Posts Tagged ‘Alcoholics Anonymous Blog’

Post Interferon – Post Celexa – Take 2 with Lamictal (Lamotrigine)

Posted: July 8, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Man oh man how nice it was when Celexa worked for so long in keeping the Post Interferon headaches at bay. And how disheartening when it simply stopped working about 5 months into treatment. So with my Doctors counsel I tried to first double the Celexa from 20 mg to 40 mg only to have my headaches increase in intensity almost immediately. But, since the Celexa had taken two weeks to feel somewhat positive to begin with I held on for two weeks suffering through an intense basically constant headache through the first two weeks of June, and then finally gave up on that increased dosage strategy, and went back to the 20 mg for a week, then down to 10 mg and then off for about a week, before beginning the next step in this process, to try lamictal. I had used it once a few years back and had some good luck with it however I’d stopped when laid off from my recruiting job, and losing my health insurance. The experiment of course was to try several different meds until I found one that worked, while I have the good health insurance, and before I take any major entrepreneurial risks. I just want to be fully operational, or even just find something that makes me fully functional and for a while Celexa worked, until it just didn’t. When I stopped taking the Celexa though, I was reminded of the original headaches I’d been taking it for to treat in the firstplace. I was hoping that conditions and variables had changed, or rather that my quitting drinking coffee was going to make the headaches disappear entirely and therefore make the headaches disappear, however this wasn’t the case. It was weird though, getting off Celexa, about as weird as getting on it was. I was out of sort, dizzy sometimes, and just not myself.

So Lamictal, originally suggested by my Neurologist a few years back takes about 2-3 weeks to get up to its full dosage and I’m only about 4 days into it but so far so good. First of all I didn’t have, or haven’t had any of the skin rashes they warn you about which is apparently the main reason you have to ease into it, but also I woke up with one of my headaches this morning and it was the kind that usually stays with me all freaking day, however after taking a few tylenol and going to the gym it was gone, and I’ve felt pretty good all day.

I am hopefully for Lamictal , but if it doesn’t work I’ll just try for six months like I did Celexa, then try something else. In the long run, I’ve now quit smoking cigarettes, and a full month off caffeine trying to get rid of headaches and there must be light at the end of the tunnel. The Celexa was good for a while, but it ended up just causing another kind of headache and also some seriously weird stomach issues that I was very very tired of. So maybe Lamictal will be better.

If not, theres still Lexapro and Wellbutrin to try out and if I get real desperate I guess I could even try Prozac…. I had really hoped quitting drinking coffee would do it… but hell, at least my teeth are whiter! 🙂

In other news, work is going great, even though I had to work through a massive headache in June, I have still managed to be over 120% of quota every month and therefore making some great money. I head to Cabo in a few weeks so that should be a blast and I’ll be sure to hit up some AA meetings while I’m down there. It will sort of be dangerous, I’ll be hanging with old friends who all drink and party still but I figure I’ll just go from the airport to the clubhouse that supposedly speaks English and then head to the hotel so I have an escape route at anytime. I’ll also have my cell phone at all times so shouldn’t be too tough , and the place looks like a dream come true, Barcelo. I deserve it, I’ve worked hard the last few months and taken care of a lot of debts.

Maybe I’ll come up with some new book ideas, the beach always does that to me!

Jared Bryan Smith

Heart Warming Review of Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety

Posted: June 16, 2011 in Uncategorized
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As most alcoholics, I am often childish, oversensitive, and grandiose.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if writing this book was even a good idea, and I constantly worry about the harm I’ve done in being so brutally honest about my life, and especially in my sobriety, but ultimately I always come back to if I’m honest,  I have nothing to fear. Even with that knowledge, I am often saddened by the misunderstandings I may have inadvertently caused, or complications my gut level honesty may have arisen. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reads “First do no harm.” Which is the beginning of the Hippocratic Oath, which Doctors take, but I take it personally almost every time I read it. I really never intended on ever hurting anyone, especially anyone I loved. But a lot of unexpected, uncharted things happen when you write a book, or when you write in general. It is not for the faint of heart. You open up a vein and bleed into a keyboard, then wait as everyone dissects and examines the blood telling you just what’s wrong with it all, just what blood borne diseases your carrying around and how it affects them somehow, who choose to read it. It is often times more pain that I would have imagined it would be. I’m not good at criticism, constructive or otherwise.

