in praise of Placebo

My yin and I were gifted a new coffee machine over the weekend, and I have to say that our morning coffee has never tasted better. The pre-wedding hubbubbling just below the surface has finally started showing itself, and it was given to my yin at her bridal shower, which, contrary to its name, has nothing to do with water or steering a horse.

(yikes! that was bad, even for me.)

But this is beside the point.

The point is that this is the biggest improvement in our coffee consumption since we made the commitment to Larry's Beans after our summer excursion to North Carolina. There, in Boone, lies the single greatest bakery south of the Mason-Dixon, north of the equator, or east of the Rockies:

I started wondering, though – how much of this improved taste is really there, and how much of it is nothing more than placebo? This seemingly topical question got me to thinking about the nature of the placebo effect, and why it is so often hauled out of the skeptic's bag of tricks as a method of discrediting the experience of another.

Those who worship at the altar of Science are especially prone to this tactic, and it is almost invariably used as proof of an object's impotence. Echinacea, essential oils, and all sorts of other natural and alternative remedies have all been stigmatized by the specter of placebo, and more than once I've fallen victim to this same finger-wagging posture.

But who can argue with the wisdom of the butterfly?

a butterfly and echinacea flower in my grandmother's garden

What seems to be overlooked in these criticisms is that the logical consequence of the object's ineffectiveness must be the mind's ability to impact the material world in substantive, measurable ways. In other words, the same Scientists who poo-poo an idea as a 'mere placebo' seem equally uncomfortable with the notion of thoughts – 'mere thoughts' – changing the body and improving quality of life.

This is not to dismiss modern medicines; I fully admit that the medicinal chemicals we imbibe (with frightening regularity) carry with them strong karmas. But with this incomprehensible strength also comes unpredictability, as the last fifty years of recalls and poisonings will surely attest.

Furthermore, it seems reasonable to me that many of these overdetermined health issues – obesity, mental illness, cancer, etc. – are phenomena that could be greatly reduced if we chose our thoughts and foods and medicines more carefully, little by little, over the course of our lives rather than waiting until faced with obstacles of ginormous proportions. These tremendous karmas build up little by little, for ill or for better, and who's to say if we had made different decisions all along the way that we might not have avoided those larger consequences. It seems, as with most things, the Middle Path is the wisest.

... and all this from a morning cup of coffee.