We were soldiers once… and dipped.
The FDA gave the go-ahead this week for Phillip Morris to openly market Zyn nicotine pouches, a move that could be the final bell for a staple of the Global War on Terror era: the spitter.
Zyn and other brands of nicotine pouches have swept across the military in recent years as the time-waster, sleep-beater and on-duty vice of choice among a generation of service members, often replacing chewing or dipping tobacco
The change is, according to experts, at least somewhat healthier for troops (though, come on kids, don’t start.) And the packets are, undeniably less gross.
But with the changing of the (mouth) guard, comes the end of an era for our generation. Our wars were fueled by dip — both combat and every other endless duty that came with it — and spitters were mandatory gear.
Spitters. The empty bottles — usually plastic, often clear — that 20 years of GWOT soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen used to dispose of the ‘spit’ of chewing tobacco. Regardless of one’s personal stance on dipping, for a generation, it was part of the landscape of service, from training to the barracks to deployment.
The days of Pvt. Snuffy accidentally taking a swig from a leftover spitter may be numbered.
Downrange during the GWOT era, dip bottles were ubiquitous — where an empty water bottle was consumed and crushed in sacrifice to that most sacred oath, ‘hydrate or die,’ they were born again as spitters. They’d litter the underside of cots, or fall into the cracks between wooden floorboards and the canvas walls of tents. More often than not they’d rock around the floor of Humvees, MRAPs or MAT-Vs, depending on the era. They, and the once-dry dip, that filled them, were there at every briefing and were waiting once their users returned from patrol. Where the post-9/11 generation went, tobacco came with it, and that meant spitters.
My memories are probably similar to so many from our generation. Before arriving at his unit, a young Pvt. Skovlund made the mistake of jumping from a plane with a big ‘ol dip in his lip during Airborne School. Upon exiting the door, the wad of Grizzly Wintergreen Long Cut hit the back of my throat and went down the hatch, leading to vomiting a few times on the way down to the drop zone.
It taught me a key lesson: a spitter is not an optional piece of gear.
I didn’t like tobacco, let alone dip, before joining the Army. It was disgusting growing up in South Dakota, where the sight of someone spitting long strings of brown juice from the corner of their mouth into a water bottle half full of the stuff made me sick. But when a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Pvt. Skovlund arrived at C Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in 2011 a can of long-cut dip might as well have been a standard issue.
And finding a suitable spitter was part of the charm and the challenge. There are water bottles (particularly at a FOB), energy drink cans, or an empty Gatorade, which are choice because the lip is bigger and you’re less likely to spit on your hand. Among the “well, better than nothing options,” were a soda can with the lid cut off, an open cup with paper towels in it, or just a cup with no frills, for the truly nasty, and lastly… the ground. Do NOT let an E-7 or up catch you doing that.
While gearing up in the platoon area of the company building during the training cycle, the sound of packing tins was common. If you ran out of dip, a Ranger buddy would always have your back, unless they were a blue falcon with that nasty peach-flavored Skoal. You could be grossed out by a spitter, or you could see its real role: like passing Lucky Strikes in World War II or Vietnam, dipping built camaraderie.
After a long day, mixing up your spitter with your drink is easy, especially if you’re using a Red Bull can. That’s the mistake I made within months of my jump fiasco, which also ended with vomiting. Some may say that’s a weak stomach as they’ve been gutting the tobacco juice since they were 12 years old. I say it’s an easier way to get stomach cancer but to each their own.
Though I’ve been off tobacco for years, this week’s Zyn news struck a chord — not because I care about which nicotine company gets approval for what — but because it made me think back to then. Back when I didn’t even care about the difference between nicotine and tobacco. Back when we were dumb and young enough to not care about the health effects of starting each morning off with a horseshoe of dip, or using it to stay awake through a 24-hour staff duty.
If Zyn kills the spitter, it may not be mourned by too many in today’s military, but it will be missed by some from the generation that came before it. It won’t be missed because it was ever good for us, but rather, because it was so much more than a crinkled water bottle filled with brown spit.
It was part of our era. And that era is over.
Task & Purpose’s editor-in-chief James Clark contributed to this story.