Thread on fasting.

A few years ago, I got into water fasting.

Here’s what I learned, the major event which saved me, and why I continue to do them.

Next one, is 3-days starting Thursday after dinner. (Every month I do a 3-day fast)

It all started with natural medicine.

Like you, I started by asking small questions about the difference in results I was seeing between mainstream health advice and the people who followed it.

If you’re detecting a pattern to my life, you’re in the right place.

Our modern medicine seems to be making people unhealthier.

Which was weird to me because as an “educated” person, who believes in the scientific method, that seems at odds. And yet the data doesn’t lie.

So I got to it.

Down all the rabbit holes.

I spent 1000+ hours traversing the health space.

Eventually I hit on different methods of fasting within natural medicine...

I read everything about water fasting I could find.

Every major religion has some kind of water fast/extended fast.

It’s lindy

The longest anyone in recorded history did a water fast was some fat fuck in Scotland, for 450+ days with nothing but a potassium shot at day 100.

Armed with a loose plan, I waited for the right time.

My first water fast was NOT the right time...I got sick for 6 months after.

My entire decision to start a water fast hinged on how long I could do it for. Terrible idea.

Where I should have done preparation, got my body mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready.

I decided 45 hours travel time back from East Africa was the right move.

Any normal human, even one who flies regularly, will tell you that traveling by plane for 40+ hours sucks.

That you should absolutely not do anything other than maximize for comfort on such an insane itinerary.

Under no circumstance should you try your first extended water fast.

I am no such person, I did and it was dumb.

Despite getting out of the gate poorly, I returned to the magical water fast 12 months later.

A simple 72-hour fast. I felt great! I did a few more about once a quarter for a while.

But my biggest and most “dangerous” water fast was yet to come.

During this time, parts of my life were going great, and some parts started going really badly.

Like catastrophically badly.

About 2 years after my 5th concussion (bicycle hit by bus) my life was on razor edge.

I found myself on the wrong end of the bottle and much worse.

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

3-months into a very painful sobriety, withdrawal is a terrible experience I would wish on no one, things took a turn from bad to terrible.

I started getting vertigo in my house.

I could go walk in the park for a couple of weeks, but eventually the vertigo caught up with me there to.

It got worse. Constant pain.

So bad, I had vertigo while dreaming.

There was no escape.

This was actually my bottom.

Not the events that preceded my sobriety.

As my world closed in on me with astonishing rapidity, a little voice in the back of my mind: A simple reference to extended water fasting as having, sometimes!, lifesaving/healing effects.

Barely able to form a sentence, I became fixated on a Great Water Fast

I went to my PCP, a woman I’ve since parted ways with, men don’t go to female doctors please, and laid out what was happening.

12-weeks vertigo, linked to my sobriety, had withdrawn from drugs + alcohol. I needed help badly.

She started to prescribe me crazy drugs

The kind of drugs where the commercial spends more time on the side effects (in extreme cases: death!) than the regular parts

Those were not for me. She told me I couldn’t continue, that my body was at war with itself, and that I was headed for a brick wall

No shit.

I told her my water fast plan. My own personal deus ex machina.

I would go on a water fast. I wouldn’t stop until my body would heal, or I would die.

A kind of Rube Goldberg’ian assisted suicide.

She started to go down the 5150 playbook but I was ahead of her there.

So I went home. Gathered what strength I had.

Announced to my poor long-suffering wife that I was going on an immediate water fast, and would let the chips fall where they may.

I said a prayer and got ready spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

The first day there was no change in symptoms.

Then over the next 5 days my suffering increased well beyond what I thought I could handle.

About day 3 I had that calm you can sometimes get when you’re close to real events. Where you self report a lvl 9 pain but don’t complain

I slipped out of consciousness around day 6/7 tbh I don’t have a memory here but what I wrote down later.

The pain ended on the 8th morning, never to return.

Since then I’ve done sporadic now monthly water fasts.

I treat it and prepare like a religious pilgrimage.

What did I learn?

In hindsight this practice, see I’ve matured, is something you should add to your life. Like meditation you should start small and follow the advice of wiser folks.

Don’t be like me. Do not go in with a quantified mindset, this is a spiritual exercise.

You should definitely do your research first, and talk to people who’ve done it.

If you are a mess, I do have the one datapoint about how there is a high correlation between my vertigo going away and my 8-day water fast.

Perhaps one caused the other to end.

Thanks to @TheLivingLogos for reminding me to remember why I have this practice.

If you found this helpful, good! If you’d like to join me NYE, even better!

If not, no worries, back to frontier Sensemaking next week.

It’s all linked though.