Too Much Coffee Man! Even better than the cartoon squirrel. www.tmcm.com
Before
We here at Too Much Coffee Man talk a lot about coffee. We drink a lot of coffee. And now, well, with all the recent press that coffee enemas are getting, we thought we’d conduct a thorough investigation and report our findings, TMCM-style.
Far be it from us to conduct an investigation through secondhand information-gathering, though. In the name of authentic and accurate journalism, we reporters must therefore participate. Besides, it can do a person a world of good to put their money where their mouth is. Or in this case, to put their coffee where the sun don’t shine.
A cynical reader may be exclaiming, “Johnny Knoxville already did that on TV, and he did it dressed as Santa Claus!” To that reader, I can only say that Mr. Knoxville, whom I respect and admire, had a colonic with the assistance of professionals. He did it in the security and comfort of a soft Santa Claus suit that doubled as both a disguise and a distraction. All he had to do was lie on the bed, let the professionals do their jobs, and say funny stuff like “Ho ho holy shit!” Don’t get me wrong; I love Jackass, and I found the colonic skit creative, informative, and hilarious. The difference here is that the absence of professional guidance should make for a very different experience. For most, self-administration of medical treatment presents far greater psychological barriers than receiving medical treatment from a trained professional. In my case, it’s just me, my ass, and the bathroom floor.
As I write, the coffee I have brewed for my enema is cooling to room temperature. The imagery in my mind is that of Rockwellian Americana with a 21st-century, big-city twist: rather than apple pies cooling gently on the windowsill, it’s big plastic bowls of assward-bound coffee.
My anticipation is producing some mixed emotions. I feel like I’m betraying coffee. Coffee has been there for me for as long as I can remember, and I chose to repay these years of unfaltering servitude with a trip up my bunghole. It seems disrespectful for some reason. On the other hand, if coffee is as amazing as I would like to think it is, then it should be equally potent and useful in any orifice.
Obviously my imagination is working overtime, trying to foresee exactly what the experience will be like. I hope there’ll be a lot of gurgling in my colon while the coffee works its magic. I want to feel it cleaning me out all the way up to my ribcage. During “evacuation,” I want to feel indigestible chunks of school lunch from my early teens plummet to freedom in the awaiting toilet bowl. When it’s over, I want to be two inches taller and I want my pants to be way too big. I am not at all anxious about having to insert something into my anus. I’m mostly worried that the whole thing is going to be anticlimactic.
I have decided to use French Roast coffee (organic, of course) from Portland, Oregon’s own Javatopia. Their coffee tastes great going down, and I hope it is equally satisfying going up. I have always harbored an inexplicable and unjustified distrust for French people, and my decision to use beans roasted in their name is as much about political symbolism as it is about which roast will provide me with the most effective enema. I brewed the coffee using a coffee press (which many also attribute to the French—I smell a conspiracy) like I would any other morning. I must admit, the thought of caffeine going directly into my bloodstream via the soft thin walls of my colon has me a little bit concerned, so I did not grind the beans quite as finely as I normally would.
As for actual hardware, I purchased a large-volume enema kit for a mere $3.50 (plus shipping) from a leading online retailer whose name starts with a “d,” ends with “.com,” and has “rugstore” in the middle. The kit is manufactured by Fleet Pharmaceuticals Corporation, and it seems to be of sound construction. The Fleet package conspicuously lacks self-promotion. It seems like there should be a little gold star on the front of the box, reading “Winner of the ‘Best in Class: Large-Volume Enema Kit’ award from J.D. Powers” or “Up America’s Butt Since 1916.” The kit includes a 1,500-ml enema bag, attached vinyl hose with flow-stopping clamp, and moisture-proof absorbent pad, which I found pleasantly oxymoronic. I quickly deduced that the absorbent pad is for lying on during the enema, in case of spillage. The most impressive aspect of the whole kit is that the tip of the vinyl enema tube comes prelubricated. It comes with a penlike cap that encloses the lubricant and (I trust) keeps everything sterile.
My coffee has reached room temperature. Back in 20.
After
I read as many enema recipes and sets of instruction as I could get my hands on, and they all touched on mostly the same points. But a few key items were not mentioned by any of them. I’ll start my postenema report with a quick list of things I was not prepared for:
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I was nowhere near ready for how disturbing it was to lie naked on my bathroom floor. Nothing will snap your cleaning habits into focus like lying naked on any uncarpeted floor in your house.
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I gave no thought to what music was playing during the whole experience. During the preparation phase, I was listening to the latest TOOL record, Lateralus. It just so happens that Lateralus is more than 70 minutes long and continued to play well into the actual enema. It didn’t become weird until I was actually inserting the prelubricated tube into my anus. At that moment, the music came through loud and clear and I saw myself from above, lying on the floor funneling tepid brown fluid into my ass. I became a self-contained TOOL music video. I expected little faceless clay men to climb vibrating out of the bathtub with the intent of laying eggs in my eyes and peeling off all my skin. Damn you, overactive imagination!
