Josh Brolin has a nicotine pouch in his mouth at all times — even at bedtime.
“I have a pouch in my lip, and I’m not f–king lying, 24 hours a day,” the actor, 56, admitted on Thursday’s episode of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. “Then I started taking them out and putting them on the bedside table.”
The “Goonies” actor — who married third wife Kathryn Boyd Brolin in 2016 — admitted that his habit is so extreme that he will even pack a lip when he’s unconscious.
“My wife would hear this in the middle of the night,” he said, demonstrating as he popped open a Zyn package. “I don’t even know I’m doing it, I’m asleep.”
Brolin — who shares daughter Eden, 30, and son Trevor, 36, with ex-wife Alice Adair — noted that he often worried that his children would be exposed to his bad habit.
“My kid would pick it up at 2 years old, which is really — maybe there’s not any nicotine, maybe there’s not any danger, but if she puts it in her mouth, she’s gonna get sick,” he said. “And instead of stopping, I try and teach them, ‘Don’t do that. Stay away from daddy’s s–t. Daddy needs that.’”
According to Yale Medicine, nicotine pouches do not contain tobacco and “are tucked in between a person’s lip or cheek and gums; the nicotine is absorbed into their bloodstream through mucous membranes in their mouth.”
Prior to his nicotine pouch usage, his vice was sucking on nicotine lozenges. However, the capsules ended up causing major damage to his once sparkling smile.
“They go away in two seconds, but they taste like gasoline, and there’s a punch to them,” he said of the cough drops. “But I used to keep them up between my gum and my tooth line.”
He continued, “I got seven cavities. That’s why I switched to [pouches]. There’s a ton of sugar [in lozenges].”
Brolin recalled his desperation for the substance when he was traveling and didn’t have access to his go-to brand.
The actor said he was shooting a film in the Middle East when he was approached by a local merchant who had pouches containing doses much bigger than he is used to taking.
“We’re in Jordan, and he comes up to me, and he says, ‘I have some,’ and it has a skull and crossbones on the top, and it’s 40-milligram packets. And I said, ‘I can’t do that,’” Brolin shared.
But the idea didn’t seem so wild after he realized that he only had “four or five more tins” left of his own pouches and he decided to try it out.
“I stick the thing in my mouth for no more, and I swear to God on my kids, for no more than 20 seconds, and I had to cancel dinner that night,” he said. “I literally was s—ting my brains out.”