I did something bad. Something very bad and it resulted in me having very little memory of anything I did, said, or even was supposed to do during the last 4 days or so. I vaguely remember that I’d RSVP’d to something on Thursday and didn’t show up.
Other than that.. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday is a blur. Actually, on Saturday I clearly remember being so confused that I didn’t know if it was 7am or 7pm. I remember it because it scared me, which is the reason that I even remember part of Sunday.
At the current moment, I’m jobless, single, and so have little real demands on my time that I don’t create for myself.
In a moment of almost suicidal decision making.. I wasn’t have much luck with the jobless issue. Due to the severe restrictions I had on myself to stay healthy, dating was becoming impossible. Even with my severe restrictions, I was still finding myself suffering through reactions.
It boiled down to… If I’m going to be alone and single, and I don’t HAVE to be at work anywhere.. there is nothing stopping me from eating what I want.
So I did.
At first it went unbelievably well. I was shocked. I was expecting reactions to hit the Ricter scale at 7, and all I got was a 2.
So I tried it again. Something worse for me. Something that was truly dangerous. I really expected monumental problems. I got a slight headache that lasted 3 minutes, a little eczema outbreak, and some gas.
It was seriously a WTF moment.
However, as much as I know one of my allergens is nearly like crack to me. It’s one that’s the hardest to avoid.. lucky me right? I wasn’t really prepared for it.
What I’d planned (after the second trial of my allergens) as a once a week binge, just enough for a date or social event, turned into a once a day, twice a day, every meal, every snack sort of thing.
I found myself craving things that I knew had components of my allergens in it. Nothing else would satisfy me, and since my reactions were not horrid.. some skin blemishes (ugly & disgusting but not deadly), some sinus problems, cough, headaches, lots of gas, and some digestion problems.. I was finding it hard to resist those urges.
So I think it was Wednesday of last week, I went and purchased some groceries that were easy to fix and “allergy-lite”. Items that contained only small amounts of my allergens. I purchased enough of these foods to last me for a few meals. I planned on eating one meal a day of it at most.
I should have caught on earlier, but I didn’t. One meal of it and I was too tired to cook my allergy-friendly food. So I made an allergy-lite quick sandwich. Then another.. and another.
By Friday, I was feeling under the weather a little, but I don’t really think I was thinking well enough to clearly assess my own health.
Saturday, I was dazed and confused. This set off alarm bells in my head. I clearly remember telling myself that I had to stop. I also remember trying to remember how many days it’d been since I’d done anything productive. I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t even tell you when was the last time I’d fed my dog. Luckily there was still some food in her dish. I gave her more just in case.
Funny thing is that I started going allergy-free because of the worsening health and digestive issues, and didn’t even notice the mental complications. But even though my health was clearly getting worse by Saturday, that wasn’t the deterrent. The deterrent was simply that I was so out of it, I knew I was missing out on life itself.
Sunday, I used what little energy I had to make an easy broth soup. By Sunday night, I was thinking more clearly and detoxing.
Today, I’m pretty clear. I seem to recognize time passing, which is a good sign.
Despite feeling like I missed a few days, I’m actually looking back at this as a positive experiment. It has shown me that I do have to stay diligent, but possibly that I can once in a while screw up and live through it with little consequence. However, I cannot allow myself to think that its ok to do it on any kind of regular basis. The potential costs are way too great. (And if I can’t control myself on a once in a while screw up, that’s going to be out too.)
People ask me all the time about my allergy symptoms.
“What happens when you eat it?”
There are so many parts of how it affects me that I cannot put it into words. Simply put.. my answer is this..
“It won’t kill me. It will just make me wish it had.” One way or another this is true.
(Disclaimer: This experiment was only with allergens that I have a past experience of non-deadly reactions. Any foods that I feared a severe or deadly reaction, I still avoided. This is not an experiment that I would advise anyone to do on their own without doctor supervision or without proper allergy medications handy – epipen. I just got lucky.)
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