally scary is the fact that these women failed to see that Lip Balm Anonymous is a joke, a tongue-in-cheek takeoff on Alcoholics Anonymous and its countless 12-step addiction spinoffs. It exists only on the Internet. There are no LBA meetings, no books, no bumper stickers. The self-test is basically AA's with "lip balm" substituted for "alcohol," and "coating" for "drinking." ("Do you occasionally coat heavily after a disappointment, quarrel or rough day?" ) Nonetheless, 75 percent of the estimated 30,000 testimonies founder Kevin C. received last year were serious.

Clearly the LBA site has touched a nerve. What the site doesn't do is answer the million-dollar question: Are lip balms addictive? Is there some biological reason why using a lip balm makes you need to keep using it? Kevin C. believes the answer is yes. Having spent years never leaving home without my Vaseline, I can almost believe it.

Mary Roach Mary Roach's column appears in Salon Health & Body every other Friday. + Biography + Archives

Kevin C. -- by day a mild-mannered information specialist in Mountain View, Calif. -- has referred me to Charles Zugerman, an associate professor of dermatology at Northwestern University in Chicago. Zugerman is a consultant to the lip balm industry. While admittedly this may impart a certain bias, it also makes him one of the few medically qualified individuals with lip balm experience. I have presented Zugerman with one of the theories put forth on the LBA site, one that seemed to make good sense: "The wax in lip balms causes the moisture receptors in your lips to send a stop signal to the moisture-releasing agents in the skin of the lips." In other words, since you're giving the lips an outside source of lubricant, they stop making their own.

"There are no 'moisture receptors' in the lips," says Zugerman flatly. Nor, he goes on to say, do the lips have moisture-releasing agents. "Lips don't have sebaceous glands." He senses my dismay. "Other than that, it's a good theory."

Another theory is that there's some ingredient that's drying out the lips, creating the need for ever more goo. Recovering balm-aholic Lisa "I'm very proud to say I'm able to go for six to eight hours without using" M. thinks it's the alcohol. Zugerman points out that most cosmetics and toiletries have some chemical formulation of alcohol or another, but that it's typically not the drying kind (ethyl alcohol). Often it's steryl alcohol, an emulsifier added to keep the ingredients from separating.

Kevin C.'s theory is that it's camphor and menthol, a duo that appears in Blistex, Carmex and other "medicated" lip balms. The two are known in the industry as "counter irritants." It's cure by distraction: Menthol and camphor create a cooling, tingling sensation that takes your mind off the burning and stinging of chapped lips. No one I spoke to -- not the FDA, not Zugerman, not Howard Maibach, author of the Textbook of Cosmetic Dermatology -- knew of any data to suggest that either substance was drying. Ditto phenol, a mild anesthetic that often turns up in lip balm ingredient lists.

Next page | Can you be addicted to Carmex?