My grandson and I got back from our outdoor explorations, hot and sweaty. He went to the refrigerator for a cold drink, then turned to me and asked, “Where’s the bottled water?” I told him we didn’t have bottled water and to fill a glass at the faucet. He looked at me incredulously and said, “You don't drink that water do you?” I told him, “Yes I do,” drank some, and then offered him some. He grabbed his throat as if it would poison him.

21% of all Americans now drink bottled water; that’s more than purchase coffee, milk, and pretty soon even beer (NYT, 7/15/07). People are buying it, not because the water’s better (it definitely isn’t), but because it’s convenient. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has conducted extensive municipal water and bottled water tests, and says not only is a city’s tap water healthy, but that 25-30% of all bottled water comes from municipal tap-water systems. Some of that water goes through additional filtering, but some does not. The NRDC says that bottled water is “subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water.”

Hundreds of millions of gallons of bottled water are being sold not because it’s healthier but because it’s convenient. Consumers are willing to pay an average of $1,400 a year because it’s so easy to take anywhere, but the far bigger price is that the plastic bottles are made from oil. Oil is also what’s used to provide the locomotion and refrigeration to ship the 43,000,000 gal./year imported from the European Union to NY harbor. This is a 3,500-mile trip which also creates 3,800 tons of carbon dioxide. Another one million gallons comes from Fiji, a distance of 8000 miles, which creates another 19 tons of CO2.

At the end of this consumption, we are left with empty bottles that end up in landfills. We are taking from our shrinking Earth all its non-replenishable resources and replacing them with non-biodegradable garbage. Tell me there isn’t something wrong with this story! Sixty years ago if somebody came up and tried to sell you water, you’d think he was crazy. I told this to my grandson, who responded that sixty years ago they didn’t have television either, and this is the way it is now.


We have to be telling a better story to our kids, convenience can’t justify our piling onto the global waste heap. Sixty years ago everybody drank water from faucets, in another sixty there may no longer be faucets.

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Dr. Joe “Mr. Fire” Vitale is billed as “one of the world's most powerful copywriting and marketing gurus,” and I just heard him deliver an address entitled Inspired Marketing. This is a subject I need to learn more about, because it’s a skill I have never mastered. Just hearing the words “sales and marketing” makes my skin prickle; it awakens an internal BS meter that thinks anything properly presented can be packaged and sold.

Dr. Joe addressed my problem right at the beginning. He said my problem with sales and marketing was because I was stuck at Level 1, the position in which fear controls your life, and you identify more with victimization. I confess I have some issues in this arena that go back to my beginnings as the first-born son of Holocaust survivors. I believe that skilled manipulators of goods and ideas can get people to buy anything.

Dr. Joe was entrancing, and his energy palpable. He told us about his rise from poverty and homelessness, and he said he didn’t like sales and marketing either. He calls what he does “creating opportunities to share his excitement.” What I call marketing, Mr. Fire calls “sharing my love with people.” The secret to success is to be infused with a passionate energy. You have to have a burning desire to transmit everything you know and say; every book you write, emails, and promotional material — they have to burn with your passion. Dr. Joe has elevated marketing to a spiritual experience.

I believe Dr. Joe is a sincere practitioner of what he preaches, that his heart is good, and that he comes from a place of loving abundance. I would also like to share my love with people, help them make good choices about how they come to the events in their lives, and do it in a good way. I left his keynote address feeling inspired.

That afternoon I took Dr. Joe up on his invitation to peruse one of his many websites. I discovered that he actually has 2 doctorate degrees; one in metaphysical science, the other in marketing, but without mention of the granting institutions. Immediately, my programmed neural transmitters started emitting Level 1 signals, this Dr. thing is just self-inflated puffery from a diploma mill (I wrote and asked him but haven’t heard back yet). He is also a certified hypnotherapist, metaphysical practitioner, Chi Gung healer, ordained minister, and one of the stars of the movie “The Secret.” He sells himself to potential clients, saying that if they want to “hypnotize prospects into opening their wallets,” he’s your man because he can help you place your customers into a “hypno-buying trance.”


Dr. Joe is an inspiring purveyor of possibilities, and I am a psychiatrist who is in the same business. I think I have something to learn from him, if I can get over wanting to run away and hide. There must be a way to feed the flame without the puffery of smoke.

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You don’t have to live a long time to leave a legacy. A dear friend sent me this story which appeared in the Detroit News (4/23/07) about Miles Levin, an 18-year-old young man who is living with a rare pediatric cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. Miles was 16 when he was diagnosed with this highly malignant cancer of the soft tissues which has a 20% survival rate. Over the last two years, as his cancer advanced, Miles decided to document his life’s journey. After reading the article, I immediately signed on to his website www.carepages.com, typed in patient’s name as levinmiles, and was deeply moved by his candor and wisdom. Here are some sample entries:

“For awhile now, with every significant event or experience that's come along on the journey I call my life I have had to consider, am I going to share this….? This is not my diary but I believe candor is courage. In light of this, I've decided to share something with you which I normally keep to myself. I was asked what college I was going to by a friend tonight. Now I can say I know what it feels like to be harpooned in the chest. He is one of the most well-meaning people I know, so I wasn't quite sure what his words meant; anyway, I had to tell them I'm not going to college in the Fall. Though I didn't want to say it outright because it would almost feel explicit, it doesn't look like I’m going to college in the Spring neither, or in any subsequent Fall.”

“It is not dying that scares me; it's dying and having no impact. I know a lot of eyes are watching me suffer, and win or lose, this is my time for impact.”

