“I threw Zyn when he said,” said Mr. Robertson. “I was glad,” great, it doesn’t matter. “”
He was not convinced to leave later at night when he came across a Reddit Group from another heavy user Zyn, who described similar symptoms. He reached out and both started talking, said Mr. Robertson, who has now left for three months without Zyn.
The post was written by Don Hood, 41, one of the three volunteers moderators that Mr Mchugh attacked last year to help. Every week, Mr. Hood spends hours out of his work as a real estate manager in North Carolina when he logs in with strangers from the group through direct messages, texts and sometimes telephone calls.
Mr. Hood said he took over the “paternal” role with many men of the group at the age of 20.
“I give younger hell and some hard love,” said Mr. Hood, who left Zyn about a year ago. In real life he added, “You don’t sit there and don’t talk about your problems with other boys, especially with something everyone else uses.”
Encouraging the group, along with repeated subsequent reports by Mr. Hood, is enough to help the young person overcome social pressure and physical move of nicotine. But not always. Mr. Hood sounded a little loser when he raised an eighteen -year -old who stopped about a week after he had a heart pounding.
“They all use them around him, so he uses them again,” Mr. Hood said.
Life after zyn
No matter how many support messages they exchange with other anonymous redditors, those who have left Zyn must still navigate a more treacherous area where they cannot hide behind the user name: real life.
Devon Verro, 26 years old, an optician in Denver, struggles with the fact that while she has left Zyn, most of her family members remain nicotine. When she visited her father last month, he made “sweet”, but not a very successful effort to hide his zyns and cigarettes before she arrived.
