A journey with multiple chemical sensitivity – by Madhuri
Sometime in the late 80’s I read a memoir by a flight attendant, in which she tells of a colleague whose plane interior, on arrival in New Zealand, was sprayed with insecticide. Through that exposure the woman became so sensitive to chemicals of all sorts that she ended up going to live on the side of a mountain in Hawaii, far away from normal life!
I thought to myself, Gosh, I’m glad that didn’t happen to me! It sounds really extreme!
And then… it did happen to me. In 1994 I had 11 amalgam fillings taken out by a dentist in Pune, back on East Street, in a little building next to the Chinese restaurant. “We are supposed to use something called a dental dam,” I offered, and the dentist put his hands up and said, “Oh no no! Not necessary!”
But it was. I should have insisted.
It took 6 weeks to get all the fillings changed to white ones, during which time I led a Mouth of the Dragon training (appropriately, it occurs to me now!) Weeks went by. Why was I feeling so weird? Exhausted, pale, and weak? Why did my teeth feel strangely transparent? Why did everything hurt – my bones, my head, my feet? Sitting in Discourse one night, a picture came to me: the little shards of metal filling, cut out of a molar by the hot drill, spraying about my mouth, no doubt going down my throat, being consumed. Oh. Shit. That must be what the problem is!
I got through the training somehow, and then collapsed. I could barely move more of me than a small finger. A Kirlian photograph showed a great fading-away, like I was barely alive: “You should not be walking around,” said Peter Mandel. I forced myself out of bed and went to Goa on the back of my boyfriend’s motorbike. This was not fun. In Goa, I got very sick and threw up a lot and felt a scary sort of deadness: as if all had become grey and blah and subsiding; no passion, no verve, just bleached and dull and vanishing. Is this what death is like? I wondered. It does not feel alive, as I thought it should. It feels… just a negation. I did not like it at all.
I got better. I went to France to work. My hair fell out, long threads coating the tile floors, the shower stall, of the ice-cold flat in Lyon where I was staying. And then I began to forget… and life picked up again. (When I returned to Poona and went looking for the dentist, I was told that he had died.)
In the School of Mysticism I studied Aura Soma, and at the same time was studying Colourpuncture in Healing Arts. I thought maybe it was the intensity of these two things that made me suddenly so incredibly sensitive: if I looked at the colour red for more than a few seconds, I could feel an attack of herpes coming on. An ashram workman came into my flat in the Pyramid and painted the bathroom ceiling. I had removed the door, as it was too tight a fit with the tiny bathroom, and so the paint fumes were also in my bedroom. I could not sleep, felt extremely disturbed, and by morning my sinuses were signalling infection. Another time I had to take tablets for a bladder infection, and they threw my body into an extreme panic reaction. And so on.
It is only recently that I have understood the mechanism at work – why I get itching and rash and pain from liquid hand soap in public toilets, why the tiniest whiff of paint fumes brings on a copious watering of the nose and feelings of dread and oppression, why the sight of a crop-spraying plane in a vid fills me with fear and horror. Why I have to live in a chemical-free zone, which I’ve established in my little flat in the north of England. Or almost chemical-free: when I write with a biro, a ballpoint pen, the fumes from the ink are so disturbing that I must wear a mask.
I consulted a doctor who specializes in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and she explained it like this: the body’s response to an allergy, and the body’s response to a poison, are very different. With an allergy, once the reaction is over, it’s over. But with a poisoning, the body is so intensely interested in never having that happen again that it sets up an early-warning system of great sharpness and efficacy: Weird chemical here! NO! STOP! AVOID!
It’s not that all these chemicals are necessarily good for everybody else, either. I read that there are at least 45,000 new compounds floating around in our environment. Nearly all of them have never been tested for toxicity. Our bodies have not had time to adjust to the novel substances, and really don’t know what to do with them. Reactions will be idiosyncratic, and many people will react. But a history of a prior poisoning will really tip the balance towards extreme reactions… to pretty much all of them! And there’s one other factor that helps tip that balance: a history of childhood allergies (which I have). (And, by the way, said the doctor, there is no cure. Avoidance is the only course of action.) It does seem that most of my friends also can’t stand the smell of ‘normal’ detergent on clothes or bedding, or the smell of perfumes. So a great many of us do register the toxicity outright.
When I was a little girl, my dad, who was a chemical engineer, had for a time a lab right inside our house. There were shelves full of large bottles of chemicals. He taught us kids, joyfully and lovingly, about these – their names, their properties. And he specially taught us about the ones with skulls and crossbones on the labels. These, he explained, were poison: sulfuric acid (H2SO4 – colourless and innocent-looking), hydrochloric acid, mercury, a few more. There really weren’t that many; but we were to totally avoid the ones that there were. Because poison is dangerous and it can kill you.
Or, in the words of the immortal nursery rhyme:
Little Johnny took a drink,
but he shall drink no more.
