Freud may have been mistaken in his belief that the “latency period” between the ages of five and puberty is merely a time of consolidation and a regrouping after the novel stimulations of the first five years of life and before the hormonal turmoil of adolescence. Instead, during this period of heightened suggestibility and hypnotizability, this so-called latency is hardly a period of dormancy. We are establishing a set of beliefs, a modus operandi, which is virtually impossible to shake in adulthood, except with considerable therapeutic effort.
The perfect example of vow power: The comedian Stephen Colbert has talked of the impact of a remarkable vow he made at the age of ten. His father and two older brothers had just died in a horrific plane crash in Charlotte, North Carolina. Leaving the funeral in a limousine with two older sisters—Colbert is the youngest of eleven children—Colbert watched in amazement as one of his sisters told a joke or said something hilarious that made the other sister roll on the floor of the limousine with uncontrolled laughter. Colbert made a vow that he appears to be keeping for the rest of his life. Here is my version of it:
I will do everything I can to make people laugh—to laugh in the face of adversity, to laugh in the face of tragedy. I want to be able to make people laugh in the way that my sister made my other sister laugh uncontrollably, to make people roll on the floor, to forget their immediate troubles even in the face of destruction and distress and death. I will make a career out of making people live and die laughing.
Hilarity in the face of helplessness, a temporary denial of death in the face of undeniable distress. An openness, a suggestibility we have at the age of nine or ten—an openness, a suggestibility we have in the face of our feeling the most fragile and vulnerable.
In the face of my helplessness and defenselessness, I realized that whatever vow I took would be with me for the rest of my life, whether that life lasted less than five years or more than twenty-five years. This vow was to be constructive and nourishing and restorative. I could not afford a vow that limited the fullness and richness of life. I wanted this vow possibly to extend my life but also to make that life very much worth living.
The vow I took had several advantages. It reflected what I call a “growth mind-set,” to use a term coined by Carol Dweck at Stanford University. I was not committing myself to a fixed and rigid outcome, nor was I falsely reassuring myself of a happy ending and positive results. All I committed to was the effort to go to all ends of the earth to achieve the kind of outcome I wanted. No guarantees. I may die relatively soon; I might die a thousand small deaths with the death of my pelvis.
My vow was also grounded in reality, the reality of death and destruction. As valuable as a denial of death can be, this denial also insulates us from an abject terror that can be a monumental positive motivating force.
My vow did not have a base of false optimism. Yes, it was grounded in the typical can-do perspective of us Americans. But it was a can-do of going to the ends of the earth, not a can-do of “I will cure myself of this disease, I will win this battle, and I will undoubtedly heal my pelvis.” I was filled with doubts and terrors, all pushing me to follow that vow to go anywhere and everywhere to preserve my life and regain some semblance of sexual health. The overwhelming obstacles I was facing could also be opportunities.
It was impossible to know where my vow might lead. The regeneration of the salamander’s tail was just in its nascent stages.
CHAPTER 7
The Salamander: Can We Humans Regenerate?
“God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.”
Robin Williams.
The salamander is my, and perhaps everyone’s, model and inspiration for regeneration. Salamanders have a capacity to regenerate their tails, legs, retinas, even their spinal cords and parts of internal organs like the heart, whenever these body parts are lost or partially destroyed.
For a species to have a regenerative capacity, it must have an appendage that is not absolutely essential—one that can be lost for a period of time while regeneration occurs. Yet this appendage must be important enough that its regeneration provides a selective advantage by evolutionary standards.
My penis fits the bill.
The penis is not absolutely essential for survival. It can go about its business wounded for a while without one’s life being in mortal danger. But its regeneration offers a clear-cut selective advantage for any man fighting to thrive, not just survive, in an alpha-male dominated world.
