- So for the last four, maybe four and a half years,
I've been addicted to nasal spray.
(sniffles)
(breathes heavily)
And a lot of people don't understand
what it's like to be addicted to nasal spray.
Now I realize so many people are addicted,
and basically it's not like, (sighs)
it's really hard to describe.
It's not like I need a hit,
it's not like I'm searching for one,
but then I'm like yes, it absolutely is like I need a hit.
So what has happened is
the purpose of a nasal spray, it's a decongestant,
so when you're sick, your nose, oh no,
it closes up and then to be able to breathe,
you just spray some of the nasal spray in
and it'll force the blood out of your nose.
So the blood sort of comes in and congests your nose
and this formula sort of relieves all the pressure
that builds up in your sinuses.
So basically I started taking Dimetapp and I can't stop,
and and other brand relieves the pressure in my nose.
Anywhere between two to four times I day, I need this,
like I need this to breathe.
Right now my nose is blocked.
Now I can't actually sleep at all
if my nose is like blocked or there's all this pressure,
I just can't sleep, so I need this to breathe
and I need this to sleep.
You're not supposed to take this for more than three days
at a time because it is highly addictive.
So four and a half years later, here I am,
I'm still addicted to this.
So I went to the chemist and I asked the chemist
and they gave me a solution to spray up my nose,
but it doesn't do anything, it's just like spraying it
up a completely blocked nose and then trying.
It's like a saline solution, so that didn't work.
So then I tried diluting this with the saline solution
and weaning myself off, but I just inevitably
didn't do it properly and I couldn't do it.
So anyway, I was googling and I just stumbled across
this thing that I've, it's just arrived in the mail.
Been a couple of good reviews for it,
but it's called Rhinostat.
And no one's recommended it to me,
this isn't a brand that's approached me,
this is just something that I want to try
because I read a lot about it
and people were able to wean themselves off.
It comes with a chart and it basically,
it's a spray solution.
So how this works is it's quite clever.
Here's the solution, so this is the stuff
that I'm addicted to basically,
and what you're doing here is this is the dropper bottle.
So you put a couple drops in your nose
and then as you use it,
it comes to a certain point
where you fill it back up with this sort of saline solution.
There's a fill line and there's a diluting line.
So when this line gets to there,
you fill it up with the saline solution.
And then when it gets back down to there,
you fill it up with the solution again.
So as you're using this, it gets more and more diluted.
All right, so (sniffles) I can't breathe now,
so it says put one to two (gasps) drops in my nose.
How do I know?
(sniffling)
(laughs)
Okay so then that will hopefully clear my nose up.
I really hope this works because (sniffles)
(laughs) my nose has been bleeding really severely.
Like just chunks of blood are coming out,
and I'm really concerned because some people have said
that they have to get their sinuses packed,
which sounds terrifying.
It's where they shove gauze up your sinus
and they like (groans)
oh no, I don't know, I didn't want to ask any further,
but that was enough for me to go right,
I need to get myself off this.
Then they like rip your sinuses out, oh my god.
And so if I have to go in for sinus surgery,
it's just gonna feel awful and I don't want to do that.
So I may as well get myself off this heinous addiction.
So it's only been 24 hours, and I don't know if you
can see this, but see how I've got two lines.
So one is where the solution should come to,
and the other one is where um,
sort of you need to refill from.
So I've used, it's taken me a day
and I've used quite a lot of drops.
Like when my nose got blocked,
I used this much like I would the nasal spray,
and so it's been really fine. (laughs)
But I'm only one day in.
So now what I do is I add this saline solution,
and I fill this back up to that top line.
(gasps) Jesus Christ, almost spilled it all.
This is gonna be the interesting part,
whether or not it takes a long time to open my nose up.
That's one thing I noticed,
I mean, the initial solution I'm assuming is undilated.
Undilated?
Undiluted.
What does dilated mean?
Isn't that when you're giving birth?
So when I first got it, it was undiluted, I'm assuming,
so now the real test begins
whether or not this is going to (sniffs)
allow me to breathe.
I have to remember to take this everywhere I go.
This is literally my lungs for the next 40 days,
and I'm nervous because I will forget it,
and if I forget it, it's gonna take every ounce of strength
not to go and use this.
Because it's just so uncomfortable, the feeling,
it just that like I can't breathe,
and then I sound like this (breathing heavily)
and I'm breathing through my mouth,
and then I get like dry mouth,
and then I'm constantly licking my lips.
(smacks lips) And then I'm doing this,
it's really, it's so annoying.
One day down, 39 to go.
Okay so we're at day six,
and you know what, I've actually found this stuff
to be amazing, my nose, I feel,
I'm not completely better, but I just feel like
the addiction that I've had,
it's almost pretty much gone.
I'm now down to I think it's like 70% saline solution
and 30% of the actual stuff I'm addicted to.
