23aka23
AKA
I would like to apply for full membership. The following, albeit unusual, will provide some insight into who I am, and how deeply my interest runs. It is a copy of a letter I wrote to a local physician. It is a summary, not a diary, and is as accurate as I'm capable of being. As you can imagine, proclaiming the use of illegal substances in this letter would have been a tragic mistake. So I hope you will take that into account, and make adjustments as needed. Wherever harmines are mentioned please add spice. I do, in fact, feel no stomach upset from harmines but the spice... My intent in the letter was to ruffle feathers by telling as much of the truth as is possible without being put in a cage, hoping that someone would be spurred to at least take a cursory glance at the lit where they would be met on all sides with the spice of life. If discussions of metabolic functions are icky to you, please skip this post. If my intimacy offends you, I regret that. But, as an "Introductory Essay", I think it captures the subject rather well in all his foolish outrage, flatulent erudition, and vanity.
Dr ******, 5/5/13
I'm writing to you because I have some information I would like to share with someone in the medical community here who has the good sense to keep an open mind. I've dealt with a fair number of physicians and related medical minions here in *(*(*(. With my limited experience and failing memory, you are the only one so far who I think will reflectively consider that I am describing an actual physical condition that can actually be physically corrected. You considered reflectively in the past when I suffered from angina to the benefit of everyone involved, and I'm hoping you'll do so again.
To help you remember me, I will say that at the time I was in the midst of fairly long-term yet temporary, unavoidable stress in a situation I'd voluntarily chosen. Others were insisting that I make dramatic changes in my life that would have instantly reduced that stress but would have, in my opinion, done great harm to people who were vulnerable and dependent on me. The angina added force to their argument, and made it attractive. You helped me through that time medically, and I was able to resolve that situation in due time more satisfactorily than otherwise.
I am not writing to you for medical help. I've found the help I needed in this instance outside the medical community. I hope you will winnow what I have to say and, if you find any value, use it. I'm not real special. Others will be going through, have gone through, what I've been through. You have my permission to access all of my records at ********************, and anywhere else.
I'm 64. I've been the poster-boy for severe, chronic constipation for as long as I can remember. It's a family talent. I had my first colonscopy in my early 40s in Eugene, Ore because I was afraid every thing in me from sternum to coccyx had died. The doctor found nothing wrong, other than that I just seemed to be chronically “full of it.” He was a real funny guy for a doctor. He suggested more fiber. I offered suggestions of my own.
I checked into ********************, through the ER just after Xmas two and a half years ago for twelve days with pneumonia, sepsis, and whimsical heart rhythms. At day ten, the staff became concerned that I hadn't yet managed a bowel movement. I was given a gallon of whatever that stuff is that WILL move things along. I chugged it. Hydraulics engaged. The inevitable occurred, and from that day to this I have been as regular as the stars. A cuppa in the AM, and off to the races. A life-long dream.
Except that this diametric change was accompanied by nearly constant, low-level nausea with intermittent, sudden, usually uncontrollable vomiting that was debilitating emotionally, as well as physically. I was extremely lucky that I was close to retirement age because, physically, I would have been unable to work. When it hit, this nausea instantly rendered me immobile, off my feet, trembling, sweating and frightened. Sit down, shut up, and be very, very still, or collapse vomiting were the only choices.
I was in school at the time , ***, trying for a nursing license. Within three months, I went from being an A student, two years Phi Theta Kappa, as well accepted as can be expected by fellow (child)students, buddies with my professors, pleasantly tolerated by all, to being given the choice of academic probation as a failing (!), truculent lout, or leaving the program six weeks before graduation.
I left the program, knowing I was simply unable to perform. And feeling like a lout for good reasons. This is illness, whatever it is, of a life-changing, life-destroying nature.
Post-hospital stay, the “doctor” I was assigned to was **(***. Nothing I could say to this man made any impression. As far as he was concerned, I came out of a cookie mold. Anything I described that didn't fit that mold was imaginary on my part, or of no consequence. My nausea apparently didn't fit his world view. His arrogance is monumental; not to say unfounded.
