Wondering from where the purely “natural” approach to solving all ills came. Always a devotee of the religion of good exercise and good diet (though I’ve changed denominations many times: mostly cardio and bodyweight, lift only, low carb, high fat, high carb, eat more often, eat less often, I still haven’t dabbled that vegan sect), this idea of “not taking drugs” to heal or enhance life seems to have been added to the canon in my 20s. At 20-something, I was as physically indestructible as I was ever going to be, and my outlook was filtered through that lense: “Drugs are for weak, old, sick people.” “I can do anything on my own, including conquering aging and my genetics.”
Confirmation bias was reinforced by reading many articles sub-titled: “The best holistic, natural approach to lowering your cholesterol and/or boosting your testosterone without the need for those dangerous drugs. ” Though the reader is assured the articles’ authors have no financial stake in selling you a prescription, like those colluding, morally compromised doctors and their big pharma drug reps, the authors are instead selling products that compete with allopathic medicine for mindshare, and ultimately dollars: books and supplements. The authors rail against the dangerous doctors that “only have 15 minutes, max, with a patient, will shrug off any new research because they just can’t keep up with it all, and think that everything can be simply fixed by taking this dangerous pill that I’m going to write you a script for, forever.” Emotionally and intellectually convinced, I was wholly decided that I could conquer anything with the right plan and hard work. That plan, now supported by a body of scientific-sounding blog research, included the right exercise, “natural” supplementation, the right diet, and none of those dangerous prescription drugs.
It’s unfair to lambast your past self and say “I was young and stupid.” You were always younger than you are now. 10 years before you were 11 you were still babbling and shitting in diapers, 10 years before you were 21, you were 11 and all that pre-adolescence carried. In my teens, I knew it all and told it to everyone largely in absolutes. I unconsciously pent up internal conflict with many of these absolutes and turning the conflict outward to defend them; “If I can’t convince myself, then at least I’ll make you uncomfortable with the idea of even suggesting otherwise.” Coulda, woulda, shoulda, but I would’ve loved to have just slaughtered some of those sacred cows and frolickling bathed in their blood rather than beating other people away to defend those ideas. My adherence to absolutes cost me some valuable relationships.
As I aged through my 20s, I became OK with the conflict internal of ideas. I struggled to consciously bring conflict to the fore, and to not insist on always finding resolution. Instead I started to learn to be in the in-between, suspended on a wire between towering concepts, penduluming between the two, holding both in balance, being at peace with indecision for a time, being rocked hypnotically by that perpetual motion, back and forth. If balancing two or more ideas for an action altering decision, I discovered there would always be as much time as needed to decide. With the amount of preparation or information you had at the time: no more, no less, necessity itself would push the decision forward.