THE FAST AND THE CURIOUS
By MALCOLM AZANIA (MINISTER FAUST)
How I survived the grueling, sickening 10-day "Master Cleanse"
Here's an idea: while billions of people go to bed every night with empty guts, how about voluntarily starving yourself and claiming everything from triumph over disease to spiritual purification? Why not write a self-help book about it? Culinary self-denial is no new notion, fellow feasters and fasters. It's as old as vision quests, spending 40 days in the desert resisting Satan and ritual initiations in the cave. I don't know if birds, bees or educated fleas do it, but from Lent to Ramadan to a hundred other religious rites, choosing to deny the body its sustenance is almost universally regarded as a means toward individual human betterment. In our hyper-stressed, ultra-confused, consumatopian world, fasting has been sadly mutated into anorexia and bulimia (disorders only conceivable in the land of spurnable milk and upchuckable honey), but it wasn't always this way. And it doesn't have to be this way. Fasting can be good for you. And man, is it a ride! The "Master Cleanse" fast, lemme tell ya, now that's a trip down a flight of stairs. Ten days of nothing but lemon juice, syrup and cayenne, followed by... oh, wait. First the origin story, then the battle. I didn't throw myself onto the rib-spreader called "Master Cleanse" just for kicks or without training. I came to fasting the old-fashioned way (one of them, anyway), by being raised as a good Catholic lad. I think I was in grade two when Sister Joanne explained to us tykes that during Lent, the period between Shrove "Short Stack" Tuesday and Easter Morn, we could choose to give up sweets, for instance, as a sacrifice. I wasn't big on sweets anyway, so that part was easy. By the time I was in junior high and an altar server, I opted for a couple of pre-Vatican II choices: I'd give up red meat every Friday and for the entirety of Lent. By the time I was in university, I did a stint as a vegetarian, but I got kicked off the tour. (Not that I re-became a T-Rex; I'm a social carnivore, and I never buy factory meat or eggs for home.) But last fall, I accidentally found fasting's answer to extreme sports, a cliff-diving anti-dietary experience that changed me forever. I didn't go looking for the Master Cleanse. It found me. Brother G. tells me he does this here "Master Cleanse." Says it cleans him out but good. So I reads up on this here eating-plan, y'know, on that inter-whatchamacallit. This here Doc Stan Burroughs invented it half a century ago, and he claimed it didn't just slim ya down by poopin' ya out, it could cure damn near everything this side of spotty skin and soul-warts. Madness. Too good to be true, so it can't be. Hell, I tried it. My first task was eating my way through my fridge to get rid of all my tempting groceries, which meant delaying my descent into hunger valley by three days. (I work fast.) Then I stocked up on the only things I was allowed to consume: lemons, cayenne pepper, a $20 bottle (egad!) of pure, organic maple syrup (not that Mrs. Butterworth's slosh which is made of more chemicals than my carpet) and... wait for it... Sea Salt . Here's how it works. (And I'm warning you: this is not medical advice-do this fast at your own risk and if kills you or your goat, don't be faxing me your curses from purgatory.) Run your lemons through a juicer to get every last drop of citric blood. (Don't use so-called ReaLemon-it needs to be fresh and pure. No cheating, cheater.) Sink a couple of tablespoons of this juice and the same amount of organic maple syrup into a glass of purified water (hot or cold, your choice). Sprinkle this with as much cayenne pepper as you like or can stand. Drink six or more of these a day, and don't chew or swallow anything else except water. Oh, and one other thing. You know that chest-puckering pukanausea you get when you gag on alkaline lake water? Enjoy drinking a litre of it first thing every morning (actually, one litre of pure water with two tablespoons of sea salt). If you can't do that-I did, and I think prison is probably preferable-drink a laxative tea. It's much slower, though. The salt water is like Liquid Plum-R. Don't drink this within one hour of going to work, unless you drive a toilet for a living. In my case, the results were 10 days spent fantasizing about eating anything, and sitting in front of the TV nailed to the Food Network the way some folks are immobilized by p 0 r n. And damnedest of all, the thing worked. I lost about 15 pounds and, at least in my case, it stayed off. My appetite has been reset. I eat less and I feel full anyway, so I'm at my lowest weight in 15 years. (Unfortunately, The Master Cleanse didn't cure my spotty skin, but I have had a 71 per cent reduction in soul-warts.) When it was all over, I chatted with other MC survivors, preaching the Doc Stan diet to the unconverted, reminiscing over the vile excretions and the deprival mania like combat veterans laughing about foxhole horrors. You don't get a Purple Heart or an MC ring when you're done, and you don't get a plaque, although some folks say you junk decades of plaque stuck in your various gut-tubes. (Hope this medical jargon hasn't been sailing over your noggin.) Look, don't do this fast. I had buddies try it afterwards who couldn't make it two days without babying out. If you've never fasted, you'll never make it. But from toilet patrol to Food TV-worship to lemon-juicing to my first, sweet, soul-satisfying gnaw on solid food, what can I tell you? It's freakin' amazing. V
be happy, be well,
Zoe
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