After giving up on **(***, I asked to see someone else. I was assigned to a Physician's Assistant. This woman, can't remember her name, seemed very nice and generally very competent. Unfortunately, she took an instant dislike to me. (Not to worry. As you may already deduce, I get that a lot.) At one point, describing to her the chronic nature of my previous life-long constipation and the dramatic change with accompanying nausea, she sarcastically asked if I expected her to diagnose an illness from which I no longer suffered. I realized I was wasting my time.
From **(***,, the PA, and various other personnel, I've been given five nonchalant diagnoses, or rather suggestions, for my nausea: two concerned my heart problems, one a possible faulty gall bladder, habitual incomplete mastication, and, of course, the old standby, psychological. The “psychological” diagnosis was tossed off in the Emergency Room during one of my many visits in front of family members, including my son and his mother with whom I am in contention for custody. Whenever the exigencies of our contention require the use of a deadly emotional cudgel, I continue to hear about this “diagnosis.”
I call these diagnoses “nonchalant” because they were delivered with no foundational evidence at all. The medicines I was given to address these imaginary diagnoses were ineffective. I hope you will check my records, and verify this for yourself.
The nausea almost always passed in a minute, usually less, without result (vomiting). But there were many times it came, it settled, it stayed. When that happened sitting down, preferably laying down, morning or night, moving not a muscle for sometimes half an hour, saying nothing, and waiting it out, hoping to avoid any result was Plan A, B, C, & D.
Other times, the nausea's lively arrival out of nowhere produced from me an instantaneous, fountaining, kaleidoscopic result that kept us all on our toes, and was often a topic of conversation among whoever happened to be present. Not all of that conversation was entirely pleasant. The more sensitive members of my family found the relentless suspense nearly unbearable. It's only a slight exaggeration to say it was rain-coats all around for a good eighteen months.
It didn't feel like food poisoning. I've had that, and it hurts. And one either gets over it, or dies. It didn't feel as if an organ were failing, injured, or diseased. Not sick in that way. I felt like I'd caught something. Like I had something. I felt infected. Not feverish maybe, or otherwise demonstrably under the weather... Nothing I could point to... Except that I was “sick”. Bowel movements as regular as clockwork maybe, with a fine, quality product, but still, the nausea was as real as a brick wall, and as hard to get through.
As the months wore on, I seemed to feel a hard knot moving slowly, day by day, from left to right across my transverse colon. Not painful but there. Rounded like a knuckle, pressing against the outer wall of my colon, inching along. I could trace its progress over the course of several weeks. This is terra incognito for me, Dr. ******,, and I don't propose that I describe it accurately, but I'm getting as close a I can.
At times, I felt a roiling unlike digestion, fluids gurgling like waves smacking against a tide-wall then flowing backwards, repeating. At times, it felt like something slinking through my gut. It was always left to right which, if I understand what direction things actually flow, is backwards. Finally, it seemed to lodge at the very right edge of my transverse colon where it stayed. I noticed no connection between these sensations and the nausea, other than they seemed to arrive about the same time.
Unable to work, flunked out of school, and barely able to care or my ten year old son, I was desperate and willing to try anything. I got fit over the course of three months (lost 35 pounds, walked four miles a day, one set of 200 sit-ups/day, strength training). That didn't work. I changed my diet every way I could think of. No go (but I learned live yogurt quickly helped reduce symptoms). I starved myself five days, twice. I ate bentonite clay (three tbls./day for a week; not recommended). I read every thing I could get my hands on about nausea and its causes. One cause is gut infections.
A brief digression... A professor-friend at *** challenged me a few years ago concerning the existence of free will. Since then I've taken an active interest, and learned of some of the influences that can affect our ability to choose. Among those influences are some bacteria, fungi, and microbes. (If you are unfamiliar with this subject, please google “Toxoplasma gondi” for a wide-spread, dramatic example.) Indigenous cultures living in verdant areas have developed ways to combat endemic organisms like these which are ubiquitous, and often deadly.
In many of these cultures, these infections are considered spiritual because of the otherwise unexplainable changes in behavior they sometimes engender. These cultures often use what they consider spiritual means to fight them. Spiritual means along the Amazon include the use of a plant called Banisteriopsis caapi. This plant contains significant amounts of three (so far legal to me) chemicals that are effective against gut infections by microbes, bacteria, and fungi: harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine.