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Once the flow of coffee has stopped, you remove the tip of the hose and retain the fluids for 15 minutes. There’s only one small problem: What the hell do you do with the tip of the hose?! Here I lie, naked, with bowels full of French Roast, holding a tube that has just been four inches deep. That’s not the kind of thing you set just anywhere. Luckily, I was able to reach some toilet paper and sufficiently wrap things up until they could be properly dealt with later.
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A retention enema calls for holding the liquid in your bowels for 15 minutes if possible, as previously stated. You’d be amazed how slowly time crawls by when you are holding a quart of coffee in your colon. All enema recipes should include the following instruction: “BRING SOMETHING TO READ. FIFTEEN MINUTES IS LONGER THAN YOU THINK.”
As far as I can tell, the enema went off without a hitch. The process of self-administration was fairly simple, but by no means brainless. There is a little black line on the vinyl tube that is intended to “indicate the generally accepted length of insertion.” This is very thoughtful, but I would like to challenge anyone who is up for it to lie on your back or on your side and try to look at your asshole (without mirrors or cameras, smart guy). Impossible, isn’t it? I got around this physical limitation by gripping the tube slightly behind the black line and inserting until I was almost touching my anus. The prelubricated tip was a much-appreciated creature comfort and actually made me feel spoiled. If my enema kit were a car, the prelubricated tip with protective cap would equate to heated seats or headlight wipers. The instructions on the side of the enema kit indicate that you should be very careful to avoid air in the tube, as this could cause cramping. This requires that you operate the tube-clamping mechanism as close to the end of the tube, or as close to your anus, as possible. It seems as though the whole system is designed to keep me from actually seeing any of it, but maybe that is for my benefit.
Once I became situated, I released the clamp and let the flow begin. I could see the fluid level in the bag decreasing, but I could not feel anything. I panicked for a second because I was certain that I had missed my ass and was pouring coffee all over the floor. But upon further examination, I confirmed that the coffee was indeed headed “up.” I continued to experience a lack of sensation from the coffee flow until the bag was almost empty. All of a sudden, I had the distinct feeling of being “full.” I followed the instructions that were in the majority of coffee enema recipes and calmly massaged everything into place.
I removed the tip (see above for further details) and settled in to retain. There was a good amount of gurgling, which made me happy, but it wasn’t much different from the kind of gurgling that occurs when you eat a large amount of exceedingly spicy Mexican food on an empty stomach. I did feel gurgling in the upper regions of my stomach, so I’m fairly confident that the coffee covered its expected distance. After occupying myself for 15 minutes with thoughts like “This building must be 100 years old. I wonder if anyone has ever died in my apartment?” and “What would I do if the landlord walked in right now? Would I admit to the nature of my present activities, or would I get up to show him the leaky kitchen faucet and pretend like nothing was going on? What if he stayed to fix the faucet? How long could I retain a quart of coffee? Surely I would have to kill him,” I decided to get up and evacuate. All the different instructions I had read said that the urge to evacuate would occur and that’s how you know it’s time. I never felt the urge, and my decision to evacuate was motivated almost entirely by sheer boredom. This leads me to believe that I did not use enough coffee. But in the long run, I would rather evacuate early and lose a little of the complete effect than retain too long and be injured or killed by French Roast.
Evacuation was not nearly the glorious and liberating passing onto another plane, both physically and spiritually, that I was hoping for. No chorus of angels sang for me. Picture the worst diarrhea you’ve ever had. Now multiply the mess times five and the stench times ten. Coffee-enema veterans always told me about the neat stuff that came out. As far as I could tell, all that came out of me was the coffee and some feces that had been on its way out anyway and simply hitched a ride with the coffee. There may have been other material, but I did not have the foresight to evacuate into a colander, and I was not about to go fishing in the bottomless, black toilet bowl upon which I was currently perched. Complete evacuation required a lot more straining and pushing than I had originally anticipated. I thought everything would fall out with little or no effort, but the French put up quite a fight. I should have expected as much. After 10 minutes of personal revolution, I hopped in the shower.
Since the enema, I have not experienced anything unusual. I was initially worried that there would be some delayed leakage, but so far, so good. I am honestly a bit disappointed that there weren’t more “fireworks” throughout the whole process. As with anything, expectations will ruin it for you every time. For my next coffee enema, I’m going to double the amount of coffee and increase the strength of the mixture.
Everything I’ve read indicates that to acquire noticeable results, you must make the coffee enema part of your holistic health regime. The process robs your body of iron, so daily administration is not recommended, but it takes more than one enema to fully clean the colon and bring the liver all the way back up to full operating potential. I’ve learned so much about the process during my maiden voyage that the next one is sure to be everything I’ve ever hoped for. Ahh, next time!