about 7 colonics. I ended up feeling great, much trimmer, with an
enormous rebirth of energy. And when I resumed eating it turned out
to be slightly easier to control my dietary habits and appetites.

Thus began my practice of an annual health-building water fast. Once
a year, at whatever season it seemed propitious, I'd set aside a
couple of weeks to heal my body. While fasting I'd slowly drive
myself over to Great Oaks School for colonics every other day. By
the end of my third annual fast in 1981, Isabelle and I had become
great friends. About this same time Isabelle's relationship with her
first husband, Douglas Moser, had disintegrated. Some months later,
Isabelle and I became partners. And then we married.

My regular fasts continued through 1984, by which time I had
recovered my fundamental organic vigor and had retrained my dietary
habits. About 1983 Isabelle and I also began using Life Extension
megavitamins as a therapy against the aging process. Feeling so much
better I began to find the incredibly boring weeks of prophylactic
fasting too difficult to motivate myself to do, and I stopped. Since
that time I fast only when acutely ill. Generally less than one week
on water handles any non-optimum health condition I've had since
'84. I am only 54 years old as I write these words, so I hope it
will be many, many years before I find myself in the position where
I have to fast for an extended period to deal with a serious or
life-threatening condition.

I am a kind of person the Spanish call _autodidactico,_ meaning that
I prefer to teach myself. I had already learned the fine art of
self-employment and general small-business practice that way, as
well as radio and electronic theory, typography and graphic design,