How I Lost My Partner To A Parasite
The scariest monsters are the ones that are real
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“I have given only the first rough outlines of a province of a great terra incognita, which lies unexplored before us, and the exploration of which promises a return such as we can at present scarcely appreciate."
-Johann Steenstrup, Danish zoologist, on the topic of parasites, circa 1845.
The Shadow King
We were watching an episode of Season 1 of the sci-fi series Legion when my experience all came together and I had an “aha” moment.
“This monster isn't David. It's a parasite of some kind. You see, another consciousness inside him,” says Loudermilk.
“What does that mean?” Melanie asks.
“This thing burrowed into David's brain ... it has been there, feeding off him ever since,” says Loudermilk.
Imagine watching someone you adore slowly die. Except they’re still alive, walking around, and operating. I reckon this would be akin to losing them to some kind of cult. Except intervention and deprogramming could revert them back into the person you knew, possibly. And while it is possible to reverse a parasite invasion, he -- whatever “he” it is that my ex-boyfriend James turned into --eventually didn’t want to.
Some lose a lover to a younger woman or an irreversible illness. I lost my partner to a parasite named Edwin. And my now-ex was aware of the heist.
I reckon this is where we may part ways. I get it, a parasitic takeover is just too much to process and accept. It sounds crazy. I often don’t believe it myself, which is when I was thankful for the brilliance of cognitive dissonance.
But the scariest monsters remain those that actually exist.
Contrary to what you might believe, parasitic creatures are not only found in Third World countries. Hardly. These unexpected microscopic stowaways are far more common than we realize. In fact, these “highly adapted creatures are at the heart of the story of life,” writes author Carl Zimmer in his book Parasite Rex, Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures. “[They’re] clearly designed to live their entire lives inside other animals.”
It is estimated that nearly all animals are host to at least one parasite in their lifetimes. In the United States alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified five parasitic infections that affect more than 60 million humans. So perhaps my story is not so unusual after all.
Parasites are so abundant that in some environments, they collectively outweigh the total biomass of that ecosystem’s top predators. Some parasites may cause relatively few negative effects for their hosts, but there are plenty of parasites that are not such low-key tenants.
Parasites can burrow in your brain and change you forever.
Confused? Let me use pop culture to help illustrate. In Season 1 of the FX television series Legion, the main character, David, is possessed by a mutant “devil with yellow eyes;” the Shadow King; a parasite -- that lives inside him and feeds off of him and gets stronger over time. This malevolent creature infuses itself in David’s very psyche, living there so long it becomes part of the mental wallpaper. When presented with the opportunity to rid himself of the Shadow King, David questions whether he even wants to get rid of the Shadow King at all. Given they have been together so long, David wonders who and what he is without the parasite.
It was sort of like that.
His lover Syd, however, is more concerned with obliterating the parasite and getting David back.
And I was, too.
Yet unlike in Legion, I didn’t have the privilege of a team of mutant Marvel super agents to come to my aid. Nor did I have access to a metal halo of a device to place around James’ noggin, temporarily isolating the parasite from his mind while I hacked for a more permanent solution.
Crazy Cat Ladies And Small Blobs With Big Sway
Dive into the wild and weird world of parasites and you’ll undoubtedly come across Toxoplasma gondii, arguably the most infamous and studied neurological parasite. It’s a tiny protozoa with massive sway. As it crawls its way to the brain, it can radically alter the behavior of its varied hosts.
This exemplary tale of survival and savviness begins with T. gondi, aka Toxo, setting up camp in a rat.
“Once they’re safe and warm in the guts of their temporary hosts, the oocytes morph into tachyzoites, unassuming little blobs that can really do some damage,” writes Ben Thomas in a piece titled Meet the Parasites That Control Human Brains in Discover Magazine. “Those tachyzoites migrate into their hosts’ muscles, eyes and brains, where they can remain hidden for decades without doing much of anything.”
