How safe is your water?

While misinformation can lead to embarrassing situations, it probably won’t harm you beyond dampening your ego a bit, especially when a friend corrects you, usually in a social situation.

On the other hand, disinformation is propaganda spread deliberately to deceive. The best textbook examples of disinformation come from George Orwell’s 1984. In that book, “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength” are slogans given by the government to befuddle the populace, among other things.

The trick to fighting those slogans is to not give in to thinking about them, but to denounce them as absurd from their utterance. Once you start thinking about them, they’ve already inserted hooks into your psyche, and you inevitably begin to question what is right, and what is wrong; what is true, and what is false; what is safe, and what is brash.

It was the word “safe” that had the hook. It was a need to feel safe that led me, and a few million others, to this current attempt to purify my body, purify it from years of chemical toxins and their residue.

It started with me clicking an ad on my social media feed.

A meme was created that stated, “How safe is your water?” with a pigtail-adorned, wide-eyed, little girl in a bright red dress taking a drink of water from a glass larger than her head. The glass was partly supported by what appeared to be an adult hand.

Below it was a link that led to a website promoted by Sucker Squealson on his show, repeatedly, over the last few weeks.

The website promoted “Pure water from the heart of the Ozarks” and the image showed four smiling adults, two men and two women, dressed to the nines and clinking glasses (you could hear the glass chimes if you had the sound up) with a clear liquid over a red and white checkerboard table setting. The table was loaded with stacks of corn on the cob, steamy casserole dishes, and huge slabs of T-bone steak on plates. The table was outside on a dock extending over a tree-lined lake, with a pink and purple sunset sparkling over everything.

Below the image was a single button that read, “I wish to be pure”. No other text appeared on the page.

After clicking the button, it took you to a video that started with a drone shot over Niagara Falls in New York. The voiceover text said with a slight Southern twang, “Countries and civilizations have been destroyed by…you guessed it, water. But not in the way you think. I mean, any fool can drown.”

The voiceover paused with a brief chuckle.

“Access to water is changing our world. In Syria, for example, a few folks figure the underlying source of that conflict is…you guessed it again, water. In California, well, you know all about that.”

The scene changed to multiple drone shots of the Ozarks, tree-swept landscapes with bright blue lakes interspersed among the hills.

“We in the Ozarks have learned the difference between cities and the countryside. City folks are high-strung and think they know more than you or me. Whereas country folks are…us. There are a lot of reasons for the current urban/rural divide, but we’ve determined it comes down to…you guessed it again, water. Most cities have codes and regulations dictating the purity of the water. They have chemicals that they say have to go into water to make it safe it to drink. It all goes the bare minimum toward keeping water, as scientists like to call it, potable.

“Don’t get me started on scientists. Those self-proclaimed, “experts”.

The scene cut to the head of the FDA engaged in an argument, then switched back to the wide-eyed little girl in the red dress, drinking the glass of water.

“That got us to thinking. Those chemicals, the accumulation of them in our system, are bound to affect our bodies, and our brains, altering the way we think. You’ve seen the difference between city folk and the real America. You’ve seen what happens when folks move to the cities. They start drinking that city water and it reconfigures their neurons. All those chemicals, all those salts they dissolve in that city water, it alters the brain waves. Makes them spikier than usual. Too spiky for you and me.”

The scene switched to a Congressional hearing with a familiar Congressperson saying into the camera, “I don’t want spiky brain waves, do you?” The scene then changed to a bunch of people in white lab coats nodding while looking at a lab coat defrocked woman holding up a clear-liquid filled test tube to the light, and laughing.

“No one likes a bureaucrat, and no one especially likes a bureaucrat, or even worse, a scientist, telling us what we have to do with our water, what we have to put in our water. So we decided to go back to square one and make water those scientists can’t squawk about. We got some high-end filters and made water the way you’ve always dreamed of it, just pure H2O, without any of those chemicals or other additives you find in conventional bottled water or city tap water. More like what you get here…”

The final scene showed a young boy diving into a lake in the Ozarks. The camera shot followed him underwater as he kicked his way back to the surface through a wash of clear bubbles.

“…the pure taste of the Ozarks.”

A button appeared below that read, “I want to drink the pure taste of the Ozarks.”

The button took you to a page featuring, “Ozark-Pure Water” with various sizes and prices.

A person could order an unlimited amount, with the largest size in 5-gallon jugs. I wanted to be pure, so I bought a 5-gallon jug of it. Heck, I bought one 5-gallon jug for each of my family members.

