Tuesday, April 29, 2008

It's Better Than Bottling It Up, Isn't It

It appears that I am "difficult" to live with. So I was sent to a "naturopath" yesterday. Seems I am always stressed and don't talk nicely (we've only been married 20 years, so what's changed?). The naturopath works out of a pharmacy, and my appointment was for 9am, so, of course, I was waiting outside at 8:50. The lady at the counter informed me she was running "a bit" late. A battered Mitsubishi with a tattered orange ribbon on the side mirror drove up at 9:30, by this time I was pacing, fuming, clenched jawed, mean and spitting fire. She left her car blocking the road outside (with the hazard lights flashing), ran in and apologized for the traffic (I asked if this was the first time she had made the trip at this time. She looked me straight in the eye and said she does it three times a week, but has struggled for the last few weeks to get in before 9:30 - remember my appointment was for 9.00). Needless to say, I was not as open-minded as perhaps I should have been.

She started by looking at my nails, tongue and eyes. Then she sat back, looked towards the heavens and produced the verdict. It seems I'm like a cat - I fall with my feet on the ground in any situation and from any height. That said, my intestines are full. They are pulsing with rotting, decomposing flesh. This is backing up my system and making me grumpy and stressed. I calmly explained that my stomach is rather active and constipation for me would mean voiding less than 7 times a day. She looked me in the eye and claimed "thats exactly what I said, you are not digesting well". My veins are stiff, and not "supple" enough. And my gall-bladder is not helping (It was removed in 2000). Oh, and I am not getting enough oxygen, I don't breathe enough. She promptly wrote down a list of what I cannot eat (basically anything that I like: no bread - not even whole wheat, no soda, no nuts, no oranges) and what I must (orange vegetables, wheat grass, and flax seeds). Then we got to the medications.

What a business this is. The consultation is free, but you buy the "drugs" from the pharmacy. In order to speak nice I need, Klintox (Detox advanced formula), Nolergi (scientifically advanced formula), Jarro-Dophilus (a mixture of 8 kinds of probiotic bacteria with no less than 4.4 billion organisms per capsule) and B-Rest. Without the B-Rest (which is "not-lost" somewhere in our house) the three magic potions came to a mere 380NIS.

At least its cheaper than marriage counseling.

5 comments:

Marc said...

Even though I have studied the guts of Schrödinger's cat - in lay-person's terms, this means that I can reproduce Heisenberg's equations in my sleep and have been forced to accept that on the basis of modern physics, the world is more than what meets the eye - and even though I try to be open-minded, I'm still Cartesian at heart. So I'm very sceptical if someone tries to proscribe me quacky medicins.

Nevertheless, extreme circumstances require a bit of bending of the normal newtonian space of my mind. Plagued for years by daily panic attacks and disenchanted with conventional psychiatry (I saw 4 different psychiatrists, took various drugs to no avail) I branched out and did the unthinkable - I tried a bit of reflexology. It was good at the beginning, but I discovered, much too late and after pumping 20k USD into it, that I had run into an Israeli founded cult that was being quietly cultivated in the peaceful haven of Switzerland. That was the Grinberg method and I said goodbye to it once I saw the light. I did however meet the woman of my life through it and they say love is priceless, so I guess that I can pass up this 20k USD loss under the name of love! The other repercusion of the Grinberg method is that I ended up in Israel, which in itself is a kind of therapy - I just haven't figured out if it is a good or bad therapy. It definitely hardens the soul.

Now get this. The woman of my life is a homeopathe - and we are talking hardcore classical homeopathy, none of this diluted French shit they pass off as homeopathy these days. We are talking interpreting hand movements to understand which prehistoric plant or animal the person is describing. I tried it out, pumped in more money, took the globules. Here we are getting closer to the uncertainty principles or for substances that have less than one atom of the original substance, there really is an affect. How much is placebo? Difficult to tell, probably a bit of both. I gave up after a while, it just wasn't making the kind of punch in my life that I was looking for.

So I tried past life stuff. But the practitioner I saw understand my cartesian mind I did something different. In 2 hours, she provided an analysis of my dilemmas that was so accurate, so profound, that it started the wave of real change in my life. After investing 10 years of money in therapy, this therapist showed me the way. Not that I am cured, but the way was set forward.

What do I conclude? That most therapies and therapists are very very mediocre. And if they are driving a car with an orange ribbon in Israel, your chances are even slimmer. Everyone today is trying to get into therapy. So I suspect that it was better when we had witch doctors, because at least you knew they had real power and brilliance. This amazing therapist that I saw for 2 hours - there are not many of them around. So perhaps, when you finally meet such a person (perhaps they are not even a therapist) you needed to go through a whole journey and invested a lot of money on false gods in order to learn what you need to learn from that one great shiva. Modern physics says that the shortest point between to points is not necessarily a straight line. So maybe it is true, until you are ready to create your reality, you reality will be whatever ailment you have. But my cartesian mind differs - there are too many quacks out there and not enough brilliant practitioners.

Marc

blackpetero said...

What can I say Marc. At least I'm trying. I am now committed to taking the full course of horse pills she prescribed. With near daily migraines this time of year, I will soon know if there is any real difference. I will keep the hordes updates on my progress.

Marc said...

Don't get me wrong. You have to try. I currently see someone who teaches me to express the contents of my psyche while tapping on meridian points. It's a bit strange, but it is the most useful therapy that has worked for me to date. Even though I spend those 2 hours with an talented practitioner who showed me what everyone else had failed to show me, the path out appears difficult, time consuming and continues to make a big dent in my wallet.

I guess the thing is this. It still makes me angry when I am reminded of how much money I "threw away" on therapists who should have been wise enough to see much earlier if their method was working with me. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way therapies are organized. It seems to me that modern therapy lacks any kind of predictability and in this sense, it is not improvement over voodoo magic. And yet we still pay these people huge amounts of money when most of them have no idea if they can actually achieve the results that we think they are promising us. And what really sux is that you don't have much choice - you need help and you pay.

Marc

Franziska said...

Hey, since I'm doing a little research about that Grinberg method these days I was wondering what made you stop doing it? I met this practioner and she actually seemed really nice and talented... I'm just still a bit sceptical whether it would just be a waste of money or not... (10 sessions for 250 €)

I'd be happy if you could shine some light into this for me ;) since you've already had some experiences in that field... thanks!!

Anonymous said...

That`s cheap. I pay 60 Euros per session.