My Celebrity Detox: Not for the Faint of Bowel

All names -including business names- in this series, except those of celebrities and of myself, have been changed for the sake of privacy. I've carefully chosen pseudonyms that I feel accurately represent the true names as well as the spirits of the people and businesses they belong to.

The subject matter of this blog entry may be disgusting to all some readers.

The experience of having a colonic, while memorable, is really not as fascinating as you'd expect. My own experience may be more memorable than most.

As concierge at You Can Do It, I had to explain the ins and outs (get it? Ins and outs?...) of colonic hydrotherapy often. Here's how it works.

The purpose of a colonic is to wash away build-up of toxins and clogged up fecal matter in your intestines, both to facilitate weight loss and to improve one's health. No studies have been able to support this idea, but none have been able to refute it either.

You lay on your side on a padded table, naked from the waist down. The colonic therapist opens a new package of sterile tubing, and your very own speculum, and attaches it all to the machine. She lubes up the speculum and sticks it in, then begins to pump water, which has been heated to body temperature, directly into your colon. She asks you to tell her when you feel "full," at which time she will reverse the process. The contents of your colon and lower intestine are then "released" through a different tube while she massages your abdomen.

This process takes about half an hour. Upon completion, she can put in an "additive" if you like: garlic to kill bad stuff, acidophilus to replenish positive flora, or a wheatgrass solution to "nourish." If you elect to have an additive, you basically hold it in as long as you can, then "release" it into the toilet.

Every once in awhile there will be a difficult customer. Someone, perhaps, who has swallowed too much Bazooka in his life, or has simply not discovered fiber. These pour souls were administered what we called a "beer bomb."

A beer bomb consists of one ounce of Castor oil mixed with half a can of beer. We used Bud Light. Mixing and delivering the beer bombs was part of my job. The other guests, seeing a can of beer making its way through the lounge area, would tend to get all excited and ask what they'd have to do to get one. Once they discovered its purpose, they were not so eager.

The recipient of a beer bomb would also be given the other half of the beer, because, we figured, they're going to be on the toilet for the next 48 hours, they may as well enjoy themselves.

You can well imagine that colonic virgins tend be apprehensive, especially when they are told they will be having a colonic every day. But after the second one or so they're pros.

Courtney Love, a regular guest at You Can Do It, rarely ventured out of her room; she was far too busy stubbing out cigarettes in her room's new carpet to mingle. But when she did come out, her favorite thing to do -when she was coherent- was assure the virgins of the wonders and delights of colonics. She would swear to them that the first time she had a colonic, she was watching the exit tube and saw a pair of Barbie shoes she'd swallowed when she was four floating along.

Many guests would also develop preferences for certain therapists. Nurse Ratched was intimidating, but she was also very thorough and was a real nurse. Julia was very nice and gentle, and also gave me the best eyebrow wax I've ever had.

My colonic however, was not with either of them. My friend Beverlee and another woman, Nancy, were training to be colonic therapists. In order to become certified it was necessary for them to clock a certain number of hours of actual hands-on colonic hydrotherapy experience, so the staff were all expected to succumb to the speculum at some point. Beverlee probably would have been the better choice, but I knew her too well. It would be weird.

I should have known it wasn't going to go well when Nancy had difficulty finding the machine's On switch.

And it just went downhill from there. She couldn't find this. She couldn't find that. Her hands shook. It would be fine, I told myself, breathing deeply. Twenty minutes later Nurse Ratched came in to check on things, and her eyes widened. She burst into the room and began aggressively massaging my distended belly, shoving Nancy out of the room. I had never liked her before then, but that day she became my hero. And when I reread One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I was rooting for her.

You can imagine that we would get some interesting phone calls pertaining to colonics. Once a man called saying he had prostate trouble and wanted to know if a colonic would stimulate his prostate. It seemed like a legitimate question, so as with all legitimate questions I was BS'ing my way through it when one of my co-workers gave me the kill sign.

Locals would often come in for colonics without actually staying. For them, I kid you not, we had punch cards. Buy ten colonics, get the eleventh colonic free! I would pass these cards out to my friends, and they would hold them at a distance like one of Brad's used tissues.

Both Nancy and Beverlee ended up getting certified, and as I was concierge, it was Beverlee that I assigned to give colonics to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I knew they'd be in good and gentle hands, and that if nothing else they'd be protected by the purple alien plate she secretly kept under the padding of her table.

A week after his stay Matt went on the Tonight Show, and described his colonic experience. I was thrilled for my friend when he said "at least the therapist was pretty."

To make further sense of this rambling mess of a blog, click on the "My Celebrity Detox" tag and read previous entries in this series.