Sometimes people need medicine. This is addressed to the people who dismiss everything and anything that comes from “Big Pharma” in favor of healthy food and “natural” remedies—or “Big Placebo,” as I (and others) call them.

More specifically, I hope the person who made this cartoon eats a bunch of organic fruit full of spiders:

See, I’ve dealt with intestinal issues pretty much my whole life, and the less processed certain foods are, the more distress they cause me. So if health food works for you, that’s awesome and more power to you, but don’t assume I don’t know what I’m talking about just because I don’t share your passion for kelp or whatever.

My issues, by the way, do not remotely compare to those of people with Crohn’s or other forms of inflammatory bowel disease. My diagnosis has always fallen in the catch-all category of irritable bowel syndrome, which also sucks but…..well, you’ll see. Take the story of Sarah at Skeptability (h/t Stephanie Zvan), a vegan who must contend with Crohn’s every day:

I shared the story of how I got diagnosed when Skeptability first launched, but in case you didn’t read it, I wasn’t treated at all for Crohn’s (or any intestinal problems) until I was 23. Though I was very ill throughout high school, my parents kept chalking up my symptoms to me not eating well enough. So I’d go on health food kicks where I really tried to nourish my body, get enough sleep, exercise…only to end up sicker than I had been before (at which point I would go back to the bland, simple foods I had been eating, because they were they only foods that didn’t make me feel awful). Know what happened after eight years of not treating my autoimmune disease? They had to remove a foot of my bowel because the tissue was dead. [Emphasis and link in original.]

Of course, this didn’t stop at least one commenter from saying something that began with “While I completely sympathize with your situation…” There’s just no pleasing some people.