The Unreliable Guide to… Detoxing

By Nat Shepherd on February 4, 2018 in Other

It’s been a tough few weeks.

This is a dangerous time of year. You’ve had a fabulous Christmas party season, followed by an even better January holiday/festival season. Your head aches, your chin is spotty, your liver is thinking about booking you into a clinic. You are prone, in other words, to falling for the idea of a ‘detox’.
Someone, probably an aficionado of Yoga or one of those other weird cults, will suggest that you should clean up your act. This may result in you signing up for something very dangerous like Dry July, Sober October or Colonic Irrigation Wednesdays. My advice is to run to the nearest pub, but if you are determined to be cleaner, leaner and meaner, the Unreliable Guide has some tips and tricks to make sure you survive the detoxification process:

You are what you eat
What they say is good for you is constantly changing. One minute potatoes are great a source of fibre, the next they’re a high GI nightmare. In the eighties it was all carbs and no fat, now it’s all fat and no carbs. Ice-cold water burns calories, but fizzy water with lemon will rot your teeth. Blueberries cure cancer, but if you eat fruit it’s full of sugar, which causes cancer. What the actual f*ck? Basically, fads come and go and yesterday’s ‘superfood’ is tomorrow’s toxic waste. The Unreliable Guide advises that you have a small amount of everything, unless it’s meth, obviously, because if you develop a taste for that you’ll need a truck load. Which leads us to…

Reality used to be a friend of mine
The thing I find most disturbing is that detoxes always require you to give up all drugs and alcohol. Being totally drug and alcohol free can be surprisingly entertaining – for a few days. Then you’ll realize that almost everyone you know is dull beyond measure, at which point you’ll probably seek a new drug, the drug that almost all detox regimes allow: the serotonin high gained from excessive exercise…

Keeping Fit
I love an ocean swim. A good walk along the coastal path is a joy. There are many great, cost-free ways to keep fit in the Eastern Suburbs, but many of you seem to ignore these free options and opt for the masochism of boot camps. The popularity of these is a mystery to me but come 6am our beaches are covered with a multitude submitting to this ritual humiliation. The more private among you might visit sweaty-bum-crack gyms and risk hurting yourself on expensive machinery that wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval torture museum, or you’ll attend yoga classes and blithely follow the instructions of some leotarded twat in the pay of the local chiropractor. Remember, all these practices are very dangerous for your health. Avoid them.

Colonic Irrigation
Poo is one-way traffic. Do not mess with your bum.

Finally, the Unreliable Guide would give you a very sound piece of advice: a little of what you fancy does you good, but a truck load of booze or drugs will make you see the devil and she will be wearing a leotard. Moderation is all.