Water Is The Enemy

Do you remember when our relationship to water was an easy one? Drink lots of it=better overall health. Well, after further review, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Many gay men, like myself, rely on water to help us maintain our health and extend our youth. Like most people, we were indoctrinated with the idea that water helps excrete toxins after too much clubbing, improves our skin tone, makes us less hungry (diet aid) and reduces headache frequency. Not only are none of these beliefs true, researchers can find no scientific study anywhere that asserts or ever supported any of these claims. 8 glasses of water a day? Only if you want to pee a lot.

I’ve been reading the various studies related to this breaking news (It’s work related…I’m not a total dork), and I’ve learned that 20% of our needed fluid intake can come from sources such as coffee (doesn’t that dehydrate you?) and food. So how much water do you need? Just drink it when you’re thirsty. Wow. Revolutionary.

How times change. Water was once magical, now it’s pedestrian—and feared. My housemates gasp when they see me drink DC tap and openly berate me for cooking without brita filtered water. They even have me considering the purchase of a special shower head so that I’m not soaked with evil. There has also been recent national news about how a vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, which enter the water system due to people pissing them out. I also saw a report on television about how San Diego has a program to rehabilitate sewage as drinking water, as a response to their water shortage. I bet people really love that idea.

Maybe water will have a comeback. It seems like every few years the experts change their mind on whether or not an egg is good for you, so who knows. The only thing I’m sure of at this point is that innocence has been lost, and something ugly has taken its place. Case in point, I was at Union Station one afternoon a few weeks ago, parched from a day spent trudging back and forth between government buildings, and I went to a vendor for water.

I was charged $3 dollars.