I had recently sworn off alcohol, since it was giving me problems beyond my control. My ex-girlfriend, Dara, was willing to give me another chance if I could stay sober. I figured if I invited her over on Halloween, I could just drink the Ozark-Pure Water and possibly impress her enough with my resolve against all things alcoholic to take me back. I figured I’d be in the clear and we could get back together.

I had just poured myself a pint glass of it when she knocked on the door. She had bought along a six-pack of my favorite root beer. She was wearing a German dirndl costume, and looked like a Bavarian barmaid. She curtsied, strutted in and looked surprised at the current neatness of my apartment.

“What are you drinking?” she asked, taking the glass from me to kiss me.

After the kiss, I told her it was the Ozark-Pure water, like what they were advertising on TV, and all over the internet.

“Mind if I try it?” she asked, about to take a sip.

“Let’s both try it,” I replied, holding onto her glass as I wrapped my other arm around her. “May it help me, both of us, to be pure.”

I poured myself another glass of it, and we clinked glasses.

“Bottoms up!” I said, as I tossed it back.

The first thing I remembered was the taste, in that it tasted flat, heavy, and bitter. Next came the pain of what felt like my teeth dissolving.

Dara spit out what she had sipped right away, making a sour face. I was determined to drain the pint, and did so. Just for effect, I took her glass from her and drained hers as well. I wished I hadn’t as I suddenly felt like I was dying of thirst and nauseous. I ran to the bathroom to try and find something that would help.

“Are you okay?” she asked from the other room as she came into the hallway next to the bathroom. “I couldn’t stand the taste of it. It was like bitter syrup.”

“My teeth hurt” I replied, as I drank handful after handful of tap water. I looked in the mirror to see if I could tell what was going on. The Ozark-Pure water had, ironically, made me feel far more thirsty.

Looking in the mirror, I discovered my teeth had a little less shine than they had before. My tongue looked bleached. I was still thirsty, but I hesitated at the thought of drinking more because I suddenly felt nauseous. I puked up a little, and there was definitely a bit of blood mixed in with whatever had been in my stomach.

I grabbed a couple of Tums and chewed on those as I made my way back to the kitchen.

I guess I should have cleaned myself up better, because she gasped when she saw me. She later said that I looked like I’d been to Hell and back. While the Tums were definitely helping, I didn’t argue with that characterization.

As the months went by, I began to develop a tolerance, as well as something of a taste, for the water. Granted, it hurt every time I drank it, but I figured that it was the purification process. It was like those liver cleanses you see advertised, a little pain brings a lot of payoff, or so they say.

For a while, it seemed like that was the case. Then, as I was stepping off a curb one morning, I broke my foot. I guess the level of pain surprised me on account I passed out.

When I came to, I was in a hospital bed, with a cast on my foot and a mess of tubes coming out of my arms and backside and other wires everywhere. A few of them were stuck to my scalp and there were enough beeps and blips to make me wonder how I had stayed asleep for so long.

“Hey you,” Dara said, smiling as she leaned over to kiss my forehead. “You had us scared for a while.”

I noticed my parents and a nurse were also in the room. Why were they here?

“Uh-oh,” I thought, as it all came back to me. My mouth suddenly felt incredibly dry and I ran my tongue over the back of my teeth, wincing from the pain.

“Oh, yeah,” the nurse said, holding up a water bottle with a straw. “Here.”

She carefully offered me the straw tip and I sucked, noticing the water tasted like the hospital room. The nurse made a gesture toward Dara. She took the bottle while the nurse studied my charts, adjusting her stethoscope. I tried to move my arms and found it took a lot more effort than normal. When I had drank enough that my mouth felt normal, I spoke.

“How long was I out?”

The nurse looked to Dara, who nodded.

“You’ve been out for about a day and a half,” the nurse said, again adjusting her stethoscope. “You were lucky we’ve been able to replace a lot of those fluids.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’ve been drinking ultrapure, or Type 1, water. That type of water is not meant for human consumption. It’s more commonly used to clean microchips and in microbiology labs.”

I looked at Dara. She sighed and indicated that I should look at the nurse.

“But I thought the pure water of the Ozarks was supposed to be good for me,” I responded, feeling each sibilant consonant in a fierce reminder of pain against my teeth. “What the Hell did they put in that water?”

“I notice that you’re wincing as you speak,” the nurse said. “The reason for that pain is most of the enamel covering your teeth has been dissolved by the Type 1 water.”

“But it wasn’t ‘Type 1’ water I drank. It was the pure water of the Ozarks. Dara, my girlfriend,” I pointed at her. “She’s been drinking it, too!”

