The True Test of Will: My Week as a Raw Food Vegan III

No matter what anyone tells you, a colonic is anything but “fun”. Unless of course, you think someone shoving a garden hose up your butt and cranking it on full tilt is your idea of a good time.


The bottom line:

At the end of the week, I felt great and didn’t want to leave. The pain in my knees and stomach were gone and I had a ton of energy. Was it as euphoric as the apex of a good coffee high? No. But it lasted all day and I was calmer, in a better mood and less jittery. For once in a good long while, I felt like someone my age should feel, instead of a cranky old man.

At first, I was confused because I hadn’t lost weight like most of the other patients had. Then I looked in the bathroom mirror and realized I had actually put on some muscle mass – something I had previously been told was almost impossible without animal proteins.

Overall, I found the staff at Hippocrates knowledgeable and genuinely motivated to help people. But even more amazing, were the other guests.

We grow up reading books and watching movies that chisel into our psyche the concept that heroes are people who battle and defeat the bad guys and external enemies. But in 25 years of wandering, I’ve never encountered a truly bad person. I have however, found plenty of enemies within.

We all have little voices inside of us that tell us we can get away with not taking care of ourselves – that other people will come to our rescue and we can just postpone our health until later in life when doctors or shrinks will simply ‘fix’ us.

A lot of the guests I met at Hippocrates had lived out this mentality, learning the hard way it is far from the truth. They are at the brink of losing it all – battling diabetes, drug addiction and cancer. Some had even been told that they had a limited amount of time left to live.

But instead of giving up, they took on the responsibility to learn how to take care of themselves – instead of blaming others for their unhappiness and unhealthiness. I watched as they turned and faced their internal enemies: addiction, weakness, depression and illness – to achieve victory over themselves.

They are all my heroes.

Reid Wright received his official degree in BS last year from the University of Idaho, in Moscow Idaho. He is a most excellent journalist.