I've noticed, the only side effects I've noticed,
which I don't know correlate to taking this spray,
I've broken out in like, I've got like pimples
on my body that I don't normally get,
and then also I cannot sleep to save my life.
Like for the last three nights, I've gone to bed
at about 3:30 in the morning, just like wide awake,
and then I've tried everything.
So I'm hoping that's correlation to the Rhinostat stuff
and that way when I do get off it,
I can go back to sleeping because I'm so tired.
But all in all, it's been great.
I haven't really needed to use the drips at all
during the day, and I think the only reason
I need them at night time is because my room
is a bit dusty, it's dirty, I've done a big clean
and everything but um,
if I have a fan on me, I find that my nose closes up.
So I use it then because I can't turn the fan off
because it is like 40 degrees here in Melbourne.
So I'm gonna go far, it's a week in, I found it really easy.
There was a moment where I thought I lost the spray bottle
and I was like flipping tables because I thought
that's it, I can't do this, but no.
It turns out um, Jesus it is raining very heavily,
it turns out it's fine, I've actually,
this has not been a struggle for me whatsoever.
The only thing I need to do is just remember
to take that bottle with me wherever I go.
I find that sometimes I'll feel like I need to use it
but the pressure isn't severe,
so I'm like you know what I don't need it, I don't need it.
So I'm actually not using it
as much as I would the Dimetapp.
So if you're thinking about doing this,
it's like, it literally cost me 80 bucks
and they shipped it from the US.
I strongly recommend a week in, we're all good so far.
Oh my god, I had a pretty rough sleep last night.
We're about eight or nine days in, I'm so tired.
And I'm getting sick, I think the insomnia (laughs)
and the not sleeping has made my body shut down a bit,
so this sinus, this one's fine, no mucus in this one,
but this one I'm just like blowing my nose continually
and all this gross clear (gags) mucus is coming out.
Because I can't use the spray to like relieve any pressure,
there's a lot of pressure build up on this side,
and last night, sleeping was quite hard last night.
Still, this process has not been as difficult
as I thought it would.
When I was using the nasal spray,
the pressure was just so intense when I stopped using it,
but with this sort of method, I have not felt
that intense pressure that I thought I would.
So I'm still gonna say this is a completely doable task.
Like in no way has this been
as hard as I thought it would be.
My mom bought me a neti pot,
so I'm gonna do that instead of use the drops
to sort of maybe clear my nose out.
(gags)
Oh my god, oh whoa.
Oh that feel really good.
Oh my god, it feels really good.
(coughs)
Okay, all right, and we're done here.
So it's been about two months
since I did that neti pot,
and I can tell you (gasps)
♪ I'm free from the nasal spray addiction ♪
♪ Yeah yeah ♪
I'm not really good at coming up with fun jingles,
but I'm completely off nasal spray
and I have been for ages.
So literally when I say maybe a week and a half,
two weeks after using the neti pot,
I just stopped using the Rhinostat
and I haven't used it since.
My insomnia went, I got better,
everything's great and I just can't believe
that that whole process was so much easier
and not as scary as I thought.
Going into it, I was nervous that I'd have to withstand
just unbearable amounts of pressure on my nose,
and that the drops wouldn't relieve anything,
but even as I was weaning myself off it,
it takes a bit longer for your nose to open up,
but you're still able to breathe.
Like I was still able to breathe
throughout that whole process.
I honestly thought I'd have my sinuses
ripped out of my face, because like
before I started there was hunks of blood.
I'd just blow my nose and like just fists full of blood
would just come out, and I thought to myself, oh,
I probably should do something about that.
I do have to say a big thank you to The Breath of Life.
They sent me some products and they're sort of
all natural herbal blends, it's an Australian company,
and this is like a breathe easy compact.
So in it it's just like mesh (sniffs)
oh but it just smells like eucalyptus,
and there's some herbs in here (sniffs)
and it's just a natural remedy
if you do feel really blocked up.
Oh (sniffs) and they sent me some oils
to put in my diffuser as well
so it makes the room smelly eucalyptusy.
I did a big clean-up around the house,
and look at all the bottles I found.
These are all bottles that I'd hid just around the home,
at work, just because like I was so reliant
on this to be able to breathe through my nose.
Now I just have to work on my addiction of cheese.
Slow down on my cheese addiction.
I love cheese so much, cheese is just the best.
Sometimes I have a whole cheese platter for dinner,
and I'm not talking a small selection
of three cheeses and a quince,
I'm talking like five full like wheels of cheese
and quince and like the pistachio walnut dip,
and then sometimes oh, like there's this really nice
like brown crackers you can get
that have got berries in them, they're really lovely.
Oh, pate, I've gotten onto pate.
Obviously because I'm on a health kick at the moment
and I'm doing Jenny Craig, I've really limited
eating cheese and now I don't have it as much.
It's just, I need my cheese.
So small steps, got myself off nasal spray
and now I'll try and get myself off cheese.