you were either on drugs or you weren’t, you were either functional or you weren’t, but they didn’t see things that way at all: they took your whole body into account. The drugs were just one piece of the puzzle to them, and I was shocked to find out that the drugs were the least intimate thing they cared about. They aim to get your entire body clean, then teach you to eat right and then to live right. I’m not what you’d call an armchair nutritionist, but I feel fine saying that they have a very unusual view of eating right, which is tied more directly than the food chain itself to shitting right. And like I’ve said, they are the kind of people who aim to be involved every step of the way.
They had group meetings about this, which involved getting everyone in a banquet room to listen to a staff member explain their program in the kind of very positive up-with-people speak that I loathe. I’m serious, that kind of shit makes my skin crawl worse than day three of heroin withdrawal. This introductory seminar made me want to throw up, which I’m not sure they would consider beneficial because it didn’t involve pulling anything out of my ass.
You see, they were obsessed with shitting, which they got to immediately after the happy talk died down. They told us that when you shit, you should keep your legs up, which unbeknownst to most of humanity is the “proper” way to shit. To assist us in assuming this position and unlearning years of improper shitting, they gave each of us a little step to put under our feet on when we sat on the bowl. It’s amazing that we’ve put a man on the moon but most of us still don’t shit right, because as I now know, only with your legs elevated can any of us—detoxing addicts, health nuts, normal people—properly get their shit on. I was so glad that someone told me how badly I’d been misusing toilet bowls since my first day out of Pampers.
They worked their way backward with us, telling us that to get our digestive tracts back in shape we would need to consume plenty of green drinks, yogurt, and more vegetables than I’d ever seen or eaten in my entire life. There was no fruit on the menu, however, because fruit is high in sugar, which is forbidden, as is caffeine and anything else that gets you buzzed in any way. To enjoy an apple a day at Hippocrates you’d need a note from someone in charge—I’m completely serious. Our diet consisted of nothing but flavorless organic things like celery, none of them fun, all of them aimed at cleaning you out.
It didn’t stop there; actually it didn’t even begin there. Every morning of that first week, a Jamaican woman of about sixty years of age woke me up at seven a.m. with a gentle knock at the door followed by a not-so-gentle green colonic to my ass. She was as chipper as Jiminy Cricket, making small talk while she slipped a tube upthere and sent this healthy, organic green cleanser that you could probably also use to fertilize your lawn into my poop chute. She’d smile the whole time, chatting away, asking me questions about my life in her thick, upbeat accent. We’d talk about my favorite bands, my hometown, sports, and whatever else, while this algae shake went into my ass, swished around a bit, then flowed out into a bag, carrying Chinese rocks and God knows what else with it. The whole process took about twenty-five minutes, and since it happened every day, she and I got real chummy, because let me tell you, if someone probes your ass every morning for a week you’ll either become best friends with them or end up killing them with your bare hands. Seeing as I was there to “make some changes” I “stayed positive,” though I hope to never, ever have that much traffic going the wrong way up my body’s one-way street again.
At the end of the first week my sister came to visit me, and she wasn’t happy to learn that I was still taking Subutex. I hadn’t told her I’d brought it and I wasn’t sure if they’d
They had group meetings about this, which involved getting everyone in a banquet room to listen to a staff member explain their program in the kind of very positive up-with-people speak that I loathe. I’m serious, that kind of shit makes my skin crawl worse than day three of heroin withdrawal. This introductory seminar made me want to throw up, which I’m not sure they would consider beneficial because it didn’t involve pulling anything out of my ass.
You see, they were obsessed with shitting, which they got to immediately after the happy talk died down. They told us that when you shit, you should keep your legs up, which unbeknownst to most of humanity is the “proper” way to shit. To assist us in assuming this position and unlearning years of improper shitting, they gave each of us a little step to put under our feet on when we sat on the bowl. It’s amazing that we’ve put a man on the moon but most of us still don’t shit right, because as I now know, only with your legs elevated can any of us—detoxing addicts, health nuts, normal people—properly get their shit on. I was so glad that someone told me how badly I’d been misusing toilet bowls since my first day out of Pampers.
They worked their way backward with us, telling us that to get our digestive tracts back in shape we would need to consume plenty of green drinks, yogurt, and more vegetables than I’d ever seen or eaten in my entire life. There was no fruit on the menu, however, because fruit is high in sugar, which is forbidden, as is caffeine and anything else that gets you buzzed in any way. To enjoy an apple a day at Hippocrates you’d need a note from someone in charge—I’m completely serious. Our diet consisted of nothing but flavorless organic things like celery, none of them fun, all of them aimed at cleaning you out.
It didn’t stop there; actually it didn’t even begin there. Every morning of that first week, a Jamaican woman of about sixty years of age woke me up at seven a.m. with a gentle knock at the door followed by a not-so-gentle green colonic to my ass. She was as chipper as Jiminy Cricket, making small talk while she slipped a tube upthere and sent this healthy, organic green cleanser that you could probably also use to fertilize your lawn into my poop chute. She’d smile the whole time, chatting away, asking me questions about my life in her thick, upbeat accent. We’d talk about my favorite bands, my hometown, sports, and whatever else, while this algae shake went into my ass, swished around a bit, then flowed out into a bag, carrying Chinese rocks and God knows what else with it. The whole process took about twenty-five minutes, and since it happened every day, she and I got real chummy, because let me tell you, if someone probes your ass every morning for a week you’ll either become best friends with them or end up killing them with your bare hands. Seeing as I was there to “make some changes” I “stayed positive,” though I hope to never, ever have that much traffic going the wrong way up my body’s one-way street again.
At the end of the first week my sister came to visit me, and she wasn’t happy to learn that I was still taking Subutex. I hadn’t told her I’d brought it and I wasn’t sure if they’d
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