As close friends of mine, you’ll know I have been battling a devastating addiction for many years now. A horrible, destructive dependency on snifters, which has alienated my family, cost me my livelihood and brought me to the very brink of financial insolvency.
The good news is that I’m making progress on kicking this disgusting habit. Unfortunately, as every addict knows, weaning yourself off will only take you so far. Sooner or later you have to go cold turkey. But if I try that, I might just never breathe again. I need some other breathing aid to see me over the difficult transition to snifterlessness. I need snifter methodone.
The recommendation I got from a professional medical person was a saline sinus swasher (possibly not its official name, I can’t remember). I gave it a go yesterday. Let me tell you what it’s like.
- The first thing that happens is you get some warm water in a squeezy bottle, and then you add the sachet of powdery stuff to it and give it a shake. Then you tip your head forward over the sink, plug the bottle up your nose, and give it a squeeze. A steady stream of warm water is shoved up your nosel.
- The next thing that happens is that the sensation of the water heading up your breathing holes gives you the instinctive feeling that you might be drowning and you panic a bit. Then you swallow, which opens up the tubes between your nose and your ears, and all the warm liquid goes into your ears.
- You stop squeezing the bottle and have a small coughing fit. The warm watery stuff is coming out of your nose and your mouth and your ears and probably your eyes. You can’t see. Everything is awful.
- Deciding it can’t be all that bad, you compose yourself, stick the bottle up your other nosel, and have another squirt. The same thing happens, but in the other direction, and this time you resist the urge to swallow. Jets of warm, snotty water ooze from all areas of your face. You feel soiled.
- Having done all of this you wipe yourself down and wait to see if the new treatment has rendered your nose breathable without resorting to the wicked temptation of the snifters.
- You spend the next three hours barely able to breathe.
There are 60 sachets of weird powder stuff so I can use this thing several times a day, but so far, I haven’t yet had a second go. Ditching the snifters is going really well.
