Opioids (Natural)

Aajonus repeatedly identified iceberg lettuce, which he called head lettuce, as the only food on the planet besides opium itself that contains opiates. He described these opiates as natural endorphin stimulators. The practical application was direct: if a person is feeling a little down and under the weather, eating iceberg lettuce will help pick them up. He also noted that iceberg lettuce is the only variety of lettuce he personally could eat, stating he cannot eat the other kinds.

He described a specific clinical context in which iceberg lettuce opiates are useful. When aluminum from vaccines or environmental exposure is interfering with brain activity, the opiates in head lettuce will correct that interference. The aluminum disrupts normal neurological function, and the naturally occurring opiates in the lettuce work to restore it. His phrasing was that "those opiates will make it right," and he recommended growing head lettuce as a practical measure.

He was also explicit that the conventional nutritional establishment dismisses iceberg lettuce as having no value, which he regarded as an example of nutritional misinformation. From his framework, the very substance that conventional nutrition declares worthless is, in fact, uniquely medicinal among foods because of its opiate content.

Aajonus described morphine as a direct obstacle to the primal dietary approach with terminal or severely ill patients. In his clinical experience, patients on morphine or other pain medications typically lose their appetite entirely, which means they cannot eat the raw foods required for healing. He stated plainly that he would "usually lose them because they're on morphine or something and it destroys their appetite and they can't eat."

He recounted one specific case involving a patient who had undergone extreme surgical reconstruction, including having the esophagus altered and the stomach relocated to the shoulder area. This person required enormous amounts of morphine just to tolerate the pain. The conflict was direct: as long as the patient had the morphine, he would not eat, and without eating he could not use the primal diet. Without the diet, healing was not possible. Without morphine, the pain was described as excruciating, particularly when the patient moved his arm in certain directions. The patient died after approximately a year and two months on the diet, but Aajonus noted that this period still gave the man a meaningful stretch of time with his wife and children, which would not have been possible otherwise.

In another case involving advanced cancer, a patient given fecal matter as a therapeutic protocol retained appetite, which Aajonus identified as remarkable specifically because morphine-dependent patients typically do not have that response. The fact that this patient could still eat after the fecal matter protocol was treated as a significant clinical sign.

Aajonus placed heroin in a specific category when explaining how different substances disrupt hormonal regulation. Most drugs, stimulants, and pharmaceutical supplements cause the body to produce elevated levels of adrenaline, testosterone, and other hormones. The body does this, in his explanation, because hormones are approximately 60 percent fat, 5 percent carbohydrates, and 35 percent protein, and fat is what the body uses to bind and harness toxins. So when a toxic substance enters the body, the system produces more hormones as a fat-delivery mechanism to deal with the poison. People then feel higher energy and mistake this for health.

Heroin was distinguished from this pattern. Rather than triggering the eightfold adrenaline dump associated with cocaine and stimulants, heroin keeps adrenaline at the same level while lowering hormonal levels overall. Aajonus did not present this as a therapeutic advantage but as a different mode of disruption, one that depresses the hormonal system rather than over-stimulating it.

Aajonus linked the violence associated with pharmaceutical psychotropic drug withdrawal extensively throughout his discussions, and while his most detailed examples focused on psychotropic drugs rather than opioids specifically, he described a general mechanism in which pharmaceutical drug withdrawal produces extreme behavioral changes in both humans and laboratory animals. He described rats, mice, and even frogs, which are normally gentle animals that do not fight, becoming homicidal on withdrawal from these drugs. Laboratory animals would kill every other animal in the cage, rip each other's throats out, and continue fighting until death.

He made the specific claim that a child in his experience was reacting to pharmaceutical exposure as if withdrawing from heroin, describing the behavioral and physiological presentation as indistinguishable from heroin withdrawal. He stated that "nobody goes into it," meaning the medical profession does not investigate or acknowledge this connection. He attributed this silence to the pharmaceutical industry's control over medical education and the financial interests of senators and congresspeople whose primary stockholdings are in pharmaceutical companies.

Aajonus described a period in his own life when he used psychoactive substances, including magic mushrooms and marijuana chewed very slowly, specifically to manage excruciating back pain rather than going on pharmaceutical medication. He described being still partially paralyzed and in constant severe pain, and choosing these substances as an alternative to conventional pain management. He stated he was "particularly feeling good about hallucinating" and handled the pain that way without having to go on pharmaceutical drugs.

He also described an earlier period in his life when he was consuming Benzedrine obtained from truck drivers, smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes per day, and drinking approximately a fifth of gin each night, because he had chronic fatigue and could not function without stimulants. He described being unable to eat, breathe, or move without drugs during that period. This was framed not as an endorsement but as biographical context for understanding how severely compromised his body was before the primal diet.

The clearest structural principle across all of Aajonus's statements on opioids is the opposition between food-based, naturally occurring opiates, which the body can use without disrupting its normal function, and pharmaceutical opioids, which suppress appetite, damage the system, and block the healing processes that the primal diet is intended to support. Iceberg lettuce opiates are presented as a gentle, useful tool for mild mood depression and aluminum-related brain interference. Pharmaceutical morphine is presented as a substance that, while it manages unbearable pain, makes healing impossible by destroying the desire and capacity to eat.

He did not frame pharmaceutical opioids as categorically without any purpose in extreme situations. In the case of the patient whose stomach had been relocated surgically, the pain was acknowledged as genuinely excruciating, and Aajonus did not condemn the use of morphine as irrational under those circumstances. The problem was structural: the morphine and the diet were mutually incompatible, and without the diet there was no path forward in his framework.

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