Cleansing the Soul

“There’s this place I know that has cheap food, but good food, and free wine,” I say, putting forward an offer which no young New Yorker should be able to resist.¹

“Oh, that sounds great, but I’m on Master Cleanse,” she says.

Sadly, she’s not the first female to tell me this, nor the first male, nor, I suppose, the last of either. The Master Cleanse had been spreading like an STD and, as with most things in our culture, it started with super-rich celebrities, worked it’s way down to young middle-class city dwellers, and shall soon be seen in the teens and pre-teens of your town. What is it? Ostensibly a diet, but where diets seek to limit overeating or cut down on certain ingredients, this diet quiet simply eliminates the middle man: No eating!²

You see, you’re body, the only one you have, the one you know and love, has, unbenownst to you, filled itself with…things. No, they can’t be seen on a microscopic or found in blood samples, but, trust us, they’re there! Christians call them sins, Scientologists call them engrams, and we, the godless, material-worshipping masses, call them toxins. That they’ve never, ever, been recognized or seen by any scientist who didn’t get his degree in hucksterism, means nothing. No, these are toxic times we’re living in, thus we ourselves must indeed be toxic.

The best way to rid your body of these evil beings, it seems, is to starve yourself; not for a day or two days, but for ten days. For ten days³, the master cleanser will only consume lemonade (or lemon juice), maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water. Who decided that these four ingredients, and the absence of all others, lead to perfect health? The creator of the Master Cleanse diet, Stanley Burroughs⁴, who, though not a doctor, insisted–in the 50s, actually– that his master cleanse system would lead “the correction of all disorders”. The Good Undoctor’s book still, to this day, ranks in Amazon’s top two-hundred (and he didn’t even have to get a degree).

Well, I’ve yet to see the master cleanse cure any disorders, which is something I usually tell my friends when they start it, but, unfortunately, our conversation are usually interrupted by them having to take a shit;⁵ because if you’ve ever been around someone whose diet consists solely of lemons and cayenne pepper, you know that they’re not usually, particularly pleasant. I’ve observed extreme irritability, crying for no reason, falling asleep unexpectedly, and even the occasional babbling mindlessley; the reason for all these things is simple: You’re body likes food and doesn’t react well to it’s deprivation. Likewise, when–after the ten days–you attempt to re-introduce it to solid foods, a period of intense vomiting, shitting, and god-know-what-else will begin.

Western civilization has seemingly become so uncomfortable with it’s own prosperity that we, in various different ways, have begun voluntarily starving ourselves⁶ . Perhaps the whole thing would seem more valiant if the master cleanser began their cleanse by taking all the food that they might have eaten that week and sent it to some country that needed it, that wanted it, and who had the idea of body “toxins” rated rather low on their list of priorities. At least then someone would benefit from the “I Got A Bridge in Brooklyn…” school of health that America consistently embraces.

1. I refuse to name the restaurant, lest they should be overwhelmed with new visitors and realize the mathematical folly of their gimmick, but, really, a few carafes of free wine is all the cleansing this body needs. [↩]
2. Actually, you can have lemon juice. But I guess ‘Master Cleanse’ sounds better, and more effective, than ‘lemon-juice diet’. [↩]
3. There have been reports of some people going for 45 days [↩]
4. Who once killed a man using his “alternate methods”. [↩]
5. Constant shitting, and the inability to do so, are hallmarks of master cleanse; let’s call it our bodies own master cleanse. [↩]
6. Of course, master cleanse is just one of our methods, but certainly the most willful and voluntary. [↩]