How Not To Detox

How Not To Detox

These real life detox tips may help if your body is indeed a temple, but one that’s dedicated to a Lovecraftian horror.

Lately, I’ve come to the grim realisation that my body is indeed a temple… to a Lovecraftian horror. Gone are the days when I could spring out of bed, the green-glassed detritus of the night before like a genteel forest around me. No, because I’m 28 now; my hangovers have evolved from the hammy head-clutching of yesteryear to genuine medical emergencies. My non-drinking friends are no longer Satan’s percolated minions but sensible people with a vested interest in their liver function.

I realised not long ago, as I hawked up yet another tarry lump of stolen cigarettes and wondered what I was doing with my life, that I needed to take this detoxing thing seriously. ‘See how you feel,’ people with thin foam mats under their arms kept saying. ‘After a couple of weeks you’ll never want to go back.’

That was a couple of months ago, and this whole detoxing lark is harder than I imagined. There are lots of conflicting (and weird) tips out there, and I’ve tried most of them. The internet has expanded from a Buzzfeed-centric distraction into a virtual gym packed with new, alien terminology like ‘juice fast,’ ‘Master cleanse’ and ‘fruit’.

Here are some of the things I’ve picked up along the way, whilst falling by the wayside:

Detox Tips

  • A Bloody Mary is not one of your five-a-day, no matter how convincing you can make the argument sound.
  • Giving up cigarettes is genuinely one of the nicest feelings in the world…
  • … After the inevitable weight gain and annihilating demonic fury have stabilised and your arson trial gets thrown out of court.
  • Smoothies are like vitamin tablets – not to be used in place of actual food.
  • All detox teas, no mater how prestigious or expensive, taste like boiled grass cuttings and/or crushed twigs.
  • A couple of weeks off the booze, fags and coffee and your face resembles a prehistoric volcanic landscape…
  • …Another couple of weeks and it’ll look like it’s bathed in morning dew by the silken tongues of angels.
  • Exercise is really a nice thing. You get to try out your shiny new lungs and put some glowing colour in pallid cheeks. It’s also essential if you want to fit back into the trousers of your smoking days.
  • There is no such thing as ‘a quick drink’ or ‘just one’ cigarette.
  • There is such a thing as ‘crushing morning-after guilt’ when you wake up with a big blank where that early night should have been.
  • The only thing more boring than detoxing is talking about it at parties when all you want to do is lie under a box of wine with your mouth open.
  • About halfway through a month of detox you may begin to worry that you’ve developed an allergy to joy and satisfaction.
  • It’s around this point you also start enjoying the herbal teas.

And that’s the slippery slope, folks. Now I can quaff a tea that tastes like the bottom of a log pile with, if not enjoyment, no overt disgust. I can reel off the top ten health benefits of cucumbers should anyone stop me in the street and ask. I am over-qualified to lecture passers-by on the calorific content of red wine per glass. I am ever so slightly more flexible. I’m downright furious that Quorn is not as horrible as I expected. I would murder someone and bury them in a forest for a large glass of Rioja. I’m thinking about investing in a thin foam mat.