Occasionally I get a note that makes it all worth while though. A week or so  ago I heard from a friend that had cleared Hepatitis C as an early responder, and that was definitely one of those days. He had read my book, and so that was definitely uplifting, but this review that a perfect stranger left on the blog wall yesterday, is absolutely the best one I’ve received in a long time.

“I have read three books on recovery in the last 2 months. The other 2 by well known authors.

YOUR BOOK spoke to me.. The other 2 seemed like a lot of dribble.

After all their words maybe, just maybe… in the very end did they say anything  to me.

YOUR book touched my mind and my soul   from the very first sentence..

Thank you and please keep writing !! Your amazing.

cc golem ”

Thanks so much CC! I really do appreciate it. For all I’ve lost in writing this book, knowing that a few people have been moved by the story is enough to solidify leaving the book up.

In the process of self publishing I’ve learned a lot about the mechanics of the publishing industry. I am tormented by the thought of taking it all down and just walking away from it all. I think I am probably not the first writer to have these thoughts. I wonder if it’s a good idea for me to control the entire process. I know there are parts of the process that could be handled better by others. For instance, I feel bad pimping my own pain. Having a literary agent would help with that. I feel terrible publicizing the book title on my own in different forums, and after just a few negative comments from overposting, I stopped all together. Then I get bitter at the lack of commercial success, and wonder how many women I’ve known just in the last year who’ve been pushed away by the content or their misunderstanding of what it means to be cured of Hep C, and I wonder, should I just take it all down?

And then I get a decent review, and I remember, that I didn’t write it for glory, or vanity, but to help other struggling alcoholics, or better yet, specifically people facing the daunting challenged of Hepatitis C. There are more options than 4 years ago when I went through it, the pain and duration of Interferon has been cut in half using Telaprevir or Boceprevir Telaprevir, but of course as the pharmaceutical industry is apt to do, since it’s half the time, it’s twice the cost, and most of us suffering from Hepatitis C, weren’t exactly on the tail end of financial windfalls, so the odds can still seem insurmountable, I’m sure. But at every corner in my journey of sobriety, God was there, every step of the way, I knew what the right thing to do was, and I was rewarded every time I took the next right step. Today, at 4.5 years sober the next right thing is just leaving the book and the blog up, regardless of personal pain or loneliness it may cause.

The occasional reader finds inspiration and that must be why God so compelled me to write it.

Thanks again CC, I appreciate the kind words more than you know. Please do me a huge favor and leave the reviews on Smashwords as well, which the link can be found under the picture of the book. I have a ton of good ones on Amazon but Smashwords is a bit bare for reviews. Thanks again so much!

– Jared Bryan Smith

Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety – Rand Hopkins Dedication

Posted: February 23, 2011 in Uncategorized
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So recently I’ve been asked a few times about the dedication in the beginning of my book, given to Rand Hopkins who was a mentor to me in my writing from early on. He, my Uncle and my father were good friends dating years back in the Atlanta theater scene as they worked on such productions as “The Boy King”, a play about Martin Luther King’s childhood and several other plays in Atlanta during the eighties. My Dad had a sound recording studio in the basement, prior to his death, and this was where they recorded the scores for all of those plays.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0394259/

Rand Hopkins was a writer, an actor, and even a talented painter, and my Aunt still has several of his paintings. He was also a very jovial, loving man, who was one of the few people on Earth who could tell me good stories about my Dad after he died in 1989 of alcoholism, or suicide rather, but still when someone dies like that most of the stories take dark turns. Only a handful of people were able to tell me good things about my Dad, and he was one of them. A particular funny story involved my dad going outside to take a piss and coming back in screaming and yelling about a dog almost biting his dick off, and as Rand would tell the story he’d be in tears with the theatrics, and his laughter was a contagious sort, so I’d be in tears laughing about my dad’s antics. That was a kind thing of him to do, and I was grateful, then and now.

Shortly after my father passed, my mom allowed me to go to NYC with a group of kids that Rand would host, and we would visit all the Broadway Plays in New York City. What an adventure for a 12 year old. We would have a blast. My mom gave me a few hundred bucks spending cash, and I remember hitting Time Square and finding every arcade I could possibly find, and just spending hours and hours in them. Rand didn’t mind just so long as I made it back to the hotel before midnight or so. While we were in NYC we saw a ton of plays, from Phantom of the Opera, to Miss Saigon, Les Miserable, and even a few off broadway productions as well, including one in which we sat second or third row and Ralph Macchio from the Karate Kid was the lead actor. I remember watching it and marveling at the differences between plays and movies with the Karate Kid a few feet from me, remembering his lines flawlessly, but still so much more human than on the big screen.