We humans, not unlike salamanders, can develop primitive dedifferentiated cells in response to injury, cells that are actually stem cells. In salamanders these cells can later evolve and differentiate into cells that are specific to a certain organ or body part. Our human cells, however, do not have this capacity to differentiate; they instead can become proliferating cancer cells, unwilling and unable to die according to the precepts of a programmed cell death. They keep on living—nothing can stop them from proliferating. Injuries caused by, say, radiation or ultraviolet rays or viruses can lead to this creation of primitive dedifferentiated stem cells that turn into cancers.
In contrast, the salamander’s dedifferentiated cells are able to transform themselves, to migrate to the place in which they are supposed to function, to develop into cells that create muscle, nerve fibers, connective tissue, and blood vessels in a leg or a tail or a retina. These evolving cells allow the salamander to return to its normal functioning as a whole being.
These primitive vertebrates are able to generate an enormous electrical current at the wound site. This current in turn creates voltage gradients that allow the gradually differentiating cells to sense their position and to grow outward, to grow in the appropriate direction to regenerate the limb that has been lost.
Salamanders do not appear to develop cancers. You can inject them with the most carcinogenic drug imaginable, and still no cancer comes into play. Maybe at most an ectopic or extra limb, but no cancer.
More highly developed vertebrates like ourselves have lost the capacity to regenerate limbs and organs. In evolving into warm-blooded animals, we have needed the capability to develop scar tissue over wounds as rapidly as possible. Pathogens, including bacteria, thrive and proliferate in warm temperatures, in the warm blood of warm-blooded animals. We need to seal off wounds quickly.
Cold-blooded species can survive for months without eating, whereas birds and mammals would starve to death. And, if birds and mammals were to be crippled for any length of time during regeneration of a leg or retina, they would become easy prey. Not so the salamander.
Salamanders can sit under a log for weeks without eating or doing anything while their body part regenerates. All the salamander needs is some modicum of nerve supply to the injured organ and some electrical current between the outside of the body and the inside—just ten to one hundred millivolts or microamperes per square centimeter. And voila: as long as skin and scar tissue—the salamander is incapable of producing scar tissue—do not block the electrical current and the healing process, a brand-new organ or limb soon reappears.
The humiliations and indignities of prostate cancer and the wounds in my pelvis and the enormous amount of scar tissue ultimately were pushing me to focus on the possibilities of some kind of regeneration. But, despite our best efforts, we human beings cannot replicate the regeneration process of salamanders. We are limited by our humanness; we are limited by our warm-bloodedness. And at the same time we are enlarged by our humanness, by our warm-bloodedness. With warm-bloodedness comes the evolution of the human brain, arguably the most remarkable evolutionary development—the most remarkable organ—in the history of our planet.
So, we go from cold-bloodedness to braininess; we go from regeneration of limbs and organs to scar tissue and cancers. All we can do is take what evolution gives us. We lose some remarkable capabilities while we gain even more remarkable capabilities.
Here’s the thing: The brain and the pelvis are
highly intertwined. The pelvic region is second only to the brain in the amount of neural tissue it contains. This pelvic neural tissue, along with the associated neurohormones—testosterone and estrogen and progesterone and oxytocin, to name a few—stimulate our desire to reproduce . . . to create with each successive generation our constantly evolving brains.
In my efforts to re-establish life in my penis, I may have altered the synapses in my cerebral cortex. A rebooting, a new kind of regeneration, a new kind of cerebral evolution, unheard of in salamanders. A newfangled salvation, a newfangled salvaging of my sexuality and my sexual energies, a newfangled regeneration of my tail, my third leg.
Only with the greatest of humiliations does one have the opportunity to achieve a great comeback. The harder they fall, the harder they rise up. The hell with gravity.
CHAPTER 8
Oglia and Aglia
“No more pie now, no more crème brulee
Lay off the gravy and soufflé
No French fri-yi-yies now, No ice cream parfait
Mr. Cheese Nacho, Stay away.”
