I have a history of doing whatever it takes to get better without drugs or surgery. This is born out of an irrational fear that mood medication would have me running across the moors in a tattered white dressing gown, and surgery, well, who wants to go there unless there are no other options? I live in a city atop an energy vortex and a mountain of crystals; every kind of healing modality, from burrowing into a salt cave to sitting in a tank filled with billowing clouds of nitrogen gas, is just a phone call and a short drive away. Combine who I am and where I live, and the result is decades of alternative medicine. I’ve seen a chiropractor who blamed my shoulder pain on my relationships with men. I’ve suffered the unwelcome smell of weed on a massage therapist’s breath as he leaned over to blow on me during a “bonus” and unasked for reiki treatment. I’ve chanted nonsensical syllables during a sound therapy workshop so bizarre I looked for the hidden camera when a gong signaled the end of our shavasana. I’ve been rolfed and acupunctured, drunk tea brewed from beetles, fasted on lemon juice and apple cider vinegar, and sat at the feet of channelers, yogis, and Native American shamans. I’ve even talked to a priest or two, and I’m not Catholic. But it took a terrible turn of events for me to completely abandon reason in the hope of easing my anguish.

When a beloved family member manifested a form of Capgras syndrome, thinking I’d been replaced by an imposter, I became emotionally exhausted. I could no longer handle her frantic phone calls at work, her terrified comments in my presence, her refusal to get help. On the bleakest of Christmas Days, after smoking what I’ve come to call the $1000 joint because of the therapy its bad high necessitated, I succumbed to debilitating insomnia and rumination. I was trapped in fear and needed a way out. Thus began my winter of grasping at straws.

It started with cleansing. I stopped caffeine, meat, dairy, aromatic spices, and alcohol. A well-intentioned Swedish friend lent me his in-home colonic device, intimidatingly called “The Clysmatic.” He advised it would rid me of impurities and bring a sense of harmony. Whatever. If someone told me accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior would have worked just as well, I’d have opted for born again over this self-administered “hydrotherapy.” I lost weight, too much really, but people would say–because apparently in my town there are few boundaries around what you might say to someone regarding their appearance–“Are you doing a (wink, wink) cleanse? You look so good!” How did they know? My skin shone, my colon sparkled, yet my spirit was dying.

I eventually called my GP and made an appointment. I feel like I’m going crazy, I told the person who answered the phone. By saying that, she responded, it means you’re not. We made an appointment for the next day. My GP provided the kind of boutique care not covered by insurance, and her specialization was “plant spirit medicine,” which she recommended for my situation. I’d read a book about this kind of therapy, was comforted that she was an MD, and open to trying anything to escape my mental hell. I signed on.

Plant spirit medicine involved talking with her for a few minutes about my life, then lying on a table while she worked with plant spirits to address my imbalance. I paid $150 for each session, and, though I prayed for this to help, never felt relieved of anything other than a goodly sum of money when I walked out the door. During one appointment, I heard children playing outside. The juxtaposition of their laughter and my suffering started me sobbing. The doctor sold me some 5-HTP as I was leaving, to help with sleep. Take two, she said, and I left, bottle clutched in my hand, tears streaming down my face. I took two pills that night and slept well for the first time in months. This would prove to be the best part of this experience. The worst was yet to come.

It wasn’t the drumming at her home in the company of women who’d been seeing her for years and looked haunted, one sharing she was so sensitive to plant spirits that watching someone mow the lawn was like witnessing a holocaust. Or the awkwardness after the drumming, when everyone described their spirit journeys and I had to confess that I didn’t go anywhere spiritually during the drumming. Certainly not on the kind of Alice in Wonderland adventure offered up by fellow patients.

No, it was during my final visit when I told the doctor that my ill family member had contacted a local witch, and asked about dark magic. She responded excitedly that this could be the key to what was going on with me. I was under psychic attack by this person; it was a form of voodoo. I began to sob again. Not because I thought this scenario could possibly be true, but because I knew if I accepted this paranoid belief, I’d end up in a psych ward, just like that family member eventually did. I felt like a fool for putting my very vulnerable self in the hands of the wrong doctor, and walked away. I began practicing yoga, weaned myself off 5-HTP, and slowly got better.

I’m a fighter and a survivor. I’ll do the work to heal and I value this quality in myself. But I was way too stubborn about resisting western medicine, and I suffered needlessly for months. Though still cautious about prescription medication, I credit HRT for making perimenopause manageable, and a therapist trained in EMDR for moving me through PTSD with an almost miraculous speed. I now travel a middle path between western and alternative medicine, with much more discernment and a very alert bullshit detector. Do I still make wrong choices? Yes, because I’m a flawed human who doesn’t know everything and can’t give up the notion that some cures might lie outside of science. But I’m so much wiser for the journey taken.

He Died and Didn't Tell me by Diane

Parlor