all my friends are trying nicotine?
observations on Zyn’s popularity in Silicon Valley
Last month, my friend told me his morning routine: a cold shower, guided meditation, and a Zyn nicotine pouch. The first two seemed like standard tech founder habits, but.. nicotine?
Somehow that week, I started seeing Zyn everywhere: on an office desk, in pictures of a friend’s housewarming, on tech twitter...
I’ve never had a friend who smoked or vaped regularly. But now, suddenly, it feels like half my circle is trying nicotine.
Why? After interviewing five high-achievers in tech who use Zyn daily, I’ve concluded: it’s partly about the productivity boost that nicotine gives you, and partly just about being kind of subversive—to signal low neuroticism and bond with other men.
Ok, but what exactly is Zyn?
I always thought of nicotine as taboo and masculine, but actually, Zyn was meant to be a clean Scandinavian product for women.
In Sweden, men have been tucking tobacco pouches into their gums for centuries. In the early 2000s, aiming to attract more female users, Swedish tobacco companies popularized a cleaner, non-staining pouch that eventually evolved into Zyn.
It became American in 2022, when Philip Morris (which also owns Marlboro) acquired Zyn. By then, vaping was going out of fashion in the US, thanks to health scares and shady marketing. The US market was ripe for Zyn to take over, and it quickly spread through mainstream America via TikTok memes.
So how did it reach Silicon Valley?
Every tech person I talked to was introduced to Zyn by a friend. They pitch it as a productivity tool similar to coffee, helping them focus throughout the day without the health risks of vaping or smoking. Even Andrew Huberman endorsed nicotine for enabling “the optimal state for getting mental work done.”
Then once your friends are hooked, Zyn becomes a social experience. Enjoying a nicotine buzz together can be an avenue for men to open up more to each other, or just a fun bonding moment in the middle of a workday, according to my interviewees.
And given Silicon Valley’s tight social networks, these bonding moments can be important. In the startup world, your personal clout and friendships determine everything from investor funding, to serendipitous meetings with potential cofounders and clients, to introductions to dates. One of my interviewees believes that, in spite of his sterling engineering credentials, his career advancement will depend more on “having good vibes” than anything else. And doing Zyn signals good vibes.
What exactly are these good vibes?
In this friend’s opinion, using Zyn signals low neuroticism. It signals that you’re chill. You’re not obsessed with controlling and optimizing every part of your life. You’re a high achiever, but you’re down to use a substance that we grew up seeing as sort of taboo and associated with the “bad kids.” You get that Zyn is addictive and its longer-term health implications are under-researched, but you like to live a little fast and loose sometimes.
And why do people want to signal all that?
I think it’s linked to the recent growth in conservatism in Silicon Valley. These days, tech people—especially founders—overwhelmingly aspire to be like Elon, who’s well known for embracing risk, rejecting conventional wisdom, and combining that with superhuman intelligence and focus to pull off impossible feats.
Indeed, one interviewee told me that his dozen friends who use Zyn are all straight, conservative-leaning men.
Politics aside, is Zyn good or bad?
Unlike cigarettes, Zyn hasn’t been definitively proven to cause health issues. The biggest known downside seems to be that it’s highly addictive. One friend said his Zyn use has more than doubled in the past ~3 months since he started; another said he’d probably have to take a week off of work to quit Zyn.
This is a level of dependence that seems meaningfully stronger than most people’s coffee habits... but maybe comparable to our phone or social media addictions?
Which begs the question: is it inherently bad to be addicted to something? I don’t think there’s an objective answer. Half my interviewees said they didn’t like being addicted and want to quit; the other half didn’t seem to mind.
Ultimately, I think our cultural narratives will decide our attitudes toward nicotine addiction.
Today, my tech circle associates nicotine with being “degen”, risk-loving, and masculine. But maybe soon, we’ll see it as a normal habit. One startup founder is already leveraging Zyn’s momentum to create a new nicotine pouch for the Silicon Valley biohacker archetype: optimized for cognitive focus, with minimized health downsides.
As nicotine becomes more socially accepted as a safe nootropic, I think even the most health-conscious tech people will grow to accept and even embrace it as an addiction. To me, the most interesting part of Zyn’s rise is how it illustrates that, even in data-driven Silicon Valley, our health decisions are still shaped by social narratives.
from personal experience with being severely addicted to zyn, and now having quit after an immense amount of struggle, i err on the side that addiction and/or substance dependence is generally not a good thing—even if said substance (seemingly) has no inherent health detriments. and let's not forget the lack of longitudinal studies on how prolonged, heavy dosages of nicotine affects health.
just off the top of my head:
1) it’s an expensive habit.
2) dependency is dependency. i was highly irritable when i wasn’t using nicotine. short tempered and rude to those around me when i wasn’t on nicotine.
3) i was always scheming ways to get my hands on some when i didn’t have any.
4) it’s called addiction for a reason—it’s hard to quit. “i can quit when i want,” is cope. the quitting process in itself was a huge struggle. i gained a ton of weight because i replaced that habit with a snacking habit.
5) and speaking of addiction, it seems even more addictive than vaping and cigarettes because zyns are even easier to conceal than vaping, which was already easier to conceal than cigarettes. and as you note, more socially acceptable.
6) it didn’t feel good for my gums.
with zyn—like when vapes first became popular—there’s this illusion that it’s somehow, “healthier”. we don't know that. i wouldn’t be surprised if studies pop up later on its detrimental effects on health.
i think the question of, "is addiction inherently bad," is an interesting one, but i'd hesitate to say it's a net neutral--let alone a net positive. the tacit implication with addiction/dependency is that there's a certain relinquishment of control. so given the choice, my stance is that regardless of if there are detrimental health benefits or not, i'd choose not to be addicted or dependent on anything, god willing.
Very interesting, learned a lot about an in-depth perspective and insight of Zyn. It is eye opening to see how rapidly it is spreading in the tech industry, but I also understand the reason behind its addiction. I enjoyed reading this!