Slowly, infected rats actually become sexually aroused by the smell of an entirely different species … the cat family (Felidae). Rats then engage in fatal feline attraction; they actually commit a form of harakiri by practically sacrificing themselves to cats where they inevitability meet a horrible death. But not before they release the tachyzoites into the next host, who then poop them out. Infected cats excrete billions of infectious Toxoplasma oocysts into the environment.
From there, they can jump to the ultimate host: humans. Imagine Matilda constantly scooping out her felines’ feces from the litter box. And Voila! You may have yourself a Crazy Cat Lady (or man) in the making.
I remember rambling about T. gondi to a colleague at an art exhibit in Santa Monica whereupon he cut me off to tell me that his mom had actually passed Toxo on to him while in the womb before it burrowed its way into his eyes. Blimey! What were the chances? Doctors had to burn the parasites from his cornea. Toxo not only almost robbed him of his eyesight but prompted him to dedicate his life to three-dimensional interactive photography.
Rat. Cat. Human. Brilliant.
There you have it, a small bug with influence over host a bazillion times its size.
Parasites break the rules. And this is when the real fun begins.
Some researchers estimate that as much as 30 percent of the people on earth — more than 2 billion of us — are carrying little T. gondii tachyzoites around in our brains right now. Most of us have no idea because the parasite often causes no symptoms at all. Until the day it strikes, that is.
T. gondii has been implicated as a contributing factor to chronic psychological disorders. Studies have linked Toxo infections to Parkinson’s, cryptogenic epilepsy, migraines, and schizophrenia.
One paper, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, argued that in areas with high T. gondii infection rates, these tiny parasites could cumulatively alter the behavioral patterns of entire cultures. While latent toxoplasmosis is usually benign, the parasite's subtle effect on individual personality appears to alter the aggregate personality at the population level.
Goat Balls And Voodoo Rituals
It all started circa June 2013. We were living in the Hollywood Dell in a big 1920s house when James got a gig in Haiti. He would become one of the first white men to journey to a sacred mountain in Haiti’s interior to honor Bondyè, the Creator God. His mission was to film a voodoo ritual, alongside Vodouisants, high priests (houngans), and priestesses (mambos) deep down inside a remote Haitian cave. The event would go down something like this: the servants of the spirits lucky enough to get possessed would sacrifice a goat and then eat its testicles. You know, the yooj.
While the investigative journalist in me was happy to see him go, I’ve never been able to bring myself to see the footage.
James shot the ceremony while standing in blood, feces, disease, mud, and spirits. Within five days of his return, he lost 10 pounds. It was coming out of both ends and of course, it didn’t take long for me to assess he had parasites. I urged him to get his stool sampled, which he did. Western Medicine identified three and my naturopath’s lab identified four. (I unfortunately never saw the tests myself to determine what type of parasites were involved. And now all these years later, it’s impossible for me to even ask for them.)
At that time, James and I were not the health connoisseurs we are today. We didn’t know about the antibiotic resistance epidemic. And James, who had just given up cologne per my counsel, was still steeped in Western medicine. He’d taken Cipro while in Haiti for food poisoning (a treatment that now seems highly absurd and irresponsible given the benefits of silver), and another dose upon returning. He was considering a third round of antibiotics until my naturopath advised him against it lest he face a “total immunological breakdown.”
“The bugs inside you will be able to learn, adapt, and mutate. I recommend you fight this the natural way,” she warned.
Instead, I gave him a natural anti-pathogen formula called Scram, which momentarily kept things stable until he went through several bottles. From here on -- during what I describe as the first phase of the parasites’ evolution -- James started getting ill about once every month. He’d undoubtedly get a fever, diarrhea, and a tummy ache, spending a few days curled up incapacitated in bed.
“To survive,” a parasite must usurp the resources of another organism to grow and reproduce according to a piece titled Rewiring the Brain: Insanity by Parasite. Many parasites accomplish this task by partially debilitating their host while still keeping it healthy enough to continue providing shelter and nourishment.
