Milk Smuggling

I was 12 when Woodstock happened, and couldn't for the life of me understand why my mother wouldn't let me hitchhike from DC to New York to go to the concert. I was born to be a hippie, and embraced that lifestyle quickly and wholeheartedly. Needless to say, I went through a season where my social life was almost entirely centered around smoking weed. In the 70s long hair and smoking weed were just what you did. (Oh, and getting to know strangers by having sex with them, but that's the subject of another blog entirely.) Although it hurts no one and actually helps many people, cannabis was and still is against the law. That meant that anyone who used it had to rely on smugglers to supply it. That made a whole lot of good people into criminals.

I eventually grew up, and almost never associated with smugglers anymore. I had a child, went to college, survived graduate school, and made an honest living. But I rarely exercised and ate dead food out of windows and vending machines. I had no energy and got sick all the time. I had the flu every year, and had chronic fatigue and mood disorders. I was profoundly depressed and suicidal for several really dark years. Doctors gave me steroids and tranquilizers and anti-depressants, and with every pill my body got sicker and sicker, and I became more and more suicidal. My psychiatrist told me that my condition was progressing and that ultimately I would end up in a state mental hospital, untreatable. Nice.

One day I just got fed up. I determined to be well. Doctors were getting all my money, and I was getting worse instead of better. So I signed up for an herbal medicine certification course, determined that I would fire all the doctors and learn to treat myself. I reasoned that since marijuana is herbal and beneficial while cocaine and heroine are pharmaceutical and harmful, then the same should hold true for medicines: herbal medicine should be able to help me without all of the harmful side-effects of poisonous pharmaceutical chemicals.

I felt so empowered. I've always believed that in a past life I was an herbalist-midwife-wise woman who was burned at the stake for being a witch. Learning to be an herbalist helped me to tap into that archetype and find the internal power I needed to finally heal my body and spirit. My psychiatrist had told me that my depression was incurable, yet within three months of drinking teas made out of valerian and skullcap and oat straw for my nervous worrying, and nettles and dandelion to nourish me back to health, my mood lifted and I no longer spent my days wondering if I would still be alive by nightfall.

Herbal medicine saved my life, and for many years I was a practicing herbalist. I again found myself buying herb by the pound and selling it by the ounce. I even learned that smoking joints rolled out of mullein is an effective treatment for lung and breathing disorders. Finally, a lifestyle I felt at home in!

But after a few years I noticed that people who came to me for herbs wanted to be treated; they didn't necessarily want to be cured. When you're sick people make a fuss over you, and being treated gives you lots of attention. I also realized that as a healer my job is to keep people healthy. The herbs I gave people treated symptoms and conditions, in the same way that pharmaceuticals treat symptoms and conditions. Similarly, herbs are potent and can have severe side effects. I reasoned that creating health must start at a much more fundamental level. So I stopped treating other people and began learning how to consistently create a state of vibrant health in myself.

I learned two things: 1. chronic sickness, and particularly depression, is a spiritual issue. Healing must occur at a spiritual level in order to be true healing. 2. The secret to a strong physical body is a nourishing diet and lots of exercise and fresh air. Great. Diet and exercise. No wonder people just want you to give them a pill. Those things take discipline, and we don't want to have to discipline ourselves.

Fast forward to 2008, when I stumbled across the Weston A. Price Foundation and learned how the commercial food industry had been poisoning me. I read Dr. Douglas's book The Truth About Milk, and vowed never to drink pasteurized milk again. But now I was faced with a dilemma: raw milk is illegal in the U.S. except for a few very narrow exceptions. If I were to find a supply of raw milk I would have to locate an underground smuggling ring and convince them that I was a like-minded soul who could be trusted with their secret, and not a narc who would get them busted.

Hmmm, seems to me I've been down this road before. I now once again find myself banded together with other non-criminal-type soccer moms forced into a life of smuggling a completely natural and beneficial substance that has been outlawed for no good reason other than to pad the pockets of the commercial milk industry. Well, it's a good thing I have experience with this smuggling thing. Looks like it's a lifestyle I was born to embrace.