“I feel relatively ready. I'm proud of myself, proud of my life, and most proud of the story of my life I say the story because it includes everybody in it, and all the goodness and courage displayed by my family, the generosity of people… I'm proud of the people my friends have become. They've grown so tall; I am proud of myself, what I've done I believe is what I've been sent here to do. Something has shifted. Everything is okay now. It's okay because I am OK with it. Thank goodness that my having and dying from cancer impacts the lives of so many thousands of people that it overshadows any personal bad. I'm in escalating pain, but I hardly mind. You know why? Because this is my story and it's not meant to be told any other way.”

Last week the Sarcoma Foundation of America named Miles Levin the recipient of their Leadership in Courage Award; given annually to a sarcoma patient who, through his or her actions, writings, or personal efforts, inspires others. Miles said, “I probably won't be able to accept the award in person we plan to videotape my acceptance speech and then show that at the gala. My family will be present.”

Last week Miles wrote from Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York that his cancer had spread to all his bones and marrow and that investigational treatment was the only option left. “My mom told me today that I don't need to go ahead with any more treatment if I didn't want to. Mainly because life is the most breathtakingly amazing thing I could ever imagine, I'll go for it even just a couple more days or weeks or months…. I will fight to the bitter end, even though it is all but a certainty, that I will never be cured…..
I still have much to learn in the realm of making the best of it, but I like to think I know a thing or two by now. It is within your power; I know that much and it’s hard; I know that too. But it’s all in how you look at it. So have a little fun.”



This new investigational therapy has no track record, but Miles wants to be a trailblazer. His doctors want to give it to him but his platelet count is too low. Miles’ mother has asked his thousands of readers and well-wishers to send their prayers and visualizations to raise his platelet levels. I wrote to him, you might want to as well, because nurturing relationships and staying lovingly connected is how we thrive as long as we live.

I say this for All My Relations, Mi Takuye Oyacin.

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This is the season when new psychiatric diseases are discovered. A year ago (Schlagbyte, 6/16/06) I shared the newest mental illness called Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED). In this mythical disease a person has repeated uncontrollable anger attacks and wants to throttle someone or destroy property. The psychiatrists who described this new mental illness said 5% of the population suffers from it. But defining IED is problematic; does feeling uncontrollable anger often, but not actually doing it, count? How many times do you have to do something before it’s a mental illness? Does daily road rage count even though you only flip them off? Even though they can’t quite define it, my colleagues know how to treat it . . . you guessed it, IED ought to be treated with psychotropic medications.

This year we have two new mental illnesses. The first was introduced three months ago (International Journal of Neuropsychiatric Medicine, Vol.12, No.4, April, 2007) called Involuntary Emotional Expression Disorder (IEED). This mythical disease is characterized by uncontrollable episodes of laughing and/or crying causing extensive social and occupational dysfunction. We’re told that IEED affects more than one million people worldwide and is often overlooked or misdiagnosed. We are not talking about neurological disorders like ALS, Parkinsonism, Alzheimer’s and other dementias, or neurological injuries all of which reveal such symptoms. We’re being told that if you are inappropriately hilarious or demonstrate excess emotionality, you could be suffering from this disease. Defining it, however, is again the problem — how much hilarity, how often does it have to occur, or how long does it have to last, do teenager sleep-overs count?

Just last month another new mental illness was introduced. At the American Medical Association’s meeting in Chicago several weeks ago, the House of Delegates wanted to add videogame addiction to the panorama of mental illnesses. It deferred the final decision to the American Psychiatric Association for inclusion in its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

How do we define this addiction? By the hours played, the desire to play, can any activity that provides similar stimulation and is indulged to excess qualify (racing cars, playing hooky to watch baseball games, etc.)? Declaring more mythical diseases for which real drugs will surely be recommended is a disaster. 25% of all Americans are said to be suffering from a mental illness (Schlagbyte 6/20/05), because we keep making diseases out of social issues. We label unacceptable behaviors as sicknesses and justify treatment with potent and potentially dangerous drugs.



There is no video-game addiction, there are simply not enough parents around who say no and mean it. “NO!” My mother said you can’t do it, you can’t play hooky to watch a baseball; you can’t gamble your milk money on games, you can’t climb on the girders of new apartment buildings, because if you do these things again there will be consequences, and she followed through. What is needed is limit setting not pill pushing for social issues made to look like new diseases.

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Last Saturday night Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko, appeared at sneak previews in 49 cities; Phoenix was among them, and it sold out.

Sicko is a cinematic indictment of the American healthcare system where three times more is spent on healthcare as other industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), yet our system performs poorly in comparison. It still leaves 15% of all Americans with no health insurance at all, and at least twice that number are inadequately insured.

This movie is a battle cry for reform. Michael Moore’s prescription is a single-payer system with the government as insurer that would guarantee access to health care for all Americans. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion a year — enough to provide comprehensive care for all Americans.

This movie will galvanize support for reform legislation; of course, the insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit hospital industries are closing ranks. They say we are not interested in the socialized health systems of Canada, Cuba, France and Britain (all of which are extolled in the film). They say we need a uniquely American free-market solution, because, “In America, you wait in line to see a movie. In a government-run health care system, you wait to see a doctor.”

Do not be dissuaded by these attempts to create the specter of “long waits for rationed care.” Some of us will have to wait longer to get seen; some of us (you can be sure in a free-market economy) will get seen on demand, but at least everybody will get seen.



We finally get a chance to reject an insurance company claim (an industry by the way that takes 31% of every healthcare dollar for administrative costs). Let’s do it! Go see this movie and let it make you a campaigner for reform. Write to your legislators, demand support from Presidential candidates . . . Go Michael, Go Sicko!

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