Along with so many other efforts, I ordered a kilo of b. caapi, made an acidic tea of an eye-balled 100 grams of the plant, and drank it. These chemicals are poisons, and inevitably the body will try to reject them so I expected a purge from both directions.
My purge was only vomiting. But the activity in my gut was astounding. Like dropping a fire-cracker on an anthill. Activity galore. Alka Seltzer in a sealed bottle. Not painful, very slightly maybe, but forceful. Something was trying to move, and couldn't because something else was blocking it. The blockage sat from where the nausea radiated. What was going on felt right. As if I had finally found something that directly addressed what made life a living hell. It seemed promising. Something was happening where something should be happening.
The purge with b.caapi was of a different order than the nausea from which I'd been suffering. It was a violent, projectile vomiting completely unlike the nearly lethargic vomiting I'd become used to over the course of two years. It felt like there was a battle going in in my stomach. The good guys were fighting the good fight.
I have been, of course, rooting for relief from any corner, magnifying any change at all, desperately looking for and noticing any good news, and involuntarily minimizing the bad. I don't deny that imagination fills in blanks in my knowledge, or that hope springs eternal. But something was going on.
During the use of this tea, I experience a sudden fever lasting only a few seconds just before and during the purge, accompanied by massive cold sweat, shivers, etc. for a few minutes after the purge.
The seeming movement across my transverse colon slowly began again right after my first use of the tea, but the sensation was different. It felt as if a sticky lining was being rather painfully pried, rolled from the inner walls of my transverse colon, and eased south. This was a slow process; one that I am describing crudely, but that was very definite.
As soon as I began drinking this tea, my feces changed. I'm sure some of that had to do with the various alkaloids in the caapi plant that are unrelated to those that address my nausea. But the more tea I drank and the more I got rid of whatever it was in my gut, the better I felt. The nausea receded over the course of a couple of months. Slowly. And then it was gone for extended periods.
I take no other medications or drugs whatsoever other than tobacco and coffee by the car lot, and Albuterol infrequently. I may not need the harmine tea any more, but I see no reason to do without it. Although it is a MAOI, it is reversible, and I've had no difficulty with my diet even while taking it at the higher levels. Increased hypertension hasn't been a noticeable problem, but even if it were I'd still trade a shorter life for no life at all. As I go longer and longer without the return of my nausea, I'll further reduce my dose and usage.
Since finding these chemical's efficacy, I've taught myself the basics of extraction, isolation, and purification. In their crystalline forms these chemicals are pure, and there's no reason the medical community can't use them scientifically rather than in the “Whack-a-Mole” fashion I'm using.
As it turns out, there are other plants such as syrian rue that contain a much higher concentration of these chemicals than b.caapi., and that are much cheaper The “cure” from these plants cost me a total of $4.95 for the material plus $24 for solvent, acid and base. And I have more of the resulting medicine left over than a city the size of Chicago could use in a year.
I may still be ill. Since I don't know the cause of my illness, I haven't a clue if I remain infected, or even if I had some kind of infection. It may be that the action of these chemicals also address some other intestinal difficulty. In any case, my nausea is quiescent, and that is a monumental improvement.
I would like to be grateful to the ******************** for their help. I am, in fact, disgusted by those I saw after my hospital stay who claim to be scientists, healers. For those I saw, if an immediate answer wasn't handy to hand then there was no serious question to be considered, no illness unless it be psychological.
How many years do you suppose suffering people spend trying in vain to solve problems labeled psychological by incompetent medical personnel when, in fact, their illness is physical? When repeated complaints become so routine that they become meaningless and are dismissed, or fade into the background as noise with the receding backs of patients, harm is being done. Real harm to real people, real families.
By the way, if it is any concern to you... I don't think I contacted whatever I had at the clinic or hospital. I think I had whatever it was (is) for a while, but was unaware of it. My treatment in the hospital affected it in some way, I think, but not negatively for me. I had enormous courses of anti-biotics over an extended period, the colon flush, high fever, shock... I was dying for quite a while before I came to the hospital, and simply didn't know it. It could be that the rats were leaving a sinking ship, were disturbed by all the chemicals I was receiving, or maybe I had some other intestinal problem.