Weird Al Yankovic, “Grapefruit Diet,” a parody of “Zoot Suit Riot”
“A New Liquid Gold,” or something to that effect, read the article in the science and technology section of The Economist in late 1984. I was looking for some new mantras, some new vows to sink my teeth into, and this article suggested that olive oil was it. Olio and aglia, olive oil and garlic, my new gods, my new objects of worship. I began to see how a religious fervor in the face of trichinosis or drinking problems can enhance the public health. Pork chops tasted too good to eliminate from the diet even in the face of widespread trichinosis. Alcohol was and is too wonderful a substance, not just in taste but in effect, to eliminate from the diet even in the face of widespread intoxication and debauchery. So, let’s put doctrinal zeal into the mix, the laws of kashrut for Jews, the laws of hallal for Muslims.
Now a religion of one, my own doctrinal fervor, my own public health initiative—for a public of one solitary individual. Weirdly, the ideas have found me, not vice versa. Yet I am more open to new options and willing to consider alternative ways of eating. Like a baseball player who is hitting .150, I am more willing to listen to my batting instructor, to change my swing, to change my stance.
I grew up inadvertently and unadvisedly worshipping dead cows as part of a family legacy. Hindus, eat your hearts out. No chicken in every pot. No, a cow—a whole cow in every pot. The object of our family worship in childhood was an enormous freezer in our basement—a freezer with every kind of cow part imaginable, young cows and old cows, veal chops and veal flanks and steaks and brisket and hot dogs and chopped beef and corned beef and tongue and liver and sweetbreads and derma. The best beef that anyone could find.
My friends all had pool tables, ping-pong tables, televisions, and stereos in their basements. I had a freezer.
My grandfather, my mother’s father, had set the stage for this animal-rich dietary tradition. He had come to America in 1892 from a tiny rural shtetl near the Russian-Polish border at the age of twelve. With the blessing of his parents, he arrived alone, a solitary figure, a mere child trying to avoid conscription in the Polish army. The oldest child in his family, he was their hope for a better future. Could he somehow make his way in America and eventually bring his parents and brothers and sisters to this country as well? A task he was more than able to achieve.
A not-too-atypical American immigrant story—except that, when he stepped off the boat, he had no idea where to go. All he knew was he did not want to spend a minute, let alone a lifetime, in New York City. The Lower East Side was not for this rural farm boy.
He hopped on a train at Grand Central Station without any clue where he was headed. When he was able to see he was in a rural enough area, he hopped off and started a new life, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He had no urban skills. The only skill he knew was how to cut up cows and chickens. So he got a job working for a butcher. Within a couple of decades he had become the king of meat-wholesaling in Bridgeport. Even after he died when I was eight years old, my mother would still make biweekly trips from a town thirty miles away to pick up huge sides of beef from his company.
Like most children raised in the 1950s, I was nurtured and suckled on land animals. Vegetables were alien, except for some boiled canned peas to provide what my mother called a more balanced meal. I hated fish. Occasionally we would have a night of chicken or lamb chops, but we all knew that the dead cow was the one and only object of veneration.
Extra fatty dead cows. Among my friends and colleagues, I was well-known in my twenties and thirties for going into delicatessens and asking for extra fatty corned beef sandwiches. Still ringing in my ears are the words of my grandfather, reinforced by my father, “The more marbled and fatty the meat, the tastier it will be.” A way of eating instilled in me when I was most suggestible. If we were not eating beef, we were all eating truckloads of cheeses and eggs and cream cheese and butter for breakfast.
So, why change a way of eating that was so hammered into me, a way of eating that may be impossible to change?
In the months after prostate surgery, I came across maps showing prostate cancer deaths around the world. In 1984, the highest death rates were in Switzerland and the United States, with the Scandinavian countries not far behind. Mediterranean countries had a somewhat lower death rate; and East Asia—particularly Japan and China—had an almost negligible death rate. Prostate cancer was a different disease in Asia, not nearly as aggressive and invasive. The disease, when it occurs, stays small and localized in the prostate, harmless and unobtrusive. Men in Asia, as of 1984, were truly dying with prostate cancer, not of prostate cancer.
