I've made it into Day 2. It's not quite the...ballyhoo...the ruckus...the ELATION of entering a Day 2 of a water fast, but it's the absolutely critical, first step down this revitalized path. I feel energized—I don't know if it is from all the nutrients that I'm integrating into my system or just some sort of psychosomatic brouhaha. Yet, I do view food as drugs—far more than just my food-meth metaphor. This isn't mind-blowing; we basically treat food like something we can take to feel good, whether we use it as a beer or as an aspirin...and it's why a 4+ week water fast is a compelling journey...

...but I'm not focusing on fasting, lest that I get pulled down that solitary-but-beautiful path again...

...thus, I return with the food-drug construct. Or, you might prefer the fluffier word, prescriptions, basically, something that someone tells you to eat to make you...change. Now, when it comes to these things, the change isn't organic: it pushes one direction, pulls on another. And to correct THAT issue, there's more prescriptions, which in turn—yes, you got it, requires more prescriptions, until you're now a 4th-grade science project Chewbacca with matted hair and a 1000-yard stare as the vinegar and baking soda reaction causes you to emotionally vomit on anyone unable to jump to hyperspace away from your incendiary Mustafar.

Yet, there are some cases when we've gotta visit the urgent care shaman. In my own story, years ago at 17, I splattered my chin open on a Bellevue Baptist Church basketball court and I just had to be rejected for a date to prom later that night. As no cornucopia is gonna stitch a chin up, I had to go. Then there was that time at a Harley-Davidson...CLEARLY, we need someone for emergencies. And a midwife. Because, yeah.

But, I don't know if a M.D. is the way to go for system maintenance. The testing is good, like, "Iceberg ahead!" But, it's an industry that is hard for me to trust with wealth as its core incentive, that, and keeping the patient mostly-alive to maintain wealth extraction, golden goose and all. If I need to correct a behavior, oh, let's say OBESITY and any current and future ramifications that come from a life of poor decisions, should I really pop a pill for correction? Honestly, can I have with any reasonable expectations believe that it would resolve things any more than giving a pill to a drowning man? C'mon, now!

CLEARLY, to correct a behavior, we gotta correct the behavior: stop going down that path and the let the body step in and fix things before it's too late. Eat things that add nutrition to our system, hit our deficiencies, and avoid things that harm us. When taking a step back, this is obvious, of course. While not as sexy as a talisman-holding harbinger of cures who conjures a laser light show throughout a waterfall of snake oil, a nutritionist holds greater value than some fat quack.

But, we don't really view food as something that fuels us with energy and enhances with vitamins and minerals. It's all about the window dressing; it's all about that briefest interaction on the fork. Yes, we'll have a good or bad relationship with that same food for the next 24 hours—in some cases, the next 24 YEARS—but made forgetful by desire, we are just in a culinary ether, a moment of zing, as we chew for six times before we swallow—at best five seconds of funzies.

So, maybe there's something more here than our failure to recognize the utility nature of food. We've got it in a role that it really shouldn't be in. Further exacerbating the issue, mad food scientists engineer food-like objects that swell the tongue and empty the pocketbooks. With some ratio of salt, sugar, and fat while pavloved by an earworm jingle, I'm convinced I'd eat my own mousepad.

Yes, there's something more going on here, and food is a square peg not fitting in a round soul.