There are times when mere words are insufficient. There are times when reflecting on the genius of Bach, or Pasteur, or Sequoyah is not enough to help me hope that maybe, just maybe, the human race deserves to survive. This is one of those times. We will speak, if you will, of Helios Homeopathy and the colour indigo. It is an attractive colour, one of my favourites. It is soothing: it recalls the colour of the sea on a sunny day, the sky as night draws on, the rainbow after a deluge. It is cool: it looks good on suede shoes, all the way up to the occasional lunatic spiky hairstyle (it matches my eyes, OK?).
Despite Douglas Adams’ jokes about superintelligent shades of the colour blue, however, it has no healing powers whatsoever. Mystical or otherwise. This is the Bullshit Zone. This, if you like, is where we exceed the speed of pure, unadulterated WTF in a vacuum. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:
Helios Indigo Essences
Ok, let’s not beat about the bush: it’s homeopathy. As such Helios Homeopathy already score pretty high on the oh-jesus-wept-are-these-guys-serious scale, which goes from zero to any infinity you like in just about any direction you like, except normality. They’re selling sugar, lactose, water and alcohol as expensive remedies for various ailments, real or (preferably) imagined.
Now sit back, pour yourself a stiff drink: these people clearly have been divorced from reality so long that the kids are all grown up and they’re not paying it alimony any more. I don’t know how to score this one. Seriously. I had my WTFometer reset and recalibrated over the past few days after PoisonTwat nearly broke the needle by sending the whole thing off the scale, but the WTFometer isn’t powerful enough to measure the quantity of sheer wibbling Stupid pouring off this site. I mean, there’s enough mind-drool here to raise sea-level by at least a foot.
Look, let’s cut to the chase. They sell this:
Indigo essences are designed to particularly help children but also for the child in all of us. These essences, derived from crystals, are used to help us stay balanced and sane while letting go of our fears and inappropriate emotions.
The drops can be added to a glass of water and sipped, put in a spray bottle and misted around the room, sprinkled on a pillow at night or added to the bath.
Balanced and sane? I must show this bit to my boss the next time I dye my hair blue for the end-of-year party. As for “the child in all of us”: since I doubt they’re trying to imply that every single adult human on the planet is pregnant (actually, that sounds like a Russell T Davies scenario for Torchwood), then presumably Helios Homeopathy are appealing to the immature and those unable to face their responsibilities. Like people who make products containing 20% alcohol for consumption by small children.
I don’t even want to know about the crystals. Maybe they’re supposed to have a super-intelligent shade of the colour indigo refracted into them especially for the occasion. Anyway, you start to get an idea of the twinkly, Madeleine Basset-style thinking that we’re facing. Brace yourselves.
CHAMPION INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
Champion helps the child who is afraid of others and often gets picked on. Champion wants us to know that our real strength comes from inside ourselves and that we can contact that strength by breathing in and pretending that we are already strong. We have no real enemies, love is much more powerful than anything in the universe.
I may vomit (©Severus Snape). This NHS-style dropper bottle with a cheap label (the font looks like Comic Sans to me) will set you back £13.23, as will everything on this page if you’re deluded enough to order it. “Champion wants us to know…” Just a fucking minute, do these people think a bottle of insanely overpriced water is talking to them? Let’s all breathe out slowly and pretend we aren’t already surreptitiously dialling the emergency psychiatric services as the copywriter gibbers blithely on. Here are some of the other “essences”:
CHILL INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
Chill helps the child who feels very, very angry and can’t seem to find a way out of it. It’s normal to get angry now and again but sometimes you get stuck in anger and this is where Chill can help. Work with Chill and it will help you to talk about what is making you feel angry so that you can come to a resolution.
Is anyone else getting the feeling that they’re trying to flog homeopathic mind-control? I could maybe make a fortune selling homeopathic tinfoil hats. In any case, their essence isn’t sufficiently diluted, because just reading this is making me seriously angry. Plus ‘chill’ is the wrong parlance here. This is Happy Hippie Land. Hippies don’t chill, they cool it. They are laid back. They are also frequently stoned out of their tiny little minds, or rather: were. Hash muffins and ‘shroom omelettes are so two generations ago, man.
CONFIDENCE INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
Confidence helps the child who doesn’t believe in him or herself. Confidence wants us to know that we are special and extraordinary beings just the way we are and we don’t have to prove that to anyone!
More baby-talking water. Oh God, where are the giant mass extinction-causing meteorites when you really need them?
HAPPY INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
Happy is for children who feel sad a lot and don’t know why and also for children who try and lock their sadness in and hide it; perhaps because they are afraid that if they start crying they’ll never stop. Happy wants us to know it’s OK to cry. The tears will come to an end and then the sun can shine in your heart again.