Something happened that stirred things up, but I don't hold anyone there responsible for any negative outcome. At worst, it's kind of like someone accidentally stepping on my already bruised toe, not knowing it was bruised. No one at the hospital or at the clinic afterwards made anything worse. Whatever happened during my stay, in fact, gave me the opportunity to solve a problem I didn't know I had till then. A little help would have been nice.
If you've read this far, Dr. ******,, thanks. I really haven't known what to do with this information. I hope you find value in it for your patients.
Regards,
omited
Dr ******, 5/5/13
I'm writing to you because I have some information I would like to share with someone in the medical community here who has the good sense to keep an open mind. I've dealt with a fair number of physicians and related medical minions here in *(*(*(. With my limited experience and failing memory, you are the only one so far who I think will reflectively consider that I am describing an actual physical condition that can actually be physically corrected. You considered reflectively in the past when I suffered from angina to the benefit of everyone involved, and I'm hoping you'll do so again.
To help you remember me, I will say that at the time I was in the midst of fairly long-term yet temporary, unavoidable stress in a situation I'd voluntarily chosen. Others were insisting that I make dramatic changes in my life that would have instantly reduced that stress but would have, in my opinion, done great harm to people who were vulnerable and dependent on me. The angina added force to their argument, and made it attractive. You helped me through that time medically, and I was able to resolve that situation in due time more satisfactorily than otherwise.
I am not writing to you for medical help. I've found the help I needed in this instance outside the medical community. I hope you will winnow what I have to say and, if you find any value, use it. I'm not real special. Others will be going through, have gone through, what I've been through. You have my permission to access all of my records at ********************, and anywhere else.
I'm 64. I've been the poster-boy for severe, chronic constipation for as long as I can remember. It's a family talent. I had my first colonscopy in my early 40s in Eugene, Ore because I was afraid every thing in me from sternum to coccyx had died. The doctor found nothing wrong, other than that I just seemed to be chronically “full of it.” He was a real funny guy for a doctor. He suggested more fiber. I offered suggestions of my own.
I checked into ********************, through the ER just after Xmas two and a half years ago for twelve days with pneumonia, sepsis, and whimsical heart rhythms. At day ten, the staff became concerned that I hadn't yet managed a bowel movement. I was given a gallon of whatever that stuff is that WILL move things along. I chugged it. Hydraulics engaged. The inevitable occurred, and from that day to this I have been as regular as the stars. A cuppa in the AM, and off to the races. A life-long dream.
Except that this diametric change was accompanied by nearly constant, low-level nausea with intermittent, sudden, usually uncontrollable vomiting that was debilitating emotionally, as well as physically. I was extremely lucky that I was close to retirement age because, physically, I would have been unable to work. When it hit, this nausea instantly rendered me immobile, off my feet, trembling, sweating and frightened. Sit down, shut up, and be very, very still, or collapse vomiting were the only choices.
I was in school at the time , ***, trying for a nursing license. Within three months, I went from being an A student, two years Phi Theta Kappa, as well accepted as can be expected by fellow (child)students, buddies with my professors, pleasantly tolerated by all, to being given the choice of academic probation as a failing (!), truculent lout, or leaving the program six weeks before graduation.
I left the program, knowing I was simply unable to perform. And feeling like a lout for good reasons. This is illness, whatever it is, of a life-changing, life-destroying nature.
Post-hospital stay, the “doctor” I was assigned to was **(***. Nothing I could say to this man made any impression. As far as he was concerned, I came out of a cookie mold. Anything I described that didn't fit that mold was imaginary on my part, or of no consequence. My nausea apparently didn't fit his world view. His arrogance is monumental; not to say unfounded.
After giving up on **(***, I asked to see someone else. I was assigned to a Physician's Assistant. This woman, can't remember her name, seemed very nice and generally very competent. Unfortunately, she took an instant dislike to me. (Not to worry. As you may already deduce, I get that a lot.) At one point, describing to her the chronic nature of my previous life-long constipation and the dramatic change with accompanying nausea, she sarcastically asked if I expected her to diagnose an illness from which I no longer suffered. I realized I was wasting my time.
