Around 2008, I couldn’t find anyone decent in New Zealand to help me work on getting my high mercury levels down. I’d been told time and time again by all the ‘top’ doctors that my levels were normal. I’d had various tests that had come back with elevated levels but was steered away from it being an issue.  I was running out of ideas and desperate for a solution so ended up at a naturopath’s house whose supplements were all from Russia. She explained to me what they were which made sense to me and off I went. Great I thought, lets get rid of this mercury and things might improve. The supplements were basically strong drainage remedies such as milk thistle and some gall bladder drainage remedy.

What was to unfold was probably my worst mistake of all time. What I was given certainly mobilised mercury and whatever else, but the problem was excreting it. Toxins are very easy to mobilise but much more difficult to excrete. They just flow around and around your body causing all sorts of unnecessary harm. The catch 22 is that mercury disrupts our detoxification systems therefore making things exponentially worse. All our bodies can do is store these toxins as safely as possible. It’s when we pull these metals out but redistribute them into less safe places is when the trouble really starts.

As I started to feel worse I decided that taking more was the best thing to do. I can handle this. I understood that some pain and suffering meant something was happening; it was coming out. Wrong.

I was unleashing these toxins into my bloodstream and very little was actually leaving me. My pain and suffering threshold was pretty high so I kept on going think I would push through. Rational thinking went out the door and things started to go from bad to worse. I finally realised that stopping was the best thing to do but the damage had been done. I wasn’t able to sleep at this stage and my heart was racing like never before; no matter what I did it just wouldn’t calm down. I was getting scared at this point because I was in the middle of this hell trip and there was no end to it.

I couldn’t lie down or things would get worse so I was sitting in bed close to losing conciousness. Repeatedly, I would begin to blackout and then fall off the bed and put my head on the floor and just save myself. I thought I’d really done it this time, one self-treatment too many. No one was home at that stage and I really thought I would black out and die.

Mercury Abyss

What I had done was put myself into a state of toxic shock which can lead to death. I had unwittingly mega-dosed myself with toxins and things weren’t looking good. I was so concerned that I scribbled out a note to my parents saying I’d really messed up this time and basically I’d died trying to get well. Sorry about that. And then I had to fall to the floor to save blacking out again in a sweaty, nauseous pile of underweight human.

When my parents saw me, they put me the car and we when to the emergency room. After explaining my experiment and getting some daggers thrown at me I was prescribed beta blockers. I must admit I did feel an idiot when I handed the doctor the container of pills but he couldn’t read the contents because they were in Russian. Ah, the joys of treating yourself when no one else can.

So, the beta blockers decreased my heart rate but I was pretty messed up. If I thought I was mentally in bad shape before, then I really was in zombie land now. I couldn’t complete any daily task without basically collapsing. My kidneys were sore for over a year, I lost more weight, and generally I was just existing. It was beyond miserable. I think 2 years just went by with me just trying to stay alive and there was no sign of pulling out of this one. I was 32 and just existing; I was alive but there was no life. The bouts of depression were horrendous but eventually I came to respect the power of them. I’d learned to look in from the outside, like part of me was looking down at myself thinking, ‘Wow John, you really f’d this up mate and you’re hurting like hell but don’t just die, hang in there, just hang in there as well as you can and keep trying”.

And that part of me was strong and would never give up no matter how much pain I was in or how bleak the future looked. I remember being impressed with the human ability to suffer continuously but also staying calm, even when things were this desperate.

So that’s my beta-blocker story and it’s great to not have to take them any more. I probably could have stopped them a year or so ago but the all I had to do was think back to those awful times and that would put me off doing it.

Proper detoxing doesn’t involve pain and suffering. If anything makes you feel worse, stop it immediately and reassess what you are trying to do. The fact that whatever you are taking makes you feel worse should give you some clues.

I’m happy with my program and it’s slowly working. In my book, I explain exactly what I did to turn things around and what I’m currently doing.

As reluctant as I am to go to the doctor these days and not being a fan of taking meds, I appreciated modern medicine at a time when I needed a solution.

Towards good health, John