30 Hours of Raw Food (Hell)

Having recently heard of the euphoric effects associated with raw food diets, and seeing as how my tolerance for the pharmaceutical pain killers that once filled that role has reduced my recent experiences on them to a weekend-long cycle of throwing up, nodding off and burning cigarette-sized holes in my shorts and couch cushions, I decided to give it a shot.

Though most people who embark on such endeavors commit to a 30-day trial, I have trouble committing to a 30-minute long television program, so I figured a 30-hour trial would be more suitable to start, and I set out to the grocery store to buy 5/4s of a day's worth of raw food. For three pounds of blueberries, two pounds of bananas, one pound of strawberries, one pound of cashews, one mango, one head of lettuce and a bag of mixed greens, I paid $55 – 1000% more than the machismo burrito from Cotija's that fed me for the loast 30 hours, which I guess explains why most school teachers are so fat.

Back at home, I started scarfing raw food like a bulimic squirrel. My journey had begun. The following is a documentation of the highlights:

July 3rd 10:00 am: Ate about a pound and a half of blueberries, a banana and a quarter pound of cashew nuts. It occurred to me that I remembered blueberries tasting a lot better when they were toasted in Eggos drenched in maple syrup. I persevered however, with the view that such ephemeral pleasures would pale in the light of perpetual, spiritual bliss.

11:10 am: Thinking it might fit the mood, I turned my television to Animal Planet, which was showing a program on meerkats. Meerkats belong to the mongoose family, eat mostly insects and plants, and evidently spend most of their time standing on their hind legs or lying on their backs, sunning their balls. I decided I could get used to being a meerkat.

11:30 am: More meerkats on Animal Planet. Was it meerkat day? I turned down the volume on the television to watch them bronze their testicles to some James Taylor on the stereo and polished off half a head of lettuce.

12:15 pm: My wife walked in the door from being out the night before. I told her I was going raw and she told me I could go to hell.

1:00 pm: Kept eating, and eating, and eating, but remained hungry. Off the top of my head, I calculated this diet would cost me approximately one million dollars a year.

1:30 pm: Fell asleep. Vaguely recall having a dream that Kim Jong-il stole my bike.

3:30 pm: Woke up in a cold sweat and felt like I had to take the biggest dump of all time. I turned James Taylor back on at an elevated volume, but considering the volcanic nature of my movement, I speculate that it sounded to anyone in the house at the time like somebody taking a huge, loud shit to Sweet Baby James.

5:00 pm: Having read that a detox period characterized by cold-like symptoms and hour-long Vesuvius-scale shits is normal when transitioning from an omnivorous diet to raw food, I resumed eating fruit despite my persistent cold sweat and a 102 degree fever.

5:30 pm: Around this time I felt my mind begin to untether. Time crawled. Every minute seemed like an hour. I started to feel extremely bloated and watched in horror as my skin began to turn blue.

5:45 pm: My transformation complete, I had turned into a blueberry. I recall finding the development disconcerting, to say the least. My son later told me he'd heard me from the neighbor's house shrieking like a woman for half an hour.

6:30 pm: Regarding my plump and delicious new form, it struck me that hordes of hungry people would be coming any minute to put me into pancakes.

6:30:01 pm: Escape. It was a must. But where? I couldn't drive, I couldn't even walk. I could only roll, and a giant blueberry rolling down Main Street was sure to attract attention. Not only that, there were birds outside. Hundreds of them. I could see them out the window, perched on tree branches and telephone wires, staring hungrily back at me. I shut the blinds. There was no escape.

6:31 pm: Realizing that I couldn't run, only hide, I rolled into the closet and shut the door.

6:32 pm – ????: Darkness turned to pitch black, and for an indefinite period that stretched for eons in my mind, I found myself trapped in a coffin of terror.

July 4th 7:22am: I awoke in the closet with a pounding headache covered in clothes and shoes. Cursing, I kicked my way out into the living room and looked at the clock. 21 hours. I still had 9 to go. "Fuck it," I said, and went down to Burger King for a bacon and egg sandwich.

Conclusion: Raw food diets suck.