“Whatever it was, it didn’t come straight from the Ozarks,” the nurse sighed. “We tested some of it from your apartment and ran it through a lab here. Ultrapure water only comes from high-level processing. Do you understand what ultrapure water is? It’s not what’s in it that harms you, but more specifically what’s not in it.”

“It’s water without any of those brain-altering chemicals in it,” I replied, trying to sit up and failing.

“It’s about as close to exclusively H2O as a person can get,” the nurse shot back, ignoring my remark. “Our bodies aren’t designed for that level of purity in water. Are you familiar with tonicity?”

“Only as it applies to what makes a gin and tonic palatable,” I tried to joke, and then I noticed Dara grimacing.

“I’ll explain it this way. You only have about half a kidney left on each side of you. Most of your liver is gone, as well as a significant chunk of your brain as it was revealed by an MRI. The only reason we were able to prevent kidney failure was because the EMT hooked you up to an I.V. right away. We’re replenishing your salts as we speak,” she said, indicating the I.V. tube and drip pouch.

“Type 1 water is extremely hypotonic in relation to the cells in our bodies. The cells in our bodies always try to reach a point of equilibrium with what’s around them. When the cells encounter a hypotonic solution, the cells attempt to compensate by letting a lot more of the hypotonic solution into the cell itself, while the water takes a lot of the salts from our cells. In the case of Type 1 water, over time it caused about half of your kidney cells to burst, along with a lot of the cells the hypotonic water encountered on the way to your kidneys, particularly bone.

“Your bone mass is about 10% of what it should be. It’s amazing that you didn’t break anything earlier.”

I thought about what the nurse said for a second.

“I just don’t get how pure water would be harmful,” I talked to myself. “It tasted bad, sure. But I consume stuff that tastes bad regularly and it doesn’t harm me.”

“What we normally think of as pure, like reverse-osmosis water, still has quite a few ions and salts dissolved in it. It still has tonicity. Your body needs that tonicity to function normally. However, the ultrapure water has no tonicity. There are no ions in the water,” the nurse explained. “So the water takes dissolvable salts from your body, especially bones, and teeth, and makes ions out of those.”

I thought about it some more, interrupting the nurse.

“Is it possible…” I paused, as I looked straight at the nurse. “…that my body’s reaction to the Ozark-Pure water was caused by my body developing a tolerance to everything in city water, as I’ve been drinking city water my whole life?”

Before the nurse could speak, I continued.

“It stands to logic to think I’m right,” I said as I tried to sit up. I could, with enough effort. “My body was in the process of purifying itself.”

The nurse gave me a brief smile, but I noticed she wasn’t smiling with her eyes.

“You know what? About a million other people thought in the exact same way you did when they got their Ozark-Pure water. Do you want to guess what happened to them?”

The nurse got directly in my face. I was close enough to smell that she was wearing Chanel No. 5.

“They’re all either dead or hospitalized,” she said as she turned away from me.

She looked directly at my parents and Dara now.

“You don’t know anything!” I protested at the nurse. “We’ve all been drinking the chemicals in our water for years! It’s changed the way we think! The way you think!

“It’s changed our bodies. Back in the day, water wasn’t nearly as contaminated as it is now. Water used to be pure!”

I sat back, completely exhausted after my tirade.

Dara held my hand for a little bit. Then she grasped it tighter as she faced the nurse. I felt the bones in my hand crack. It kind of hurt but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

“He’s right. You’re wrong,” she said. “You have no proof that those people died or are hospitalized because they drank that water.”

The nurse’s eyes went wide and her jaw hung open a bit.

“Actually, I can prove it. I’ll bring in the doctor who’s treating him,” the nurse said as she pointed to me.

“You got any more of that water left, son?” my mother asked, ignoring the nurse. “Your dad and I would like to try it…see what it does for us. See if it helps us be pure.”

I smiled, feeling vindicated while I ignored the pain in my teeth.

“It tastes kind of bad,” Dara piped. “But it’ll clean you out. I think of it kind of like a liver cleanse. While I spit out most of it, I feel so much better afterwards. It really makes your urine a lot more yellow. That shows it’s working.”

The nurse scowled at all of us and left the room.

“Medical professional, my ass,” my dad offered, shaking his head. “I just ordered a five-gallon jug of it, off that same web page you shared with me.”

“Some people just don’t know what’s good for them,” I sighed, giving Dara’s hand a squeeze back.

Within a couple of months, both my parents and my girlfriend were with me in the ICU, but in separate rooms. The same nurse who was assigned to me was assigned to them. She scowled everywhere she went.

I pondered how people just refuse to learn the truth as I prepared for my dialysis, and a liver transplant.