Happy. Indigo. Essence. More baby talk and sentient water, but you and I know why this poor kid just wants to cry and never stop. Call the child abuse hotline. This is maybe diametrically opposed to the two stupid bitches I saw screaming in the face of a crying child this afternoon (and I mean in the face. Noses about 2″ away), but it’s just as cruel and abnormal.
INVISIBLE FRIEND INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
Invisible Friend is for the child who feels lonely and scared. Invisible Friend wants you to know that you are never alone. You are surrounded by beings you don’t always see, who love you very much and will always be there to talk to. They know who you are and will do everything they can to help you.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that would probably make a child feel about as safe and secure as Indiana Jones in a snake pit. This magic talking water tells me you are surrounded by ghosts! They watch your every move! They know all about you! We are all completely insane and love to make you feel really paranoid!
Good fucking grief, this whole setup is sick. Sicker than eating raw placenta or flogging bleach as a miracle remedy. This stinks of cultism. Helios Homeopathy doesn’t appear to be directly connected with any of the other big-buck bullshit brigade (UPDATE: I was wrong. They are. Of course they fucking are), but it does look as if these people worship Mother Earth and think going “Ommmmm” is a substitute for getting that lump looked at by a doctor. They probably dance nude in the starlight, trying to summon the fairies. Well OK, that might happen, but only if The Starlight was the name of a gay night club.
This is the full list of the complete and utter bollocks that these idiots promote, as featured on their site:
- Acupuncture
- Boulderstone Technique
- Counselling
- Developmental Integration
- Food Intolerance Testing
- Herbal Medicine
- Homoeopathy
- Hopi Ear Candles
- Hypnotherapy
- Inner Journeys
- Jungian Psychotherapy
- Kinesiology
- Massage
- Naturopathy
- Nutritional Therapy
- Reflexology
- Reiki
- Shiatsu
- Theta Healing
Out of all that, only ‘massage’ is anything like approaching sane, even if I certainly wouldn’t risk a massage from this lot, given their other activities. The Boulderstone technique isn’t chucking rocks at people until they get better, by the way: it’s one of those laying-on-of-hands setups.
Helios Homeopathy: delusional nutjobbery, barely concealed control-freakery, dancing with the fairies and imagining all will be well if only we wish hard enough. I found a WordPress site which presents the phenomenon pretty well, with all the wide-eyed uncritical acceptation we’ve come to know and weep over: Mediumsworld: Indigo And Crystal Children
One last one:
THE WORKS INDIGO ESSENCE 15ML
This essence will help you to remember the point of it all, it will help you carry on with your life…
Well, yes, The Works can do that. But lay off the essence, get the full Queen album; it’s one of their best. It’ll also be a damn sight cheaper and you’re less likely to end up at the funny farm doing Freddie Mercury imitations than talking to a 15ml bottle of water from Helios Homeopathy. Or anyone else, for that matter.
More reading:
And thanks to @lizditz for the encouragement.
Skepticism > cynicism, although your post was hilarious.
Don’t be so quick do dismiss the unconventional – some of the practices in your list of “utter bollocks” have been used successfully for years and are backed by solid scientific evidence. For instance, if you have ever taken an aspirin, you’ve already utilized the wonder-workings of genuine herbal remedies.
Of course, there are a lot of modern pseudo-therapies that come from a Western society full of disillusioned individuals that are desperately looking for something “fantastic” in their lives to put faith into. *cough* Reiki, *cough* Shamanism.
This being said, while you can often distinguish a placebo from a genuine treatment in alternative medicine, they both have similar effects: measurable improvement in the patient’s health.
Now here’s food for thought: Let’s pretend a patient’s faith in “Happy Indigo Essence” (which is really just a vial of grape juice) results in a placebo that cures them from depression, is it unethical? Helios Indigo Essence probably just saved them from popping neuro-raping anti-depressants for a year. I change the opinion on the matter often, but I think that if there’s a market of “companies” that inadvertently trigger the healing effects of a placebo, then hell, let them be.
Your thoughts?
My thoughts? Briefly put, I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word “placebo”, which is “a harmless substance given as if it were medicine, to humour a patient or as a dummy pill etc. in a controlled experiment” (says my trusty Oxford dictionary). A placebo cannot cure anything, by definition.
Aspirin does indeed originate from herbal remedies, as much of our medical pharmacopia does. The difference between 500g of aspirin and an infusion of willow bark is that the aspirin has been carefully dosed and comes with a useful piece of paper telling you when you can take it, how much you can take, and when you should avoid it like the plague.