As the years passed we lost touch, especially as my drug and drinking use accelerated. But at a few critical moments I would reach out to him and share with him my writings, and he would encourage me, and tell me I was talented and I should continue writing. He sent me a copy of the Writer’s Market around 1998, and then again in 2004, when we reconnected after I was cast, quite accidentally, in “Miracle on 32nd Street” due to Gwen’s insistence. That’s another story you can find in the book. It was just a few weeks after my mama had died of cancer, and Gwen had left me for San Diego. I was withdrawing from all opiates and doing my damnedest not to kill myself drinking, or at this point, the way my father had gone. We talked briefly one night about a month after my mom, and he said something to the effect of “Live out your dreams JB, because life is short and you just never know when you might get run over by a bus. Write a book about everything you’ve gone through, because you’ve gone through a lot, and it will help you heal.” Literally a month later Rand Hopkins died suddenly in his sleep. I dropped out of that play, unable to contain my drinking binges, and completely incapable of showing up to anything on time or with any kind of consistency, but because of that play, and the people at the play house I heard about Rand’s death, and otherwise, I doubt I would have ever even heard. Funny how life works out like that.

I wasn’t invited to the funeral. Or maybe I was, and they just couldn’t get a hold of me. That’s the predicament of being a black out drunk, it’s hard to blame folks for lost invites, but the significance of that man, his words and his sentiment was never lost on me. He believed in me as a writer, and because he was an award winning writer himself I believed in him. If anybody else had said it I wouldn’t have believed them.

He had awesome connections and friends, and I sometimes wonder if I could reach any of them, but I know he knew Michael Jay Fox and also helped out Kenan Thompson who was also from my hometown of Atlanta, GA, early on in his career, though I’m not real sure the extent or depth of either friendships.

Still, I wish he’d been here to see my book launched, and could have helped me a little to promote it, and more than that, to tell me what he really thought. The good die young it seems. I suppose I should rejoice that I had him in my life as long as I did, and be proud that I did complete the project.

I dedicated the book to him because more than anyone else, his encouragement and faith in my writing meant the absolute most to me over the years. He was a good friend and I miss him much.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Guerilla Publicity, Reviews, Promoting a book…

Posted: October 27, 2010 in Uncategorized
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So the initial book launch has begun to fade, and with much stress I’ve watched the title go from top 50k, to under 100k, to 200k, and now is floating somewhere around 400k top books. Which is really still sad if you think of about it considering I’ve sold only around 30 copies or so. So now the real work begins it seems.

Getting the book to reviewers, getting those 30 readers to leave Amazon reviews, making sure Amazon lists it in proper medical categories, under Hepatitis C, Addiction, alcoholism etc, all very important. And then of course writing a decent press release, getting that press release and then hopefully a Press Kit into the hands of editors, producers, etc….  All it will take is one good hit, but it may be hard to do without the aforementioned reviews, and so , again getting the book to recognized reviewers will be crucial.

There are services that will do that for you, ranging from $250 bucks to 1500, but being unemployed, having spent every dime on the http://www.books4free.com launch and not being well funded, books4free is going to need to really begin rolling up their sleeves and getting it out there.

Fortunately his pain, followed by a solemn oath to avoid love again indefinitely, should definitely free up his calender…

-Jared Bryan Smith

Only Three Left in Stock – Amazon Says?

Posted: October 20, 2010 in Uncategorized
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What the hell… I seriously thought this was Print on Demand. How strange. Also, how in the hell do you change a subtitle in Amazon to reflect that the book is about Hepatitis C. Grrr… When you search Hepatitis C books, mine is nowhere to be found, because I used an artsy title instead of a factual one…. so I tried to change the subtitle with more than a few keywords, and they freaking rejected it.

So, I, the author, don’t have authority to change my own subtitle. Maddening.

Not that I liked the title, the most unartistic, mangled drivel ever, written soley for the purposes of Amazon’s search engine… still I was proud of the amount of keywords I crammed into 200 characters…alas it was rejected:

“Current value: Hippopotamus Sea
Your suggestion: Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety, or How I Beat Hepatitis C, Addiction, Alcoholism, & Interferon by Working the 12 Steps of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, & Recovery Stories of Drinking, LSD, & Cocaine”

* Please do not add descriptions to the title. The title should be as it appears on the book.

