I have been doing a series of videos on Andy’s book Amalgam Illness, specifically the section, “What to Do About Mercury Poisoning.” In this video I talk a bit about a topic he covers “Day to Day practicality” and “How to Keep your Life together During Treatment.” These topics are actually terrifically important because chelation or detoxification of metals, involves doing the same thing over and over for a very long time, and you need to put systems and habits in to place to make this easy to do.
I think I scared the crap out of a person in the Facebook group the other day when I mentioned that I had been chelating for TEN YEARS! Yes, I came across Andy’s program ten years ago. I actually started feeling better pretty quickly and people told me I was “aging backwards.” I had a lot of weird health problems until then and I had always gone on intuition as far as what to do about this or that. Sometimes I was wrong but most of the time it led me well. My intuition said that Andy was right. What he said sounded right and logical. But in the spirit of “trust but verify,” I gave Amalgam Illness to my then son-in-law, another chemical engineer. He said the book was not hooie and I went with that.
At that time, along with my health going south, my husband had an affair and the marriage broke up, I went bankrupt and lost my 20 year business and my house, got sued by two employees when I couldn’t even afford a lawyer and I got breast cancer twice. Talk about adrenal stress!
I found myself living in subsidized housing with the poor and with no prospects. My mother died and left me a little money and, along with getting my amalgams out, I decided to put that towards getting licensed as a health coach. I can’t say I learned very much from the program. But I asked Andy if he would mentor me, and if so, how much? Yes, he replied, and probably a lot because of all those poor sick people out there.” He was a really sweet man. “A prince,” as Joann, his girlfriend puts it. Don’t go beatifying him, though. His main purpose in life was not to deny himself and just help out you poor sick people for free. He did wind up doing a lot for free, though. As do I.
The first thing he did was go over my website to make sure I was not saying things that would get me in trouble with the medical authorities. The second thing, to my surprise, was to tell me to get everyone to use a particular pill box. It would be a great help, he said, in getting people to comply with taking the supplements they need to feel better.
In Amalgam Illness, he wrote these two sections about organizing your life. “Day to Day Practicality,” and “How to Keep Your Life Together During Treatment. “ I am not going to go over blow by blow what he says. It is covered on p. 71 in Amalgam Illness and Chapter 10 in The Detox Manual. The upshot is, whether you use pill boxes, or to-do lists or sticky notes all over your fridge, set up systems so you take your supplements and are able to follow the chelation schedule religiously and implacably without screwing it up all the time.
“Procrastination is a symptom of mercury poisoning,” he tells us. “You will do it a lot. Learn all of the ways you can to defeat it and use them. Have your friends and family help with this, too.”
“How to Keep Your Life Together During Treatment” is almost a list of aphorisms, kind of like The Book of Psalms. Bulleted points include, “Make a list, pick the most important things on it, do that, cross it off,” and “Read appropriate parts of this book repeatedly.” But we also get a couple of gems of Andy’s wisdom, which was considerable. “The physical symptoms remove before the emotional ones, “ and that the shyness and withdrawal are the last symptoms to go. Important to know!
Do you remember those books by Carlos Castaneda about his relationship with the Mexican shaman, Don Juan? They were very popular when I was a young person. One thing Don Juan says, is, “when you are young, your body is stupid.” So yes, you will be well again, but it takes a long time, and don’t expect to have the same stupid body that can handle all kinds of abuse. You are not going to be able to fart around and do anything you damn please.
"Chronic Illness is like a war being fought inside your body,” Andy tells us. “ After the soldiers are gone, it takes a lifetime to clean things up and they may never be perfectly right again.” I know that is not news that you may want to hear but I have certainly found it to be true for myself. I am healthy now, but staying healthy is a full time job.
“You are not crazy, you are poisoned, “ Andy famously told us. And you can also expect to have to do some inner work, in the category of insight and self-awareness in order to sort out the habits that have set in from feeling sick and crazy for so long.