From **(***,, the PA, and various other personnel, I've been given five nonchalant diagnoses, or rather suggestions, for my nausea: two concerned my heart problems, one a possible faulty gall bladder, habitual incomplete mastication, and, of course, the old standby, psychological. The “psychological” diagnosis was tossed off in the Emergency Room during one of my many visits in front of family members, including my son and his mother with whom I am in contention for custody. Whenever the exigencies of our contention require the use of a deadly emotional cudgel, I continue to hear about this “diagnosis.”
I call these diagnoses “nonchalant” because they were delivered with no foundational evidence at all. The medicines I was given to address these imaginary diagnoses were ineffective. I hope you will check my records, and verify this for yourself.
The nausea almost always passed in a minute, usually less, without result (vomiting). But there were many times it came, it settled, it stayed. When that happened sitting down, preferably laying down, morning or night, moving not a muscle for sometimes half an hour, saying nothing, and waiting it out, hoping to avoid any result was Plan A, B, C, & D.
Other times, the nausea's lively arrival out of nowhere produced from me an instantaneous, fountaining, kaleidoscopic result that kept us all on our toes, and was often a topic of conversation among whoever happened to be present. Not all of that conversation was entirely pleasant. The more sensitive members of my family found the relentless suspense nearly unbearable. It's only a slight exaggeration to say it was rain-coats all around for a good eighteen months.
It didn't feel like food poisoning. I've had that, and it hurts. And one either gets over it, or dies. It didn't feel as if an organ were failing, injured, or diseased. Not sick in that way. I felt like I'd caught something. Like I had something. I felt infected. Not feverish maybe, or otherwise demonstrably under the weather... Nothing I could point to... Except that I was “sick”. Bowel movements as regular as clockwork maybe, with a fine, quality product, but still, the nausea was as real as a brick wall, and as hard to get through.
As the months wore on, I seemed to feel a hard knot moving slowly, day by day, from left to right across my transverse colon. Not painful but there. Rounded like a knuckle, pressing against the outer wall of my colon, inching along. I could trace its progress over the course of several weeks. This is terra incognito for me, Dr. ******,, and I don't propose that I describe it accurately, but I'm getting as close a I can.
At times, I felt a roiling unlike digestion, fluids gurgling like waves smacking against a tide-wall then flowing backwards, repeating. At times, it felt like something slinking through my gut. It was always left to right which, if I understand what direction things actually flow, is backwards. Finally, it seemed to lodge at the very right edge of my transverse colon where it stayed. I noticed no connection between these sensations and the nausea, other than they seemed to arrive about the same time.
Unable to work, flunked out of school, and barely able to care or my ten year old son, I was desperate and willing to try anything. I got fit over the course of three months (lost 35 pounds, walked four miles a day, one set of 200 sit-ups/day, strength training). That didn't work. I changed my diet every way I could think of. No go (but I learned live yogurt quickly helped reduce symptoms). I starved myself five days, twice. I ate bentonite clay (three tbls./day for a week; not recommended). I read every thing I could get my hands on about nausea and its causes. One cause is gut infections.
A brief digression... A professor-friend at *** challenged me a few years ago concerning the existence of free will. Since then I've taken an active interest, and learned of some of the influences that can affect our ability to choose. Among those influences are some bacteria, fungi, and microbes. (If you are unfamiliar with this subject, please google “Toxoplasma gondi” for a wide-spread, dramatic example.) Indigenous cultures living in verdant areas have developed ways to combat endemic organisms like these which are ubiquitous, and often deadly.
In many of these cultures, these infections are considered spiritual because of the otherwise unexplainable changes in behavior they sometimes engender. These cultures often use what they consider spiritual means to fight them. Spiritual means along the Amazon include the use of a plant called Banisteriopsis caapi. This plant contains significant amounts of three (so far legal to me) chemicals that are effective against gut infections by microbes, bacteria, and fungi: harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine.
Along with so many other efforts, I ordered a kilo of b. caapi, made an acidic tea of an eye-balled 100 grams of the plant, and drank it. These chemicals are poisons, and inevitably the body will try to reject them so I expected a purge from both directions.
My purge was only vomiting. But the activity in my gut was astounding. Like dropping a fire-cracker on an anthill. Activity galore. Alka Seltzer in a sealed bottle. Not painful, very slightly maybe, but forceful. Something was trying to move, and couldn't because something else was blocking it. The blockage sat from where the nausea radiated. What was going on felt right. As if I had finally found something that directly addressed what made life a living hell. It seemed promising. Something was happening where something should be happening.
