Day 11: Blood Tests, a $6 Doctor, a Heart That's Seen Better Days, and the Drinking Problem I Haven't Solved

It's 9 o'clock Thursday night. I'm on my evening walk, and there are bats everywhere. Like, everywhere. I'm going to keep going.

Four hours of sleep again. This is officially the worst sleep run of my life, and I've had some bad ones. But I woke up excited because the Knicks won, which is enormous. My jersey also arrived today, so I got to wear it during the game, which meant a genuinely happy morning despite the fact that I am functionally running on empty.

The $6 doctor and what the echocardiograph found.

I've been wanting to get some bloodwork done since I got here. Not because anything's wrong — more because when you're somewhere like India where healthcare is genuinely affordable, you do the thing. A full blood panel costs almost nothing. The consultation I had tonight with the ENT doctor cost $6. Six dollars. That's what it costs to see a specialist in India. In LA that's $500 minimum, usually more. If you're ever here, get everything checked.

So this morning I went into town, got blood drawn, and also got an echocardiograph. I had pericarditis a few years ago, and I've always meant to follow up on it. The echo showed a little swelling around the heart. Nothing alarming — the doctor wasn't worried — but it's something I need to deal with when I get home.

I'll be honest: I looked at that and thought, yeah. That's what years of putting your body through things will eventually produce. Not in a panicked way. More in the way you look at a car you haven't maintained properly and think — alright, we're going to have to get some work done.

Still waiting on the blood test results. I'll report back.

The enema situation.

I postponed my last enema because I didn't want to do it on the same morning as the blood draw. Having a significant amount of blood taken out of you while also having things go in the other direction seemed like a lot. So I pushed it to tomorrow.

Which means tomorrow is the last one. And then it is, genuinely, easy street. The final stretch is body scrubs, facials, more walking, and whatever I can squeeze out of the time I have left. I'm ready for that phase. I've earned it.

18,000 steps and food that would have been a side dish three weeks ago.

I'm going to hit 18,000 steps today. The walking has been the unexpected gift of this whole thing. I thought it would feel like exercise. It doesn't. It just feels like the way I move now. I don't dread it, I don't resist it, I just walk. Which is, genuinely, the only sustainable version of any physical habit.

The food continues to astonish me. Tonight I had steamed vegetables and half a quinoa ball and was full. Not politely full. Actually full. Three weeks ago that wouldn't have registered as a snack. I would have been ordering thirds and still scanning the menu. Something has genuinely recalibrated in my stomach, and I am not complaining about it.

On weight: I checked in at 76 kilos. I'm hovering at 74, 74.5. That's about 4.4 pounds, which is less than I'd expected given the deficit I've been running. But I think the sleep is the culprit. Water retention, cortisol, all the things I've been reading about. My body has been in stress mode and holding on. I just can't imagine what this would feel like if I was actually sleeping seven or eight hours a night. It would be a completely different experience.

The mental side. Which is the harder side.

I feel good physically. I really do. Better than I have in a while, probably. And I'm proud of that — genuinely.

But I've been honest with myself this week about something: I've made less progress on the mental side than I have on the physical side. And that matters more. Your physical body will follow your mental state eventually. The reverse is less reliable.

Here's the thing I keep coming back to: I can't really picture a world where I'm not drinking. I know that's a strange thing to write in the middle of an Ayurvedic retreat designed in part to address exactly that. But it's true. Even with everything I've been through to get here, even knowing what alcohol has cost me and what it's doing to my body — and now apparently to my heart — I drove through town today, past a liquor store and some restaurants, and I thought: that sounds nice.

That's the reality of addiction. It doesn't respond to logic. It doesn't read the echocardiograph results. It doesn't care that I've been clean for nearly two weeks and walking 18,000 steps and eating quinoa.

They use the phrase "de-addiction" here, which I found interesting when I chose this place. Not maintenance, not management — de-addiction, like it's a thing you can fully arrive at the other side of. I was drawn to that framing. I still am, philosophically. But three weeks is not enough. Not for me. I think six months might start to produce that result. Three weeks produces discipline in a controlled environment, which is useful but not the same thing.

What I think I actually need when I leave here is to get into meetings. Online, in-person, whatever I can access. Not because I think AA's framework is the only one, but because isolation is where I use, and community is where people stay sober. I know that. I've known it for a while. I've just been slow to do it.

The encouraging thing.

Here's what I keep coming back to, though. When I'm feeling this good — when I'm eating clean and walking a lot and not carrying the weight of the day before — the idea of getting drunk genuinely doesn't appeal in the same way. Like, I don't want to erase this. I've worked for this. A bottle of wine would cost me the sleep, the digestion, the energy, the clarity, and most of the physical progress I've built over two weeks. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a part of me is starting to do that math without me having to prompt it.

That's different from where I was when I arrived. It's not confidence in sobriety. It's more like: the argument for moderation is getting harder to make to myself. Which might be the best outcome I could have hoped for.

We'll see what happens. I'm not going to claim something I don't feel. But I'll take the shift.

Tomorrow.

Last enema. More walking. Blood test results. Final stretch.

The bats have dispersed. I'm going back inside.

Alex is the founder of DoshaFlow, writing from an Ayurvedic retreat in Kerala, India. Take the dosha quiz → · Read more from the retreat →