I noticed that the symptoms were activated around the full moon, which is when the freeloaders, who by the way absorb our nutrients and poop out dangerous toxic waste -- swell with water and also have sex parties in our bodies.
“Parasitic infections can disable normal mental function by depleting the host of essential nutrients, interfering with enzyme and neuroimmune function, and releasing massive amounts of waste products, enteric poisons, and toxins, which disable brain metabolism,” describes Dr. James Howenstine, M.D., board-certified specialist in internal medicine.
Mature tapeworms for instance can lay a million eggs a day, and roundworms, which afflict 25 percent of the world's population, can lay 200,000 eggs daily.
There was one night I recall James had a dream. It was fairly nondescript; he was at a beach party with some braless women in South America when something strange occurred. Something hacked into the vision; he noticed a figure loitering a few hundred feet away in the periphery of his vision. He slowly approached, yet when the figure noticed James noticing him, he froze to the edge of the periphery again. This dream repeated and on the third night, James got close enough to identify the figure; he looked like Don Fino Sandeman, the caped man from the sherry bottle!
Enter Edwin.
Stool Samples And Mania In Cannes
Oh-oo-oor. Oh-oo-oor. Oh-oo-oor. Oh-oo-oor.
I awoke at 7 a.m. to pigeons making a nest on our roof along with a hell of a lot of noise, and James hovering over me with a look of distress. Since we were both digital nomads, we were now momentarily living in his friend’s penthouse in Cote D'azur.
He explained how lucid nightmares kept him up all night. Apparently, a big jabba-the-hutt-like female creature had been sitting on me while I slept. Oh my! What could be causing his hallucinations, I wondered. I immediately thought of the parasites.
Around this period in late 2014 -- phase two of the parasite’s evolution -- James’ sleep was often compromised and in fact many days, he barely slept, contending that zzzzz’s were simply “a mindset,” needed by the weak-willed.
It happened to be a full moon and over the past several months, I’d recognized heightened agitation and mood swings. James was exhibiting manic behavior and had begun lashing out at me, lobbing insults. And while he was an alpha male with a strong personality, he had never turned on me. Until now.
After my morning double espresso, I asked Dr. Google whether parasites could cause hallucinations. Indeed they could produce personality changes and psychosis, including delusions and auditory hallucinations.
“Just like any other brain injury, any infectious agent that damages the brain has the potential to disrupt mood, behavior, and personality,” says Bill Sullivan, a Showalter Professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, where he studies infectious disease. Sullivan has published over 70 papers in scientific journals.
I also came across a parasite called Trypanosoma, which is actually found in Haiti, that alters the structure and function of its host's brain cell.This particular parasite seemed to have a penchant for the hypothalamus, the area of the brain that regulates our mood and sleep/wake cycles. The hosts start to feel and behave strangely. First they suffer headaches and have trouble sleeping, or sleep and wake at odd hours, due to the parasite’s alteration of the rhythm in which the sleep hormone melatonin gets released. Sounds a lot like what James was going through but I have no way of knowing if this is one of the many parasites James came into contact with. But it’s interesting to note.
Could the parasite be causing James’s personality to further morph? Indeed. Parasites can influence multiple facets of host phenotype, including physiology, behavior, and biochemistry.
“Because pathogens want to spread around to other hosts, one way they can do this is through behavioral manipulation,” added Sullivan.
Furthermore, a study in the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health concludes that the behavioral manipulation hypothesis predicts that parasites can change host behavior in a way that benefits the parasites and not the host. Or arguably their loved ones for that matter.
When observing animal behavior, we tend to assume that the animals are acting of their own accord. But what if there is another creature in charge of their actions? Though this sounds too sinister to be commonplace, the evidence exists.
Turns out parasites use their hosts in ways that are often rather disturbing.
“It’s impossible to cover all examples of parasites controlling the minds and bodies of other animals. Indeed, there may be many cases that have yet to be discovered,” according to a piece titled Zombie Cognition: Parasites and Mind Control.