Could it be just genes and genetic differences? Or was it the environment, or a different dietary pattern?
I knew enough about Switzerland to appreciate the ubiquity of their cows. The clanging of cowbells everywhere in the Alps during the summer months; the tomato soup with a dollop of cream so large you might as well call it cream soup with a touch of tomato; cheese, Swiss cheese of course, all around. Scandinavia, pretty much the same—a diet rich in meat and dairy products. When the data on prostate cancer deaths was collected in the previous quarter century, fruits and vegetables and olives and olive oil were not a staple of northern Europe. The easy transport of oils and greens from the south, or even from the southern hemisphere, was not up and running.
So too in the United States: The northern European diet ruled, especially in my family. Meat and potatoes, and dairy and more dairy.
Not so in Asia. Lactose intolerance, virtually everywhere in Asia, changed the rules of the game. No milk, no butter, no cream, no cheese. No dead cow in every pot as well. Few people in Asia had the resources to raise and kill and eat cows.
I had nothing to lose by changing my way of eating. I could not change my genes, but I could change my diet and my environment. I could also put myself to a test: could my newfound suggestibility and mantras allow me to change a highly engrained eating style?
No way was I going to turn to macrobiotics, as Anthony Satillaro had done. I had flirted with a macrobiotic diet, where you eat mostly grains, briefly in college and hated it. I tried it again very briefly, but brown rice did not rule; macrobiotic gruel did not rule. And I saw no evidence that a macrobiotic diet played any role in the low death rates from prostate cancer in Asia. The differences between the West and the East seemed simpler and more subtle than macrobiotic versus nonmacrobiotic.
So, I made some new vows: No dairy, no beef. Indeed “no land animals” whatsoever. Just fruits and vegetables, and loads of that liquid gold—olive oil. No butter on bread, instead olive oil. No blue cheese dressing on a salad, instead olive oil. No stir-fry with butter, only with olive oil. I was turning to the Mediterranean and Asia for my dietary inspiration, not to northern Europe and America.
Fortunately, I had grown up not only with beef and dairy but also with potatoes and peanut oil. My father had owned a large a
nd successful potato chip company in Connecticut. I would skip school as often as possible and grab hot oily chips off the conveyor ramp after they had gone through the frying process. The oilier the bubbles in the chips, the better.
If our family was not busy worshipping dead cows, we were at least worshipping oil and potatoes. My father and I even used peanut oil from his factory to oil my baseball gloves, particularly my catcher’s mitt, every spring. Nothing could have solidified my hypnotic connection with cooking oils more so than an idyllic potato chip factory and the bonding spring ritual of oiling my baseball gloves.
Dead cows are fine in the form of leather baseball gloves.
And then a new discovery for me in the fall of 1984: Peanut oil, like olive oil, is mostly a monounsaturated fat. Another liquid gold: potato chips and french fri-yi-yies. Yes, indeed. No more land animals, but peanut oil and olive oil will provide salvation.
And nuts as well—all kinds of nuts including almonds and cashews and the legume of peanuts. Nuts had been a close second to fries and chips as my favorite food. It helped that my father had been a distributor of Planters nuts at the same time he was producing and distributing his potato chips. So, pasta and stir-fried vegetables—in oglio and aglia—with plenty of fruits and nuts and chips and fries—a diet already more diverse and appealing than the diet of most Americans.
Yet, how does one give up ice cream and milk chocolate and cheeses? How does one overcome the indoctrination from earliest childhood about drinking four glasses of milk each day? How does one live with Oreo cookies without a glass of milk alongside?
Here Tony Robbins came to the rescue. While he put us into a hypnotic trance to walk across blisteringly hot coals, he reminded us that cow’s milk was designed specifically for young calves—to help them grow into large cows. “Cow’s milk is simply a substitute for human milk. Once we reach our adolescence, when our bones are fully formed and we are fully grown, there is no need for milk of any kind.”
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