Daily Detox

If I’m ever going to do a commercial for something, it would be for Daily Detox: For Today’s Toxic Environment. This will probably read like a commercial. It has all of the best herbs that are good for cleaning out the body.

When I lived in NYC, I used to hit a tennis ball against a wall at some handball courts. I started up a game with a Puerto Rican guy and we’d play a game of handball using tennis rackets and a tennis ball. Sometimes I’d even win. Once I played the same game against a guy using just his hand and he kicked my ass, which was fairly humiliating.

An incredibly fun game, but also incredibly unhealthy. The handball courts were beneath the Williamsburg Bridge--soot and exhaust descended on those courts. Sometimes I couldn’t take in a full breath afterwards because I could feel the pollution in my lungs. The same thing happened to me as a kid living in L.A. After a day of playing, I couldn’t take a deep breath. It’s seems to be a lot better in L.A. now. Must be the smog checks on cars.

So I went to a health food store, bought some Daily Detox, and it cleared my lungs out right away. I also have bad kidneys so it’s good for me to get some extra help with cleansing my system. My kidneys work only 2/3 what they should. Doctors don’t know how it happened. My guess is that it happened during a horrible fever when I lived in Minneapolis--shivering uncontrollably, crazy hornlike glands swelling up on the back of my head. It might be when my kidneys got scarred. A bad fever can do that. I need to stay away from meat and keep my blood pressure down.

So I always feel a little bit toxic, unhealthy. It contributes to me feeling psychologically toxic as well--about all the dumb, bad, violent stuff in the world. Daily Detox has herbs that help the liver and the kidneys--Milk Thistle, Dandelion, Burdock, etc. Some supplements like Juniper or Licorice actually make the kidneys work harder so I stay away from them. I’ve done my homework.

What else is wrong with me? I’m 3/4 deaf in my right ear. When I was seven I got a concussion after a kid dared me to make a jump on the jungle gym from one bar to another and I hit my head. I ended up lying unconscious in the sand, blood pouring out of my right ear. Must have been hideously bad for my brother to see me lying there. Really, I think it’s years of playing drums and live music which have broken down my ear drum. Again, doctors don’t know what caused it. All they can tell me is that, yes, I have hearing loss.

Everyone’s got some maladies: these are mine.