Letters to the Editor
MXC 100*193
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 5
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governments should be banned from banning plant extracts.
[Read the article: Confessions of a salvia eater]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Governments are always going to ban hallucinogens, sadly, regardless of how much benefit people get from them. This isn't about safety, it's about fear and ignorance, and control of the populace.
And why does anyone feel that a dad's trying salvia in his basement turns him into a loser? He did, after all, say that he just uses it a couple of times a year, when he's totally stuck and needs a breakthrough. Sneaking into the basement to, say, send anonymous pornographic e-mails to people is definitely loser behaviour. Taking salvia for an inner exploration isn't. Plenty people consider salvia to be a sacred plant, and taking salvia trips is part of their spiritual practice.
I tried a tincture of salvia once, bought from a rather dodgy source. Didn't work, unfortunately. I'm grateful for this article, it's reminded me about salvia. I'm as stuck as a needle in a bloody record, could use a kick up the arse, especially if it's delivered by a nice lady in a white dress.
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blessed are the non-hypochondriacs
[Read the article: Sick in the head]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Great article, really made me laugh, and sadly, I relate to it. So far this year I've diagnosed myself with diabetes, kidney failure, ovarian cancer and bowel cancer. Unlike Jennifer Traig, though I can't laugh about it, because it's been a source of huge fear and anxiety for me. I'm so frightened of not being able to earn a living if I'm really sick, and end up on living on the street where I'll surely die from the sheer discomfort. Yes, homelessness and destitution is where my hypochondria leads me, though I obsess about my health in secret, mostly.
And like the author, I have a raft of real, chronic disorders, but also a whole load of things that can't be treated by a doctor, but make me a weak and weedy specimen, compared to the hardy folk around me. Nonetheless, I'd say that overall, my health is relatively ok. As long as I really don't have ovarian cancer, which I should find out about soon.
My hypochondria stems from a very traumatic past, that's left me with huge free-floating anxieties and insecurity. I need some hook on which to hang all that fear and it looks like my health is one of the hooks. Also, I'm extremely sensitive. Like some poster here just mentioned, I think that hypochondriacs tend to be extremely sensitive people, and are hyper-aware of sensations and 'symptoms' in their bodies. Neurological tests have shown that highly sensitive people (known to scientists as 'neurotic' or 'introverted') have a chronically 'aroused' nervous system, and exhibit much lower thresholds for tolerance of pain or noise.
CAM can be a godsend for hypochondriacs. I've spent a relatively large part of my life and income trying to make my real and imagined disorders more bearable, with various herbs and diets, and other forms of healing, and I'm now considerably healthier and stronger in my forties than I was in my twenties or thirties, when I was pretty sickly.
I was quite lucky in that my doctor is quite open to her patients self-diagnosing -she says it makes her job easier, and I did actually self-diagnose a severe chronic problem that had really hampered my life - no doctor had cottoned on to what the symptoms actually represented. The diagnosis was a huge turning point for me. So I think there is a balance to be had between letting your paranoia run away with you, and being aware of when your intuition tells you that something is truly wrong with you. It can sometimes be difficult to tell the paranoid imaginings and intuition apart.
It's easy to scorn hypochondriacs, but it's really not easy being one. I can think of many other things I'd rather be.