Well ya know what Amazon, how about you stop trying to sell Hungry Hungry Hippo to my NOT INTERESTED IN HIPPOPOTAMUS customers, you over digitized, zealous, taking the art out of writing demons!!! But I digress… I shall return in a better mood later.

At least we’re back in top 100 recovery books again… introducing another problem, how do I get classified under Hepatitis C Books?

-Jared Bryan Smith

Books4free.com – Hepatitis C, Alcoholism, Addiction Memoirs, LSD, The Grateful Dead, Amsterdam and Juvenile

Posted: October 15, 2010 in Uncategorized
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So the momentum is beginning to slow down as the facebook crowd who were awaiting books, are now reading rather than ordering I suppose. At the peak the book was in the Top 100 Alcohol and Recovery books, ranking at #67, but unfortunately I don’t know how many books that is in that given hour. On the overall ranking it’s maxed out at 32,000, which isn’t bad considering there are millions of books on Amazon, but now that it’s back in the 100-200k range, I’m scared to see where it will be in a week. Moving forward reviews, word of mouth, emails, and networking will be more influential than facebook. Guess I need to start sending to reviewers.

The book chronicles being born into alcoholic family, rebelling, dosing LSD/Acid very young, and raising hell through his teenage years, stealing, running away, wrecking cars you name it, until he finally settles down however briefly to have a son, and play family for a few years, however poorly the execution. After divorce at 22 he picks up where he left off, raising cane again, and really doesn’t even begin to slow down as his mom lies dying of cancer. After she’s gone his drinking takes on new sincerity and the challenge I really took on is towards the end of the book where I do my best to explain madness and insanity, delusions, and paranoid schizophrenia to the normal, “earth” person as we recovered alcoholics refer to the unafflicted. It’s hard to explain the color red though to a blind man, and I wonder if anyone will understand the enormity of my massive, intricate, detailed derangement. All I could do was try and explain how lost I’d gotten, how lost I stayed for so long, and how far I’d come back. It’s not a short journey, but given the number of people, just in our class of 1996, that are now dead to alcoholism, addiction  or something related, it’s a story worth reading, and worth understanding, as the solution, the 12 Steps of AA, can work on really any spiritual malady, but most especially addiction.

If the AA 12 Steps could work on me, who went to the edge of the abyss, looked in and had the abyss stare back in, invade and pay rent for years, it can seriously work on anyone. I really wrote the book I wish I’d read when I went to pick up a Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I wanted some hope, I wanted a story as dark as mine, detailed and honest, and messy with guts and humiliation, and something bigger than myself. When I lived that firsthand, I felt it was worth writing, and though a little long, as I’m beginning to hear back, it’s worth the read. If you think it’s long reading, thank God you didn’t live it!

-Jared Bryan Smith


Books4free.com – Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety by Jared Bryan Smith

Posted: October 11, 2010 in Uncategorized
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Well the book launched yesterday! I was very excited as I didn’t realize it was basically automatic from the acceptance of the proof with Lightning Source. I was putting pressure on my graphics designer/web designer who was basically stalling and putting it right back on me, which drove me a little batty. So I was thinking books4free was going to have to call LSI, which is always a pain in the ass, and find out how to connect LSI and Amazon together. Thankfully it was all done automatically.

Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety, written by me, Jared Bryan Smith, 2.5 years in the making, and it finally launches on 10-10-10, a sheer coincidence. Chronicling a 17 year drug and drinking binge, sobriety,  the 12 Steps of AA in their modern workings, haha, as well as, of course, the contraction of Hepatitis C, the insane costs of the treatment without insurance, the charity given by Roche, and the grueling Interferon treatment itself, it’s certainly a book anyone in recovery would appreciate.

It doesn’t sugar coat much, and cuss words are modern, and used liberally. Anyone who has Hep C, isn’t going to be offended I suspect, but it may not penetrate the staunch religious aspects of AA as some are very averse to cursing. My God doesn’t speak English exclusively so he could care less how many times I drop the F bomb. I didn’t cross the GD line though, haha. It’s a good book, regardless of anyone’s delicate sensitivities. I couldn’t write honestly and not cuss a little.

