A hidden gluten intolerance changed everything about me

Some things I learned from a search for answers across three years and a dozen countries.

I discovered on Oct 17th that I was gluten intolerant. My big realization arrived at the Whole Foods on Market, sitting in the entrance area with a loaf of gluten-free in one hand and whole wheat in the other, munching on slices of plain bread while a local Warriors diehard ranted to me about KD:

“Now, what about a wheelchair? I guarantee you I’d trash Durant in a 1v1 if he’s stuck in a wheelchair,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied, more interested in what “hydrolyzed wheat protein” meant on the product label of one of my loaves.

The gluten-free went down fine. Two slices of whole-wheat made me ditch my new friend’s monologue, run to the bathroom and gave me brain fog so bad I couldn’t even finish a sentence. I cancelled everything for the next three days.

So that’s how I found out.

Since then, I’ve had to come to terms hundreds of times over with this stark disconnect between what I want and what my body demands. Anhedonia is a good term to describe this — a total and puzzling inability to feel pleasure, in this case enjoyment from the presence of others.

I’ve had to learn to approach my changing moods and negativity with grace and patience for myself. I’ve learned to accept that some relationships will slip away because I don’t have the energy to maintain them.

In my head I know that I wanted people, relationships, connections; but in my heart oftentimes I feel nothing (other than an impulse to ditch and go home).

Unfortunately this isn’t the type of symptom where you just rock up to a doctor and ask for some meds. In fact, this isn’t even something you can recognize as a symptom if it progresses slowly. It’s just an imperceptible waning over months in your ability to be the person you want to be — one that makes you blame yourself and question everything about who you are.

For the past three years, I’ve felt like something invisible and intangible, something “beyond” myself has been a major factor in my life choices — often by causing me unbearable negativity and forcing me away from something I loved. It left me exhausted, antisocial, anxious.

It manifested itself first while I was living in the 30-person co-op I adored so much, where even today I find many of my closest relationships. I felt a deeply conflicting pull between my love for the community and a desperate need to find space and solitude at all costs. So I chose to leave and isolate myself.

In this process of discovering introversion, I unblocked something that had been stuck inside me — a journey towards creation.

I started traveling and working on music after that, looking to recapture that clarity, but I found neither magical scenery nor wild experiences could unlock that visceral joy. Even worse, my energy continued to drop — to the point where I completely reset my daily habits and routine in pursuit of that fleeting “good day”.

I learned to recognize the deeply ingrained connections between my mind, body, and stream of consciousness. How anxiety and panic attacks weren’t driven by anything real happening in my life, but just by a set of physical feelings.

While spending two months in India alone, I practiced taking a step back and becoming a “silent watcher” — fully removed from the deluge of thoughts and emotions arising from the subconscious.

Eventually, this implacable feeling took away the one thing that I had clung most tightly to through this journey — my love for music. Listening to other people’s music became shallow, unenjoyable, an analytical process devoid of the emotional warmth and color it once brought me.

Though it was probably our best production yet, this third iteration of Solaura was the one that broke me. I spent the entire week riding a wild rollercoaster of solving logistical problems, briefly enjoying (or pretending to enjoy) the festival and friends, and having my body totally crash and drag me back into a bed for a power nap — over and over and over.

From Solaura I learned that I needed to take some months off and put my health first, so that someday I’d be able to give my energy unrestrained back into the world again. So it’s almost poetic that coming back to SF is how I realized the source of all of these symptoms — a safe place to heal after being unable to find the answer around the globe.

Through most of this journey I gave this mysterious, invisible force many different guises: maybe it was a search for meaning, maybe spiritual signs from a deeper source of inner truth — who knew?

The most crucial step for me was recognizing this mysterious, invisible force as something outside myself: something happening to me, not from within me.

It took me years to realize that it wasn’t myself that suddenly stopped enjoying the presence of others: it was a condition within me. That change in understanding was what put me on the path towards finding an answer.

Since going gluten-free, I’ve been in the process of rediscovering who I am without these ugly shackles dragging me down. Try as I might, I can’t get back to who I was before the symptoms started. Too much about me has changed.

But that’s what growth looks like.

Unfortunately, these past few months have had their own share of challenges. My sensitivity has skyrocketed since quitting gluten, and even trace amounts of gluten can trigger multi-day crashes, taking me on a continuous emotional roller-coaster.

When I’m off it for over a week though, it’s as if the whole world has opened up again. Music is stunning. Conversations are full of character. Being healthy is an exquisite and simple beauty.

Two weeks after the big discovery, I threw on some headphones for a short walk to Whole Foods to do some (ridiculously expensive) gluten-free shopping. It might be hackneyed, but every new block was a miracle. Little pockets of light bloomed on every street plant. Guitar plucks seemed to drip in space around me. Birds squabbled over breadcrumbs. Duboce Park was lit in green and gold.

When “Alaska” by Maggie Rogers came on, I pulled over to a stoop and broke down. The tears refused to stop. It took me three hours to get to Whole Foods.

Some books that guided me through a lot of growth during this process:

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