Besides Toxo, there are parasitic worms that turn crickets into “suicidal maniacs,” making them jump into the water where the worms need to go to breed. They also manipulate the crickets to “shut the hell up” with their chirping. Isn’t that arguably a cricket’s raison d’etre, a part of their seeming spirit?
And then there’s the fungus that zombifies ants and wasps that enslave cockroaches -- six times their size-- by injecting them with mind-controlling venom to induce temporary full-blown zombification.
There are thousands of other parasites we know very little about.
If these parasites can screw with other species’ brains, is it that strange to believe that a microscopic puppeteer was beginning to pull the proverbial strings of the man I loved?
It was during this phase in France that James announced the parasite had a name. He claimed “Edwin” didn’t like to be called a “parasite.” The classic term, he said, didn't explain its nature.
“Most people who hear the word, visualize a worm that hasn’t shaved for weeks, with tiny antennas, living in a cabin in your brain or colon, chewing your guts out. But nobody really knows who “he” is, or that he sometimes takes more than the shotgun seat” James who is a brilliant mind and writer, wrote about Edwin in a piece I edited, which I deem sheer brilliance.
Unlike most hosts, James was cognizant of the parasite’s presence from the start. That’s the irony that as health-oriented journalists we freely discussed with fascination the possibilities of Edwin.
But as Edwin ‘grew and mutated’, it became clear that he didn’t like me. I threatened his existence. It was as though I stood in the way of him energetically, siphoning the energy to his heart.
Interestingly, while the uncouthness toward me excelled, the physical symptoms tapered. Under this parasite-altered regime, his temper toward me felt paper thin.
Who is this? Is this James Or Edwin? I found myself asking. I want to talk to James. Sometimes I got a reply. Other times the silence served as an even louder response.
Sure, a psychologist, or you the reader, can simply chalk my tale to lunacy or a shared delusion, his behavior as “bipolar” or asshole-ish. Take for instance in Legion -- David is misdiagnosed with a mental health issue when superpowers and parasites are at play.
I knew there was something else involved.
“The brain is a ‘privileged site’ for many parasites,” states Joanne Webster, a parasitology researcher at Imperial College, London. “And that really challenges the concept of free will — after all, is it us or our parasites who ‘decide’ our behavior?”
‘If the mind is a machine, then anything can control it – anything, that is, that understands the code and has access to the machinery,” was a quote I found in a U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health study.
That week in France, I found a lab and urged James to poop in a cup. And while he hesitantly did, there was seemingly less and less interest to fend off Edwin. And so the cup of “merde” sat in the fridge for days before I eventually threw it away.
Science Friction and Lost Love
Ninety percent of our cellular count (100 trillion) is other than human DNA. That’s right, you are more bacteria than you are you, making us all minorities in our own bodies. Plus, consider that the bacteria in our guts dictate brain cognition, mood, and health.
We believe we are “one” but who are we at all?
Who was I to gauge James’ parasite-altered reality when we are all chemical?
Meanwhile, I also realized that studies on parasite vs person are scant. “Research into the potential neurological consequences of brain infection in humans is ongoing, although it is very challenging,” adds Sullivan.
Gauging a parasite’s ability to erode a heart connection, well that data was even more untenable. “There is no evidence either way, but it’s unlikely,” states John Hawdon, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Edwin et al, were influencing James, but the physiological and psychological changes were imperceptible to most. But not me.
I’ve known James for 13 years. Strangers often confused him for Jason Statham. We first met in 2004 on Craigslist. Not in the personals; he was looking for a researcher and writer, and out of 250 applicants he hired to develop a handful of documentary ideas. I even tracked Julian Assange for him once in Iceland before WikiLeaks became a global sensation and Assange was sent to seemingly live the remaining of his days at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
For six years, up until 2010, our relationship remained strictly professional, until we unexpectedly “fell in love” or simply put, our bacteria wanted to do the samba.