For what he thought was H20
was H2SO4.
We were impressed!
Somewhere during the past 50 or 60 years, though, certain purveyors of certain substances – insecticides, bleaches, detergents, perfumes, medicaments, stain repellers, etc etc – began to ‘educate’ the masses with a new idea: a little bit won’t hurt you. And so now we’re inundated with a little bit of this and that and the other thing, stuff that comes from bottles with skulls and crossbones on, in some laboratory, but then becomes palatable through labelling, marketing, and efficiency of function – and the very notion of a ‘poison’ has become arguable, suspect.
I’m saying all this because I want to make a point here. People don’t like sensitivity. I used to use a quote from Osho in my Psychic Palmreading groups, in which he told us that sensitivity was our birthright, and that we should become more and more sensitive.
Anyone who was around him remembers how he could not tolerate perfumes, and so we had to use unscented shampoos, conditioners, and soaps. He used to create beautiful artwork on the beginning pages of books, but had to stop when he became allergic to the smell of the fibre-tip markers. We all accepted this – it seemed to make sense with his enlightened state. But as soon as he left his body, out came the cigarettes, even in Lao Tzu house; and I can attest that super-sensitivity in a disciple was not felt to be a virtue.
Then, out in the world, I’ve been bullied, ridiculed, sneered at, criticized, and ignored. I’ve had my sheets drying on the line contaminated with blue herbicide even as I yelled “No! No! No! Not my sheets!” There are people who accept my allergies and sensitivities, but many more who do not. Even sannyasins ridicule them. I can understand it: I have a friend for whom I often cook. He does not like pickles, or vinegar – anything sour. It gives him an upset stomach. (Actually, I have 2 other friends like that too!) It is difficult for me to comprehend. I love pickles! I grew up chewing on oxalis, a weed with a very tart taste and lots of vitamin C in it. How could anybody not like these things?
But everybody’s different.
And I think the very fact of sensitivity is offensive to people: you are claiming to be sensitive in ways they are not. It’s as if you are being precious, over-privilege-ing yourself. Maybe, oh horrors, you are being superior! You’re spoilt! It’s not allowed! We all have to muck in together, get muddy and dirty, no complaining! Toughness is rewarded, not fussiness. It just causes too much inconvenience for people! The Tribe wants you to be like them, and help with what needs doing. Fussiness elevates you. Makes you special. It’s not okay.
And yet, as we know from meditation, in subtlety is delight…
I’m wondering if anyone reading this is recognizing something from their own life. India was a place with many pollutants; many of us must have become overloaded. Or, maybe you encountered a toxin elsewhere, somewhere in the West. And then found you had become inexplicably sensitive. (I have a good friend in England who got carbon monoxide poisoning from a leak in her exhaust plus a hole in the floorboard of her car. She ended up with MCS as well, and we totally understand each other’s language.) I wanted to share my story because I have found that having gotten a proper diagnosis, and even a proper official letter detailing it, I can much more easily stand up to the folks who don’t like my health issues. In fact, I now stand in that diagnosis with such confidence that I find people are not even questioning or criticizing me – or not nearly as much. I state my situation calmly and with a minimum of explanation, and people are simply accepting it! I must previously have felt some shame or doubt or embarrassment, and that made a hole where the bossy folks could get in. Now, knowing why it is like this, and that I’m neither making it up, nor over-emphasizing it, I can simply be as sensitive as I am and too bad if somebody doesn’t like it.
And suddenly, people just aren’t kicking up a fuss.
Quotes by Osho
- “Because women have suffered for centuries, they have become more and more sensitive to subtle nuances of joy, of suffering, of pain, of pleasure. Don’t ask, ‘Why do I get so sensitive?’ Sensitive you are born, it is your birthright. When you don’t feel sensitive you can ask the question, ‘Why I am not feeling sensitive?’ Sensitivity is one of the great qualities of being religious.”
(Satyam Shivam Sundram, Ch 13, Q 3) - “To me, the whole training is how to become more and more sensitive. Other religions have told you to become insensitive, to kill and destroy your sensitivity. I tell you to make life as intense as possible — because, finally, God is not separate from life. Being alive to life is being alive to God. And that is the only prayer; all other prayers are home-made, man-made. Sensitivity is the only prayer God-given.”
(The Search, Ch 4) - “Become more and more sensitive to everything that is — to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to people, to animals, to birds, to trees. To everything that is, become more sensitive, available, open. Breathe more, see more, listen more, feel more. That will bring richness. That is the only richness.”
(The Shadow of the Bamboo, Ch 28)
Related articles
- I used to go on my horse – Osho speaks about traveling and having an allergy
- Sensitivity is your birthright – Madhuri answers the question if we need psychic protection
- Adulterated food – Did you know? – Karen Foster of Prevent Disease presents twelve foods that most people don’t know are dyed or adulterated
Featured image by Alamy: alamy.com
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