Here’s the story. For the last several months, I have been eating a vegetarian diet, due in part to ethical interests (as I have outlined before), but also because I was looking for a challenge. With the exception of needing a few food supplements to replace the loss of certain minerals in my day-to-day food intake, the whole transition has been relatively hassle-free. In fact, the exercise was satisfying in both the sense of achievement I gained by sticking to a set of clearly delineated dietary parameters and also that smug sense of moral gratification one gains by abstaining from meat consumption (a joke – of course). I’m hardly journeying into sandal wearing, vegetable-juice drinking territory just yet, however, I still eat sea-food, making me that breed of half-hearted vegetarians referred to as a piscatarian.

On Monday night, I was late out of work with an ambitious list of housework to get done, a 5k run planned and a meeting with an old friend set up. I always do this; lay far too many things on top of the other. Flooring it from the train station toward home, I decided I would jump into one of the dozen or so Turkish fast-food joints to grab something quick too eat – dinner was not factored into the evening’s original plan. Ducking into the first place I came across, I ordered a vegetarian lahmacun (a sort of spicy, baked, round, thin piece of flat bread topped with minced vegetables and herbs, onions and tomatoes. They’re delicious).

Not even looking up from his newspaper, the guy behind the counter tells me they only have the variety made with minced lamb. With the clock ticking and that list in my head, I just said fine and took whatever he had. I mean, one day off the veggie diet wasn’t going to end the world. I inhaled the wrapped Turkish-pizza and went about the rest of my day. No worries. I woke up on Tuesday morning with a headache that could undo screws and a knot of Gordian proportions in my stomach. Mistaking these early symptoms of something-very-sinister-heading-my -way for an easily shakable fatigue caused from the hectic previous night, I got dressed and headed to work. It was only when I began to find it a genuine labor to stand upright on the train that I figured something could perhaps be wrong. With male hubris very much at the helm, however, I still made my way into work. No sooner was I at my desk that things turned quite real quite suddenly and I was auto-piloting it to the bathroom. In one abrupt and violent wretch of a cough, I threw up the half glass of water and apple I’d eaten that morning. I felt dreadful, like I had the most horrific hangover of my entire life without the pleasure of a night’s drunkenness to at least reminisce on. Dizzied and with the pain in my gut only getting worse, I finally submitted to the truth of what was happening and that this first vomit was most likely to be one of the fondest memories of the day ahead. As soon as I saw my boss, I made my apologies and got out the building ASAP. When I miraculously made it home without throwing-up on myself (or worse), I collapsed onto my bed and quickly began to acknowledge exactly how unpleasant a case of food poisoning I was facing.

What followed was a solid 24 hours of vomiting, dashes to the bathroom, voices in the dark, shakes, sweats and spectral visions. I talked at length with long dead relatives, relived times before my own birth and generally tripped balls. This was cosmic retaliation, both psychedelic and colorless, for eating that meat. Half-mad and feverish, I was convinced of it. Vomit and diarrhea came in torrents of equal measure and intensity. When my dehydrated mind wasn’t struggling to navigate through the seventh dimension, my stomach was evacuating its contents through any available opening. Whatever perverse bacteria had made its way into my guts, the body wanted it gone and would stop at nothing to get this done.

I woke up, drained but intelligible, on Wednesday afternoon. I was exhausted and confused, my bones ached and my stomach was a wasteland, but I had energy enough to at least consider some tea and dry toast. The war within was over, it was now time to rebuild. With the exception of some rather unsettling stomach cramps and a lack of sleep last night, as I write this on Thursday, I think I’m pretty close to making a full recovery. I don’t even want to think about eating meat again for a long time. Lesson learned on this one. The Gods have spoken. Unless, that is – as I may not have mentioned – the sickness was actually caused by those half dozen oysters I ate on Sunday.

(Featured image courtesy http://www.niaid.nih.gov)