It's World Homepathic Awareness Week ...
I'm writing this on 10 April, at the start of 2022's World Homeopathic Awareness Week.
But first, let me take you back to the mid-90s ...
One balmy day in April, a single little white pill obliterated my hayfever for the whole year. To this day I still don't know how. Or why.
A lunchtime walk in Princes Street gardens in Edinburgh had just left me sneezing and streaming so much I wanted to dook my head in a bucket of cold water. I was willing to try anything short of decapitating myself to make it stop.
I took a leap of faith and spent what was then Rather a Lot of Money on a homeopathy consultation at a well-known herbalist clinic here in Edinburgh. I can't remember how much it was, but to the skint student I was back then, it represented many, many beers.
"Oh and you shouldn't eat frozen vegetables, either. They're not good for you - their life force has been suspended in frozen animation" the woman in the white lab coat in the well-known herbalist clinic insisted.
A few years later, I grew these in my back garden. The idea of NOT freezing the surplus ..?!
The consultation on how my extreme reactions to pollen could be calmed wasn't going too well. I was pissed off I'd spent a fair chunk of my student income on virtually being told that vegetables have feelings. My scepticism called me a fool for believing something so off the wall could help.
"We'll make up a formulation specially for you based on what you've told me and get it out to you in the post tomorrow. One tablet, take it first in the morning, not with liquid, don't eat or drink for half an hour afterwards."
Was that it? No frozen veg, and one wee tablet?!
I walked out of the place furious at myself for having been so gullible.
But of course ...
I took the pill.
And ... I didn't have so much of a twitchy nose for the rest of the year. No streaming eyes, no sneezing my head off, no feeling like my nose was like a tap I couldn't turn off. Not one single miserable symptom. Nothing. FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.
The only way I could get this close to flowers was when it was raining, so the pollen was damped down.
Until the following spring when things started up again in their usual manner.
I tried a few different over-the-counter homeopathic thingies claiming to prevent hayfever, but none of them worked.
Just before making another appointment to get another magic wee white pill, I tried cetirizine hydrochloride antihistimines for the first time. Bingo! £8 for a year's supply of a chemical I reacted well to which made the symptoms abate would do me just fine.
And to be honest, it's done me fine ever since. I never did go back to that homeopath.
But it did leave me wondering. That wee white pill undoubtedly worked. But was it all in my mind, or did it REALLY work?
What do you think of homeopathy? Have you ever tried it? I've met plenty people over the years who have had very polarised opinions on the matter. Please do tell me yours - I would honestly love to hear it.
The bit about the frozen veg, though? Aye right.