The first time he came to my house, to pick me up for a date, I gave him a tour before eventually escorting him to my extensive library. I handed him a book titled Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment. It was an odd book to possess, but James also owned the same title. We had, in our own respective rights as journalists, shared many interests, on odd subject topics other than mental illness, including euthanasia, cult leaders, creationism, death, the history of vibrators, and familial suicides.
As a teen, James, who was raised in Finland, had worked on a deer farm in Ireland; he told me I reminded him of a delicate innocent fawn. And then soon after, he started calling me ‘Bambie,’ James used to tell me that if we were ever separated, he’d be able to pick up my scent in a crowd.
In a folder titled Ocean Blue, I found this email he wrote to me during a business trip. :
Dear Bambie,
A coyote howled in my heart,
A full moon filled me, bright,
drowning all other creatures of the night, when you just sat there, to my right.
You are my queen baby, I love you! Don't worry about anything. And clear your head before you hit the sack. I desperately want to be in your arms and kiss the living daylights out of you.
Love you, my partner in crime and everything else!
James and I shared so much life. I eventually regarded him as my partner and family. At 37, he was the first man I’d ever lived with. During year one, we dreamt up a co-venture in the Dominican Republic, and soon after started an online health and wellness business.
Shortly after our tropical trip, he dropped me an email:
You on my chest, white sheets, hot bamboo, ice cubes, coral sand, sea salt lips, coconut oil, sun chills, dusk light, jacques cousteau, blowfish alive and well, freshly planted earth, quiet chicken roaming, mango and citrus trees, standby machete, revolver and canister target, skimpy bikinis, erect breasts, nape of neck buzzing, peach, opening, moist, swell, lick, drink, swallow, embrace, fuse, melt, liquefy - love. sleep. together.
“I ONLY need: you, good food a good bed, books, and an internet connection,” James told me in the many many emails we shared.
We were both writers; we didn’t need to verbally speak, our mental connection was electric.
“Me too,” I responded.
When we were together, we’d work alongside -- oftentimes in silence. I was alone but with. And then we would reconvene and cook dinner. Every night, we fell asleep curled up in each other’s arms. We had an unspoken routine. I’d fall asleep curled into him, with my head at his shoulder level. Then I’d eventually turn around and he’d spoon me half asleep before we drifted.
Over the course of several years, we built our startup HoneyColony into a million-dollar company. The goal was to run it from anywhere we wanted. And we did so from places including Costa Rica, France, Greece, Italy, Miami, Montreal and Puerto Rico.
He had joined me on my pursuit to hack health and so we ate the same foods, and shared a similar worldview and sense of humor. Sometimes we’d literally party all night at home, just the two of us. We watched foreign films and he called my commentary the “Bee Track.” We even watched Legion together. But when they start wanting to kill the parasite, James lost interest.
We worked well together. Until we didn't.
Considering a parasite’s ability to penetrate and usurp, we are the bugs.
Superpowers Fully Integrated
“I’m you. I’m me. I’m everything you want to be,” the Devil With the Yellow Eyes tells David in Legion’s first season.
By now, the powerful parasite has infested David’s body and mind, allowing for a successful hijack. More Devil than David, he uses his powers to systematically wipe out an entire section of the shadowy governmental task force known as Division 3.
I surmise that the phases of integration vary in humans, compared to let’s say a cat or a cockroach. Since humans have considerably longer life-spans (and are larger), one could reasonably propose that humans “are more susceptible to developing “unselected” pathological behavioral changes simple as a byproduct of their extended durations of infections,” writes one study.
After four years of integrating with Edwin, James still possessed oodles of charm. Meanwhile his brain cognition function and physical capabilities only seemed to excel. Creatively, mentally, and physically, James was off the charts. He had evolved into a superbug of sorts.
Essentially, parasites evolve to out-maneuver their host. In response, the hosts evolve better defenses, and the resulting feedback loop is a veritable arms race known as co-evolution, according to Zombie Cognition: Parasites and Mind Control.
