Heavy Metal Hell

I saw a guy at Def Leppard the other night, early 40s, who was wearing an old denim jacket with a Dokken transfer on the back. I saw tons of people in Kiss t-shirts. Lots of skanky bogan people. A guy my age in leather pants. Leather pants are barely able to be worn by even raunchy 25 year old sex machines. And even then, you probably need to be in the band or something. I think maybe wearing leather pants is more offensive than being buck naked :)

I am doing a heavy metal detox. I know there are things still for me to do to regain good levels of energy. This is something I have had a strong gut feel about. Especially mercury. I haven't actually been tested for high mercury, but I do have amalgam fillings. Not only is mercury in some older amalgams, but it is in vaccinations we receive when we are babies. Hell, there's even high levels of it in our tuna. We are so overloaded with toxins in our environment. Unfortunately, they are invisible, so it's not until they drive you under that you start realising it. Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - when it starts driving you under you don't have any choice but to consider the things that might seem flakey, like mercury overload.

Now, it's a good thing I'm a lover of paradox. It features so heavily in my life. Take, for example, my journey from sickness to health. Ever since I got smashed in the face with glandular fever back in 1999, almost everything I have taken (apart from supplements and vitamins) has sent me three steps back before I took a leap forward. A necessary dose of courage and gut feel is required to do that dance. There's nothing worse than gritting your teeth when you have been unwell for months, years, and doing something you know is going to make you feel worse. I was on antibiotics for a year, one week out of four for a whole year. This was to treat the rickettsia. Amongst many other symptoms, it made me feel mentally ill. It's difficult to explain. I know I have tried to here before, but I can't describe how those bugs dying off into my bloodstream would affect my emotions. I knew I hadn't suddenly become mentally unstable (well, no more unstable than usual, anyway :) And yet, it felt like it. Doing this detox, I'm reminded of that most unpleasant scenario. I am feeling so grouchy and irritable, so decidedly unmyself as this stuff leaves my system, that laying low is the best thing for me to do when I feel this way. Like the Toxic Avenger.

Another paradox about being sick is that it has taken getting this low for me to get glimpses of what good health actually feels like. Can't get much more paradoxical than that, huh? When I look back over my life, I actually think my health has been like most other people I know - like the proverbial frog in the boiling water. Like so many other things, it is easy to believe that you've got the real thing - health equalling absence of sickness, in the same weird unlife way that much of Churchianity equals the same old performance trip with a few spiritual things stuck on. Both of those things can take us through life thinking we've got the real thing when we're actually miserable. General malaise is so low-level that millions of people drag themselves through life not realising that they could feel so much better. I have had glimpses of something different, like an oasis up ahead. I have had a glimpse now of how much my health is in my own hands, and how many things there are out there to aide it (none of them in a doctor's surgery), and how much is required to get yourself out of the sludge pit that is ill health due to our toxic environment. How strange that in such an age the road to good health is a crockpot road, according to the wisdom of conventional medicine. How strange that good health is only achieved when we take responsibility for our bodies instead of being dictated to by Glaxo Smith Kline. Health has been commodified and taken out of our hands like everything else. Like everything else, there is some sort of fight reuired on our parts to gain back what is ours to start with.

I am taking something called liquid zeolite. Taken in water, it goes into your cells and mops up heavy metals and other nasties. I can tell it's working because I can feel it. The recommended dosage is 10 drops at a time, 3 times a day. I didn't start out slow, like I now understand you should. I just jumped right in and took 10 drops straight up on Wednesday night.

I had to lie on the couch for over an hour without moving (except to go the toilet from the 2 litres of water I drank along with it - the more water the better, it is how the toxins are removed from your body). I lay on the couch with this localised headache that felt something like a migraine but without the accompanying need for darkness and no movement. It felt really shite and a bizarre feeling. I felt so toxic, so terribly ill, like a river with the local Acme Sludge Smelter spewing stuff out into it. Thing is, it's the same level of stuff in me all the time, causing less energy, and bouts of brainfog and fatigue. It's just that now the pot is being stirred. This is the dance. Eighty five steps back in readiness for the leap forward. I'm glad I have been forced to learn this crazy helldance. It's the way forward for me.

Several hours later on Wednesday night I was feeling reasonable again, back on my feet. But feeling kinda wonky, the way you feel after you've had a bad dose of the flu. I have learnt my lesson. The latest lot of zeolite I have just taken is ONE drop in water. Just one. Because obviously I am full of toxic stuff. Which doesn't surprise me at all.

What amazes me is how the body is able to continue on, functioning after a fashion, while so full of toxins. I feel really crap. Toxic. Really irritable. Itchy. Brainfogged out of my ... well, brain. Just really ... unwell.

It's amazing how much more body conscious I have become since being sick, much more able to tune in and feel how things are going. I've gotten pretty good at the old intuition/gut feel. It has served me well in many things but in terms of improving my health, it has been my saviour. Modern day medicine is as institutionalised as everything else in our society. If I had listened to the man behind the desk, I guarantee you I would still be sick. Hell, when I first got sick, many doctors didn't even believe in CFS. Doctors serve their purpose, but when it comes to chronic illness they know diddly. I guess if I could say something else I am grateful for that came out of CFS, it would be this improved turning inward to listen and watch and feel my body and how it works (amazing machine), and to really start to realise that the only person who could really decide in the end what was best for my body was me. I have done plenty of things to get well that would be considered on the kooky side by mainstream medicine. But from my position looking back at them, they're the kooks. So wrapped up in their half knowledges and specialisations that they can't see the organic whole.

Zeolite was recommended to me by one of my online buds, Brandi, who has begun taking it for her fibromyalgia and is seeing good results. I happened to mention it to my real live breathing friend, Jane. Funnily enough, she had just ordered some of the granulated form the day before to help with certain chemicals in her house that are affecting her. Neither of us had ever spoken to each other before about this zeolite stuff and suddenly here we are both ordering it within 24 hours of each other. Weird. I find those coincidences in life quite thrilling. They are little signposts to me that I am on the right track.

I know I am on the right track. Just like Jane does. She has suffered from CFS for 12 years. She was sick before I met her, has been sick the whole time I have known her. Jane is on her own bout of moving forward into wellness, trying new things. Yesterday she emailed me in excitement to tell me that the night before she had slept straight for 7 hours, woke up feeling refreshed, and had less brainfog that day than she had had in years. This is amazing.

I'm so glad I have Jane in my life. She has the same level of pigheadedness as I when it comes to regaining health. Whatever it takes. I believe that there are answers to be found to good health. We just have to be willing to follow the crumbs.

This post has taken me so long to write!! So anyway, if I seem weird and flakey to you at all over the next few weeks, please forgive me. It's the mercury talking :) Doing this particular part of the dance makes me feel somewhat disconnected from the world around me. Prayer please, if you are of the praying persuasion. It's difficult to keep perspective when you slip down into feeling so awful.