So as of yesterday my best ranking was in the top 32000 on Amazon, but today, Monday, we’ve drifted back to about 75k, so my brother just bought 3 copies to test this theory, see what happens. Very strange as a publisher books4free can’t just go and look up exactly how many copies they’ve sold, but I guess they probably just haven’t figured that out yet. I suppose books4free should call LSI regardless just to see how to do that.

I’m glad the book is up though. I used a technical editor, and in all honesty it wouldn’t shock me if later on down the road I ended up getting an editor specifically attuned to working on autobiographies, to get rid of some of the name dropping, probably crop some pages, but at this stage, it’s the very best I could do with the tools, resources, and time I had at hand. Especially the money. I would have saved thousands going through Lulu.com or any Vanity Publishing Press out there, but we wanted to use my book to launch books4free.com. We’ll see how that all plays out moving forward  I suppose.

So go take a look please, if you haven’t already!

http://www.books4free.com

-Jared Bryan Smith

Dead Parents, Living Amends…

Posted: May 31, 2010 in Uncategorized
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My mom died of Cancer in 2004, and 6 years later, I have 3.5 years sober, and owed her an amends. Not the kind one can make in person though, but a living amends. As I was advised, a letter.

For several reasons I document in the book it took me no less than 5 tries to get to her headstone and be able to sit and write for a couple of hours. Having finished the amends, it felt anti-climatic, if not a touch depressed.

Though I cleared the Hep C virus in 2008, and went 6 months without treatment, was then tested, found negative and thus declared Hep C negative, I went and got another test on Friday, just to be sure as I go to publish with the book, in the next few weeks, and it would be nice to say it’s been 2.5 years without the virus, instead of just that six month test. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m nervous about that test, regardless of being pronounced cured 2 years ago, and that visiting my moms grave, after 6 years of absence was more than a little emoti0nally taxing.

Visiting my Dad’s grave, who shot himself with a .357 when I was 11 years old, was usually filled with more anger, and self righteousness, than visiting my moms, which brought up guilt and depression. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll get good news next week from the gastroenterologist, finish typing up the amends, and thus the end of the book, get the cover back from the graphics designer, and launch the site books4free.com finally as I’ve been patiently awaiting the finalized book to launch, and I’ll have accomplished a goal I set in motion over 10 years ago, I never knew would have taken me down this road, facing Hepatitis C, alcoholism, addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, and living life on life’s terms, but here we are.

Life is an adventure I suppose. The living amends to my mom is good, I believe it ties the book up nicely. I’m glad I did it, but it was damn emotionally taxing, like most of the book. Reminds me of a quote I read about writing years ago.

“Writing is easy; I just open a vein and bleed.”
— Red Smith

Funny I could have sworn that quote included a typewriter. Damn google, it’s probably a misquote, feel free to respond with the original origin, but you get the gist.

– JB Smith

Hepatitis C, Anthony Kiedis, Johnny Delirious, Homeopathic or Pathetic … Hep C Reality

Posted: May 28, 2010 in Uncategorized
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I did it. After almost two years of writing my book about Hep C, and hell, 3.5 years of thinking about the story, I decided to google the competition out there and see who else had written stories involving Hep C, and of course, as the challenges are so parallel, sobriety. I don’t know why I was so reluctant to see what was out there, other than, I just didn’t want to be discouraged by seeing like Hemingway’s surprise Hep C autobiography I’d never known about or something, and I just wanted to knock it out before I looked. Anyway, I found some stuff out there, but nothing that blew  my socks off.

First and foremost, you have Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue, a great book I’ve heard, as he’s the front man for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and God knows we’ve all heard, Under the Bridge Downtown, and can hear the description of his pain as he shoots heroin for the first time. Surely we can expect him to have had his own Hep C struggles, and of course the sobriety struggles that go along with it. I love one of his quotes I just found because it is exactly what happened to me regarding drugs and alcohol:

“You know I love pot, and I love beer, but I am totally sober, just because it completely stopped working for me.
Anthony Kiedis”