As for Helios and their Indigo Babytalk: what shocked me deeply about the whole affair, as I perhaps failed to make 100% clear, is that the vision of children and their emotions is highly suspect. It smacks of the abusive: dehumanising children, nullifying their emotions. Shut Up And Be Happy is not a responsible parenting attitude. It is a repressive attitude. You cannot cure a bullied child of others’ aggression by giving it a drop of Essence up the nose, or whatever. If a child is persistently angry and aggressive, or always crying and withdrawn, then giving them sugar pills is unethical. They need psychological help, which may or may not include drugs, and possibly even removal from the milieu which is causing the distress.
As for antidepressive treatments being “neuro-raping”, well…. For a start, that’s not a word. If you mean they destroy neurons, that is nonsense. If you mean they change the personality or harm creativity, I can reassure you that also is nonsense. If you mean they zombify, then the wrong drug was given, at the wrong dosage. That would not be allowed to continue for a year by any competent medic.
Aw, hell, I’ll always lose the war of semantics. I suppose I should re-define incorrect terms: by placebo, I mean a substance or other intervention that encourages the brain’s function of improving physical health.
I don’t know why I said “neuro-raping,” it was ignorant, but I guess it’s because I’m personally afraid of something that will significantly alter the levels of neurotransmitters in my body (this is a personal opinion – please don’t attack this). As for this “nonsense” business about antidepressants, there are many well-documented cases of antidepressants causing side effects such as sexual dysfunction (especially in many SSRI’s) and emotional blunting. Not to mention the physiological side effects often experienced at the beginning of taking the medication like nausea, skin rash, and diarrhea. Sure, I’m certain medical professionals can eventually find a suitable treatment to which a patient doesn’t develop adverse side effects, but this process CAN be lengthy and traumatic.
I completely understand and agree with your concerns about this Helios stuff. A parent who completely neglects proven and effective treatments suitable for their child’s personality disorder and instead gives them the essences is a criminal. But many alternative medications are and should be used in synergy with other forms of treatment, especially when the disorder is severe. Consider: a mother, who is deeply concerned about their son’s biologically-inherited childhood depression, buys the Happy Essence and honestly believes that it will help them. The child is already seeing a therapist for their depression and the treatments prescribed are starting to have positive results. With good intentions, the parent gives her son the Happy Essence, explaining its intended effects, and in the process shows him that he’s deeply cared for. The son, after taking the essence for several days, sees leaping progress in the treatment of his depression while still continuing to see the therapist. We can be cynical and suggest that the Happy Essence is bullshit and played absolutely no role in the child’s psychological improvement. Or we can consider that the child’s pleasure with the prospect of feeling “happier” from the essence and his mother’s nurturing affection triggered a psycho-physiological response that treated their depression. In this case, is it unethical?
*Please note: I think your interpretation of the Helios essences is not what they intended. The Happy Essence doesn’t suggest shutting up/repressing emotions, but rather recognizing it is OK to be sad (“it’s OK to cry”) and things will get better. If a parent shoves the essence up their child’s nose and tells them to shut up and be happy, that’s a fault of bad parenting and is not an encouraged use of the product when looking at its description. But whatever, moving on.*
I think a lot of treatments like these elicit positive changes in people’s lives because they represent taking steps towards treating whatever ails them which is empowering. Even antidepressants are theorized to be so effective because the act of taking pills to fight their disorder generates a placebo effect – check out the studies done in 1998. Furthermore, studies where placebos were used in place of actual antidepressant medication showed that sugar pills did as well, or sometimes even better, than the medication itself.
If some people are (I’ll use the word) simple enough to use a sketchy alternative form of medicine which ends up being their miracle sugar pill (like homeopathy – no pun intended with the sugar pill part, lol) and get positive results, then all the better for not having to invest in some other more taxing form of therapy. But not everyone can be so easily convinced about the healing potential of things like Helios essences, and even if they are, the body works in ways entirely unique to the individual and antidepressants might absolutely be the right treatment for their problem.
Where was I going with all this? Oh yes, the top of my previous post. Skepticism > cynicism. Tearing apart honest practices that only intend to help an individual and may even do so by reproducing a phenomenon like the placebo effect, in my opinion, is a use of intellect that could be used to fry bigger fish. Note that when I say “honest” practices, I do indeed have problems with greedy practitioners who generate themselves lots of revenue with a product that they know is a load of crap (and Helios may be one of those companies – it’s hard to tell, so good for you for expressing your opinion).
All this being said, there are some alternative medicines that, as I previously mentioned, have been used successfully for years and are backed by solid scientific evidence. I’m not going to go there, though, it’s something for you to objectively research yourself if you’re interested.
P.S: A trained and experienced herbalist would be able to give you proper instructions on the usage of a willow bark infusion as well as many other herbal remedies 😉
You say you find it hard to tell if Helios is ‘one of those companies’?
They sell ‘essences’ derived from ‘crystals’. What do you think?
If you think that’s cynical, and that Helios has *any* credibility whatsoever, then I have a bridge for sale.