The purge with b.caapi was of a different order than the nausea from which I'd been suffering. It was a violent, projectile vomiting completely unlike the nearly lethargic vomiting I'd become used to over the course of two years. It felt like there was a battle going in in my stomach. The good guys were fighting the good fight.
I have been, of course, rooting for relief from any corner, magnifying any change at all, desperately looking for and noticing any good news, and involuntarily minimizing the bad. I don't deny that imagination fills in blanks in my knowledge, or that hope springs eternal. But something was going on.
During the use of this tea, I experience a sudden fever lasting only a few seconds just before and during the purge, accompanied by massive cold sweat, shivers, etc. for a few minutes after the purge.
The seeming movement across my transverse colon slowly began again right after my first use of the tea, but the sensation was different. It felt as if a sticky lining was being rather painfully pried, rolled from the inner walls of my transverse colon, and eased south. This was a slow process; one that I am describing crudely, but that was very definite.
As soon as I began drinking this tea, my feces changed. I'm sure some of that had to do with the various alkaloids in the caapi plant that are unrelated to those that address my nausea. But the more tea I drank and the more I got rid of whatever it was in my gut, the better I felt. The nausea receded over the course of a couple of months. Slowly. And then it was gone for extended periods.
I take no other medications or drugs whatsoever other than tobacco and coffee by the car lot, and Albuterol infrequently. I may not need the harmine tea any more, but I see no reason to do without it. Although it is a MAOI, it is reversible, and I've had no difficulty with my diet even while taking it at the higher levels. Increased hypertension hasn't been a noticeable problem, but even if it were I'd still trade a shorter life for no life at all. As I go longer and longer without the return of my nausea, I'll further reduce my dose and usage.
Since finding these chemical's efficacy, I've taught myself the basics of extraction, isolation, and purification. In their crystalline forms these chemicals are pure, and there's no reason the medical community can't use them scientifically rather than in the “Whack-a-Mole” fashion I'm using.
As it turns out, there are other plants such as syrian rue that contain a much higher concentration of these chemicals than b.caapi., and that are much cheaper The “cure” from these plants cost me a total of $4.95 for the material plus $24 for solvent, acid and base. And I have more of the resulting medicine left over than a city the size of Chicago could use in a year.
I may still be ill. Since I don't know the cause of my illness, I haven't a clue if I remain infected, or even if I had some kind of infection. It may be that the action of these chemicals also address some other intestinal difficulty. In any case, my nausea is quiescent, and that is a monumental improvement.
I would like to be grateful to the ******************** for their help. I am, in fact, disgusted by those I saw after my hospital stay who claim to be scientists, healers. For those I saw, if an immediate answer wasn't handy to hand then there was no serious question to be considered, no illness unless it be psychological.
How many years do you suppose suffering people spend trying in vain to solve problems labeled psychological by incompetent medical personnel when, in fact, their illness is physical? When repeated complaints become so routine that they become meaningless and are dismissed, or fade into the background as noise with the receding backs of patients, harm is being done. Real harm to real people, real families.
By the way, if it is any concern to you... I don't think I contacted whatever I had at the clinic or hospital. I think I had whatever it was (is) for a while, but was unaware of it. My treatment in the hospital affected it in some way, I think, but not negatively for me. I had enormous courses of anti-biotics over an extended period, the colon flush, high fever, shock... I was dying for quite a while before I came to the hospital, and simply didn't know it. It could be that the rats were leaving a sinking ship, were disturbed by all the chemicals I was receiving, or maybe I had some other intestinal problem.
Something happened that stirred things up, but I don't hold anyone there responsible for any negative outcome. At worst, it's kind of like someone accidentally stepping on my already bruised toe, not knowing it was bruised. No one at the hospital or at the clinic afterwards made anything worse. Whatever happened during my stay, in fact, gave me the opportunity to solve a problem I didn't know I had till then. A little help would have been nice.
If you've read this far, Dr. ******,, thanks. I really haven't known what to do with this information. I hope you find value in it for your patients.
Regards,
omited
