Pills, Pills, Pills
In the past couple of months, every time I went to write something for the blog, I suddenly found myself watching episodes of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and eating leftover Halloween candy instead, which is a clear sign that I am feeling a lot of things and having a hard time herding them into something that makes sense to write about.
When I slam into one of these emotional brick walls, I find myself doing a lot of Googling “industrial live/work loft spaces, Gowanus” and “why does cheap jewelry turn your ears green” and otherwise burrowing into the internet with no real purpose.
A few months ago, a friend and I saw a poorly designed flyer proudly scotch taped to a pole in the East Village, advertising a cure for “brain fog.” The URL on the bottom was http://michaelalexis.com/brain-fog/ which had a real ring to it (it didn’t.) I, of course, interrupted my friend to stop and take a picture of it so I could look it up later.
In my recent pointless wave of internet exploration, I found myself revisiting his site, and it is everything I remembered it to be. The site reads like a sales pitch given by someone who is just a little… off. It’s classic New York. Enough of the sentences makes some semblance of sense, so you feel as though an actual human person wrote it, but the points made in between can only be described as batshit crazy.
Our telephone pole prophet, it turns out, is preaching the virtues of a “self-designed treatment plan” for clearing your "brain fog.”
He writes:
“Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, and if I was then other doctors would consider me a quack. This article is a personal account of what worked for me to clear over a decade of brain fog, neck pain, digestive issues and other symptoms.”
Long story short, he got a parasite in China and it made him sick so he came up with plan based on what appears to be absolutely no real logic/knowledge to make himself better. As an added benefit to curing his tummy worm, this regimen also enabled him to, uh, think more clearly, I guess?
Before detailing his plan, he offers the following parable:
“A lady I worked with was famous for making awesome cakes. She would give the recipe to people and then they’d come back and say it didn’t work for them; they always made substitutions like whole wheat flour or weird sugar. You can be a great recipe borrower or a terrible one.”
I think I speak for all of us when I say 🤯
I really did love reading his detailed instructions, which played out loud in my brain as I read, in the voice of The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With At A Party. A few gems:
No liquids with meals because it dilutes enzymes
“Chew everything a lot. Seriously, if the only thing you do from this article is chew more it will help.”
Try to keep electricity away from your body.
Pay attention to hygiene, cleanliness, posture, sexual restraint, emotional control, having a positive outlook, while avoiding grudges, resentments and stress (NBD)
Also, he wants us to go through something he calls “lymph cleaning” which was a hyperlink I ultimately did not choose to click.
This site confirmed what many of you would probably suspect. It turns out that you can actually put pretty much anything on the internet. And I will read it, obsessed, literally eating popcorn so fast that I’m barely tasting it. The world is a hot mess, and I’m just hanging on for dear life.
Yesterday I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts called Sawbones. Basically it’s a very lighthearted chat between a doctor and her comedian husband about all sorts of medical topics. It’s extremely low key and I’ve fallen asleep to it on many occasions, but the episode I listened to last night was horrifying enough to keep me wide awake and prompted a subsequent Google dive. It was about “Jilly Juice.”
For those who don’t know, Jilly Juice is a gross-ass concoction invented by a 100% out of her damn mind lady named Jillian Eberly. Her whole thing is centered around this drink, which you have to make yourself. You mix water, an OBSCENE amount of salt and cabbage, then you let it sit at room temperature for three full days to let it ferment. THEN YOU DRINK IT. And you drink a lot of it. And you don’t eat or drink anything else. You do this constantly. And by all accounts, it leaves your body quickly, violently, and from both ends.
Where Michael Lewis and his brain fog teachings feel relatively harmless (as far as I know, I didn’t click that lymph cleaning link) Jillian Eberly’s movement is just straight up dangerous. She makes Michael Lewis and his brain fog look almost Goopesque in its prescription of supplemental vitamins, tai-chi, and “snuggling with your honey bunches [sic]”
Jillian has a few especially bonkers tenets, including:
Cancer is a fungus
Exercise is bad for you
You can regrow a limb
Humans could live until 400 if they drink her swamp water
This information gathering expedition on my end was punctuated around 1AM by several clips from the Dr Phil show, showing segments wherein Jilly (of Juice infamy) vehemently puts forth a host of insane alternative facts. Dr. Phil eventually falls mostly silent, shaking his shiny dome in disbelief. You can tell that he’s cursing his booker and longing for a nice, unhappily married couple that he can tear limb from limb. A couple who, while not bright enough to turn down the show’s invitation, at least wouldn’t expect those limbs to grow back.
TBH, all of this would make me want to start a blog, which I’ve already done, or a cult, which is on one of the more freeform drafts of my bucket list.
Much like my current jury duty responsibilities are actually making me think about what it would be like if I went to law school, these case studies have opened the door to the realm of medicine for me. I mean obviously I don’t have the time or money for a medical degree, also blood makes me uncomfortable, but if these true pioneers have taught me anything, it’s that it only takes one, great, unproven idea to break the medical field wide open and save humanity. Science be damned. I’m going to start brainstorming, and for now I guess imma steer clear of electricity just to be safe.