Brown teeth make good friends…
PART 1
We exited the bus and speedily manoeuvred past wobbling figures and through swarms of brightly coloured raincoats and umbrellas. To escape the wind-driven rain, we decided to make our plans for the night inside a crowded kiosk. Repeated exposure to the cold breeze had sobered me up. Noticing this, my friend promptly went over to the counter to buy me snus. As he handed me the round tin of *Epok No. 21*, ‘extra strong’, he tauntingly suggested that I might have grown too soft for snus during my time in England. Without hesitation, I conspicuously placed two white pouches between my gum and my upper lip. Vanity soon gave way to perturbing stinging followed by nausea and vertigo. I sank down to the heaving floor and spent the next ten minutes clutching a guardrail in a vain effort to anchor my surroundings.
As cultural material, snus induces emotional and cognitive states by being seen, smelled, touched, and tasted. Moreover, any sensation inevitably finds itself dependent on an always-already set of conditions, like whether a history of use has made you tolerant to nicotine, or whether or not the people you are with are disposed to respond positively to you using it. However, to someone who has not built up a tolerance, snus, especially of the really strong variety, is likely to involve sensory pain followed by nausea and dizziness as the sensation intensifies, along with a growing unease about the bodily reactions that might follow.
In this vulnerable state, every deed or misdeed, action or inaction, becomes an emotionally potent statement about the level of affection, trust and reciprocity to expect from the people around you. For exactly this reason, snus is exchanged between Norwegian youths and young adults to welcome novices to the ‘party scene’. Like many rites of passage, snus marks the symbolic end of childlike ‘naivety’ with a rush of dysphoria, followed by acts of conviviality. Given that self-disclosure is an important precondition for emotional intimacy and social penetration (Altman and Taylor, 1973), a nicotine shock can help forge social bonds by disrupting the ability to effectively manage one’s public image in social role-play. Habitual users typically respond in like manner by disclosing how snus made them react the first time they tried it. Not only does this accentuate feelings of embarrassment and humiliation, but it is also reveal that the ‘ideal partygoer’ is a phantasmagoria borne out of impression management and years of learning and experience. The ‘gift’ that is snus ‘comes together’ in the *return* display of personal ‘outpouring’ and recognition. The novice can respond by remaining ‘porous’ after regaining his or her composure, or by withdrawing from the encounter and the possibility of further social integration. Either way, the person is forever changed by the memory of the experience. From this point onwards, she will be one of those who ‘tried it’, forever harbouring the potential to recall and relate to others who are similarly affected whether by snus or some other mind-altering substance.
Snus is shared and given away for the purpose of forging social bonds, even amongst experienced users. My friend bought me the tin of *Epok No. 21* upon noticing that my mood had turned mellow since pre-drinks. This act of recognition was valuable only insofar as it was oriented towards the actualisation of social intensities that already existed *in potentia*. First of all, the gift-giving itself entrenches a logic of generalised reciprocity which suspends the expectation of immediate return between alternating givers and receivers, making it easier to respond to one another’s immediate needs in the future. Secondly, heightened emotional and social responsiveness within the friend group is important for justifying the group’s continued existence. For example, it is reasonable to assume that a dance circle whose mood and vitality have been elevated by the sharing of intoxicants will attract other clubbers to approach and join in on the ‘good vibes’. By the same token, I find that when paired with alcohol, a moderate nicotine high helps me ‘think less’ — to exit my self-enclosed self and surrender to the multiplicity of the dancefloor – and synchronise more with the bodily movements of the people with whom I am dancing. The more integrated a group has become, the greater the emotional contagion, and the group persists as an open and hospitable arrangement only because there is a strong will within the group to engage in interpersonal caretaking to allieviate sad passions. Like so, entitativity is kept from turning into a liability that threatens to obstruct or debase social intercourse.
Contributed by AdrianSjøvold on 08/02/2023
