Detox Anonymous

"Hello, my name is J and I'm addicted to irrigation of all kinds."

"Hiiiii, J."

I'll admit if they had a Draino® for your body, I'd have a tall glass with ice on a hot summer day. Enemas have always intrigued me; the idea of a fresh, clean start is detoxicatingly hopeful. But Americans have become absolutely obsessed with irrigation. Whether its a cleansing liquid diet fast, an enema, or a handful of horse pills to help keep your intestines moving - spooking us with statistics about 40 pounds of undigested meat in the average mans guts.

I'm guilty of it, too.

I've swallowed giant plastic coated pills that resembled like those instant sea monkey capsules, hoping they'd clean me out. Was a tiny spongy sea monkey going to get to work pressure washing my insides once the capsule dissolved? In other forms of emblematical irrigation; we're obsessed with oil changes, credit reports and debt dissolution - bankruptcy - we need to clean it all out. Engine flushes, transmission washes - clean it out, make it like new, we've gotta flood it with water like a groundhog's burrow and make it clean - chase out all the debris - "smoke 'em out" like John Wayne would say - turn the lights on the bugs and swab the decks.

But why are we obsessed with irrigation and detoxification? We all crave the confidence and a peace of mind of a "fresh start". Programs that'll clean out the small intensines of your computer; an virtual enema for your hard drives... viruses RAUS! Skin care products, peel that dead skin off and clean those pores, people! If there were a cream that could clean your skin, leaving behind only smooth bone and skull, I bet some of these loons would spread that shit on like jam on a crumpet. Ah, so fresh, "Julie you're cheek bones are so smooth and, well, exposed!"

Are we so bogged down with responsibilities, bills, paranoia and fear that something wired animal inside us inherently attracts us to a morbid fascination with self-cleansing, resurrection and sweat lodges?

Even I've been to the Russian Bath Houses. A friend of mine took me behind an old school house and sold me on the idea like a pusher and a bag of drugs. She said how great my skin would feel afterwards; how you could really feel all the toxins leaving your body as you laboured inside these barbaric wooden furnaces. And I sat there like a nut, in a toothpaste turquoise robe and laboured, thinking only of the finish line. And, she was right, I left that place glowing. My skin had a shine to it I'd never seen before and my spirit felt like it'd been through a brushless car wash.

That reminds me, I've only been alive about 30 years, but when did these oil change franchises pop up? Were people in the 50's haggling with grease monkeys about a $90 transmission flush and a $100 engine wash when they went for their oil changes?

Are our lives so fucked and caught in such a tailspin of upheaval that we're crying out to get off the ride? Think about "3 wishes"; about cats and "nine lives"... fuck it all up; eat fifteen chocolate cannolis, do some heroin, fuck your fiancées sister, steal a Rolls-Royce, drive it off the Brooklyn Bridge and wake up the next day like nothing happened.

Think about your boy Jesus, and the rebirth and resurrection, maybe that's why we're all so into that dude. He was the first guy to get a fresh start. Why do we find such solace in these restart buttons? Why are we intrinsically drawn to cleaning ourselves out? Are we drunk on the pregnant promise of an endless new day always at our fingertips? I think so. I'm sure theres a search for the fountain of youth buried in these words somewhere but I'll save that for another blog.