Man, I remember hearing that in an AA meeting before it happened, and thinking, What Bullshit. But whoa, what fear descends upon the madman when it occurs. Of an addict for 15+ years, when that day comes that the drugs and alcohol quit working, you will feel fear, and loneliness that few others ever experience. Your best friend of years disappears instantly, and you can’t imagine life with or without drugs and alcohol. I say this is my book, but it remains one of my favorite quotes: “Most of God’s miracles, first felt like a punch in the gut.” Eventually I would be grateful for that day, but I digress. So Anthony Kiedis had Hep C, wrote an autobiography, and says some pretty good shit about sobriety and Hep C. However, a lot of it was rock star, elite, Pie in the Sky treatment that Joe America simply doesn’t have access too. He says he beat it with a controversial treatment called Ozone gas, which is presumably, painless, miracolous, and just as effective as 48 weeks of hellish painful Interferon Treatment. My only objection here, is that if you ask your Dr., any major Gastroentologist in the United States about Ozone, they will laugh it off, or claim the expense is too high, that it isn’t FDA Approved, or just say that the only thing that is medically recognized to cure Hep C is Interferon…which is by the way, expensive, painful, depressing, and maddening. It’s like saying well, the common man has to take Chemotherapy for Cancer, but I, being a pompous rock star, was able to take nitrus oxide, and laugh away my disease.

“And finally yes, it’s true that Anthony Kiedis has hepatitis C. He contracted it somewhere along in his escapades and it is believed that it was caused by the drugs.  He is combating the infection with ozone administered by flea’s and his personal nurse Sat Hari. Ozone is a “wonderful-smelling” gas that has been used legally in Europe to treat everything from strokes to cancer. Most of this information can be found in his biography “Scar Tissue”.”

A wonderfully smelling gas. Interesting. I wonder how true any of this is? It’s all legal in Europe huh? If this is the case, why does the US not use it. Maybe I don’t know shit, and it’s a huge conspiracy against Americans, but as an American I was given one option, by my medical Dr., to defeat Hepatitis C, and that was Interferon, and though it was painful and hellish it did seem to work. After 6 months the disease was clear from my system, and after 2 years, I’m going in today to get it checked again, and hopefully will receive the same result. Hep C free and clear. I’ll ask my Dr. about Ozone today.

The other book I was able to find out there was written by “Johnny Delirious, Hepatitis C, Cured, who claims, from what I could tell briefly that he beat the disease, which he was diagnosed with in the late stages and given 8 months to live, with only homeopathic means. Ie… vitamins and sunshine, and positive thinking. Quite honestly his site links to so many sites charging for Homeopathic cures, you can’t help but think that this guy is just marketing to a demographic already susceptible to delusions and pie in the sky instant gratification solutions. I wonder how much money he’s made selling this book, and/or linking back to all the homeopathic solutions, that have absolutely no medical validity, and my MD claims are bullshit. Milk thistle? Gimme a break. This Virus will attack and kill your liver, and some dipshit is out there selling books about refusing a liver transplant and beating the disease on his good karma and GNC pills. Gimme a break. No I haven’t read the book, and no I don’t plan on it. I don’t know about Ozone treatments or homeopathic cures to Hep C, just as much as I don’t know how to moderate drinking or drugs. I got into this mess, taking short cuts, shooting for the angles, instant gratifications, and feel better cures, and the only way out of the hole I dug for myself, was the long ardous road of Interferon that an actual MD, speciliazing in the liver, suggested I take and whom laughed off, Ozone, and or Milk Thistle, and the other bullshit he offers on his website…

Also, never take medical advice from a guy whose last name is Delirious. Just saying. Maybe it worked for him, I haven’t , and won’t read the book, but for the average, Hep C infected addict, alcoholic, your options really don’t include Ozone, and or Vitamins and Milk Thistle. Follow your Gastroentologist’s advice and take Interferon. It’s tough, but it works, and these other cure alls are just that in my opinion.

On the other hand if Ozone does actually work, and the medical community has kept it out of the states, for profitability reasons or something that sinister, then Shame on them. Interferon changes you for life. If there were medical data, and access to Ozone, like rock stars apparently have, I would recommend it be the new treatment, but I have to assume, the United States, with the best, most educated Dr’s in the world, have a better reason than profits, to keep Ozone out of the US, and Interferon as the major treatment for this debilitating disease. I don’t know, but it just seems really strange, the only two other books out there, offer these fairy tale, delusional options, that weren’t available to me, or any of the other Hep C patients I’ve met here in the States. I guess, that makes my book original then. Unless of course, you are a rock star, then call Anthony Kiedis, he seems to have access to magical gas that smells great.

Please take a moment to read about my  journey through insanity, addiction, Hep C, Interferon, and AA on http://www.books4free.com and check out the strong reviews on amazon at:

-JB Smith