“Parasites can also have positive impacts on other species in the community. We now recognize that parasites influence species coexistence and extirpation by altering competition, predation, and herbivory, and that these effects can, in turn, influence ecosystem properties,”states an article titled Diverse effects of parasites in ecosystems: linking interdependent processes.
It may seem strange that parasites would protect an animal’s health. But think about it, causing its host to die quickly is not good for a parasite, especially when he reaches the ultimate frontier -- a human body. In terms of real estate territory, we -- humans -- are “a get out jail” card with automatic dibs to Boardwalk and Illinois Avenue.
I wondered if there was any evidence in the animal world of host-parasite interactions where the infected coped better and developed superpowers of sorts?
There was.
For instance, toxo-infected rats become braver, heedless to danger. A recent research indicates that the parasite may actually be a source of increased dopamine. Meanwhile, by modifying particular receptors, the ichneumon wasp enables spiders to weave an optimized cocoon web that is stronger with more durable support.
And a recent study shows that Artemia brine shrimp, infected with parasitic worms actually have boosted abilities to survive toxic arsenic-laced water. They also produce more antioxidants, according to a paper titled When Parasites Are Good for Health: Cestode Parasitism Increases Resistance to Arsenic in Brine Shrimps.
Maybe Edwin had carved out an entire section of James’ heart and set up base camp for ultimate dominion. Without someone tugging at his heartstrings, he was infallible.
Who would want to give that up?
It was during this final integration phase that Edwin went from being an invader to a “high priest who worked for a living.” Edwin was no longer an “enemy” but a “co-inhabitant.”
Edwin got the credit for “gently” nudging him to drop carbs, sugar, and alcohol, and who inadvertently led him to a ketogenic diet, metabolomics, and the amazing power of silver to bolster his immune system and stave off any possibility of physically getting sick.
The two had seemingly worked out a living situation that was a win-win.
Toward the end of the the first season, The Devil With Yellow Eyes stalks Syd, and this time she has nowhere to run. That’s how i felt. James would call me a victim, I don’t care. The parasitic nature of our now interaction had caused an entire section of my own heart to suffocate and die. James was collaborating with the critter. And I was on the outs.
“Stop talking to Edwin in a demeaning way, you have no idea what u r talking about,” was the response I got when I asked why he had stopped trying to kill the parasites.
Later, he also admitted that he’d “be lonely without them.”
“I’m the magic man,” David says cockily toward the end. I think James credited Edwin for his genius.
After that, I stopped plotting ways to annihilate Edwin with ayahuasca, exorcism, coffee enemas, strict detox, or love. Who was I to dictate what I thought given his ”free will?” Given that parasites usually reproduce more quickly than their hosts to maintain the upper hand, I figured Edwin was keeping a firm role as master.
While James and I continued to see each other whenever we were in the same country and still somehow worked together, he’d broken up with me long ago, stating he’d outlawed relationships.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in relationships. You’re having a relationship to the eggs you’re eating right now. We ‘relate’ to everything.”
“Blah blah blah. I'm not a fucking boyfriend or a life partner do I have to carve it on copper? Listen, you have lupus and autoimmune disease filters going on.”
This was the man who told me that we needed to hug every day and that I was his queen?
Perhaps you think Edwin was a coping mechanism and that James was a flaming narcissist who never really loved me at all. It certainly looked like that toward the end. But I disagree, given our history and our undeniable connection. While I could accept that he no longer wanted to be with me, the underlying aggression and venom was perplexing. I'll maintain that Edwin was rewriting James’ memories or at the very least his perception.
The love of my life is no longer tethered to a reality I reside in. Regardless of the true impact of this mental passenger named Edwin, I was no longer his Bambie, his partner in crime, or even a friend. Ironically, in the end, the full moon did fill James bright, but alas despite his email and my efforts, I was unable to ‘drown out all the other creatures of the night.’
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What a brilliant and evocative way to lay out this information. I've been collecting information on these critters, and this opus is going on the top of the heap. Thank you, Maryam!