Burn-out, Break-down and Break-Through: My Story
Shuddering in the foetal position I have the distinct sensation of having been flayed with poison ivy. My mind races across the full spectrum of fight to flight, whilst even small muscles I never knew I had twitch and spasm with electric jolts. The glands in my neck throb and ooze pure sticky lymph as my entire scalp peels off in a manner that feels like an LSD hallucination. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that rice cracker.
Like many people Sweet Friend, I’ve been a busy man over the last decade and a half. I’ve been doing what I love, but I’ve been doing a lot of it at quite a fast pace. I’d also been ‘doing’ so much of the time that simply ‘being’ had become an increasingly scarce commodity. My soul whispered her fears and complaints with a rising urgency… but there was always something more urgent to attend to.
I guess I was ripe for a mid-life crisis.
So in 2019 my body gave voice to my soul’s unheard petitions and my health just broke. I quickly went from an energetic professional with no formal dietary restrictions, to a twitching, peeling, blistered pile of overwhelm and fatigue that was allergic to everything.
I quickly realised I was now caffeine intolerant and dropped my 3-5 beloved earl-grey teas a week. Then I figured I was now dairy intolerant and dropped that, then I realised I was histamine intolerant so progressively dropped pretty much everything else except oats and parsley for a while whilst I healed my gut.
I also dropped my gym membership, closed my clinic and stepped back from the charity that I founded 15 years ago. It felt like a wrathful goddess was consuming my life and I genuinely feared for my marriage, children and family home. I even offered this wrathful Goddess my beloved camper van – selling it quickly – in an attempt to buy her off and demonstrate my willingness to change.
But she was implacable. I was now also apparently intolerant to sunlight, the local swimming hole, sex, concentration of any kind, and sleep. The simple act of cooking my children an omelette brought me out in blistering hives.
So what was really going on? Was I simply 'allergic to work' as I told the kids, or had I actually become a deeply intolerant person?
The physical picture was fairly clear to me soon enough. The intense skin symptoms (technically eczema-dermatitis) were obviously histamine-mediated, and since histamine is a neurotransmitter involved in the alarm response, the acute psychological symptoms that were so crippling made sense.
This model also explained nicely why I was worse for even mild exercise, and also explained the way my symptoms flared every night around 2 am - getting me out of bed scratching at my skin until I bled.
For those who have never truly itched, I finally understand why people will burn, cut or blister themselves to find even an hour’s reprieve. The sensation goes way beyond the skin and burrows deeply into the nervous system until it is inseparable from a nightmare cocktail of hallucinations and emotions.
Histamine is technically what puts so many people in mental health institutions. If not for a rich history of meditation and psychedelic plant use, I don’t know how I would have coped.
Yet human beings cannot be reduced to their biochemistry. I knew without a doubt that this was about my Soul.
Slowly, in the ruins of my old life, realisations and hints started to trickle through: I had become intolerant of myself in some important ways. Yet paradoxically, the ‘self’ that I was intolerant to was not even me. “I am not Jimi” declared a voice deep within my heart during a meditation one day; “I am light dancing on water, I am bat-wing and oak-song, I am falling leaf… I am the beheld”.
It’s impossible to describe such a journey in a humble email. But I felt I owed you an honest attempt anyway. This was also a PhD in inflammation and allergies and what led me to create my herbal formula Cell Mana, and further the Hista-Clear Kit.
My skin is now healed, my diet is slowly but steadily expanding and I’m exercising and sleeping once again.
The point of all this is simple: everyone finds themselves in a place like this sooner or later, the symptoms vary wildly, but the invitation is the same: “Die and be Reborn”.
Never lose faith in the human capacity for radical transformation and healing.
Much Love,
Jimi
