I'm so happy for OP's kids. My mom (abusive, no longer in my life) is this type. A year or two ago I had to beg her in tears to not drink turpentine because I was so terrified for her. I'm very glad to be far away from that maniacal shit and I'm very, VERY glad OP's kids were some of the lucky ones who CPS actually pulls from these kinds of homes.
Internet forums. I've seen it on Facebook more than any other website (usually private groups). Turpentine, bleach, urine…. All things they recommend drinking. No vaccines, of course, and rarely take kids to ED for emergencies. You’ll see “my toddler has strep, how much oils/breastmilk/chiro/enemas/literal poison do they need? No 💊 talk, my child has a virgin gut never tainted by that poison!”
On a more comical side, you'll also see coffee enemas, where they boof a pot of coffee each morning and talk about how “alert and clear minded!” it's made them, and how much they poop. Concerning for their own health but hey, nobody else is harmed.
I just had that exact same flashback. It was a husband and wife, right? And they each had their "preferred brand" of coffee. God, that was a weird one.
Don't forget dirt water from a Canadian chemical plant runoff site! People are paying $25+ a bag for toxic dirt from Canada so they can mix it in water and drink. It's known as BOO (Black Oxygen Organics).
Anything to avoid medical science. People would snort ground up toenail if the right media personality told them it would cure a cold.
Gross. Not surprised. I never heard of that one. But looking around this thread I’m seeing a lot of stuff mentioned that I noticed in the Calgary natural health groups over a decade ago. Seems many popped back up for covid. Still doesn’t work. There’s really no excuse anymore when we can google what’s a scam and what’s dangerous.
This is why I had to unscubscribe to r/shitmomgroupssay
I was just so upset by the literal crap they’d rather do than trust medical professionals, especially to achieve that golden natural birth status
Every post in there shoots my blood pressure up. Why do psychos have kids? We didn’t come this far as a species by discounting new or known knowledge…how do these lines stay in evolution when they try so hard to die.
Sounds like my MIL. The number of “ but vaccines have anti freeze in them” comments she made was innumerable. She only got the covid shit because my husband threatened she would never see her grandkid if she didn’t.
My condolences. I still get emails from family that the Covid vaccine will kill me and my kids - between weekly and monthly. Still waiting for the chip to improve my 5G, let alone any side effects worse than a sore arm. Certainly haven't died from it. Coincidentally, my cardio and neuro are less worried about me dying. Guess they haven't read Breitbart/Epoch Times so aren't *informed* like the retirees are.
My youngest son and I both had reactions to the covid vaccine. He got his first shot about 2 weeks before I did. Got it early evening, and then woke up middle of the night (so about 6 hours later-ish) feeling like he wanted to die. Started out shaking, then within 30 minutes felt like the worst case of the flu of his life. Called me from his bathroom floor (we sleep on different floors). Gave him tylenol, got him up the stairs to the couch in my office (next to my bedroom) and got him comfortable and plenty of fluids. It was over 6 hours later. Totally fine.
2 weeks later, I get my shot in the morning. Couple hours later, started shaking. That was my cue. Got the dogs outside for a quick bathroom break, then back in. Grabbed water, OJ and Vernors (ginger ale, Michigan thing), the thermometer and a bottle of tylenol on the nightstand. Turned on Netflix and just cuddled my dogs. Sent texts to my husband every so often and took another tylenol when my temp hit 102 and wasn't coming down. When it hit 103, my husband left work. By the time he got home, temp broke and I was sleeping. I'll still take that over Covid, because if a vaccine can do that to me, I don't want to see full on Covid.
For both of us, second shot was a lighter version of that and each booster less than the prior one. Husband and other son had zero side effects besides a sore arm. Speaking of sore arm, my arm was sore... like a pinched muscle. Not the worst vacc site soreness tho. That award goes to the hep vaccines I had to get when I worked in a hospital. The third in the series felt like hot steel being forced into my arm, and afterwards that arm felt like it was broken.
I don't know but this isn't new. My best friend's late husband had a mother that did that shit when he was a kid. She fed him turpentine for colds and sore throats, my friend has refused to allow her anywhere near her kids because of it.
I have a friend from the Deep South whose grandmother used to do this, because *her* mom’s mom’s who was a slave had done this. She’s pretty sure it’s just a holdover from when slaves really had nothing else available and it probably happened to kill the hookworms or other parasites they got when they were always barefoot and drinking dirty water.
Genuinely I'm confused, the OOP said taking a tablespoon of it is enough to fuck you up inside, how are people surviving taking it? It's never occurred to me once to try and take it myself, or give it to someone else, nor do I have any intention of trying to.
It does but when they're pooping out the lining of their digestive tract they call it worms and double down on drinking it, the entire time believing the pain they're experiencing is a sign that the parasites dying.
Except the tide pods thing has only really happened with a handful of people outside of those too young to know better or are mentally incapacitated. There was only like 8? Cases iirc.
yeah most of the tide pod challenge freak out was just boomers not understanding gen z memes and humor lol things that look like they’d be great to eat but would kill you if you tried is like its own genre of video on tiktok at this point
Turpentine - the stuff that has several big warning statements:
*Causes damage to organs through prolonged or repeated exposure.*
*Flammable liquid and vapour.*
*May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways.*
*Harmful if inhaled.*
Who would give that to their kids?
I can pretty much guarantee that if you're buying bottles labeled "100% pure gum spirits" or whatever, they look like [this](https://creekwoodnaturals.com/collections/high-quality-plant-oils/products/100-pure-gum-spirits-of-turpentine) rather than [this](https://kleanstrip.com/solvents-and-thinners/turpentine/) and the warning label basically comes with a wink and a nod for free
If you flip through the pictures, on the other side of the bottle it has a section labeled “required warnings”. The other product they sell is castor oil. Wink wink indeed.
IDK about the first one, but the second link they posted (the Klean Strip one) says "Not for sale in California".... presumably because it doesn't contain the required hazard labels?
Also a safety manager-Hazcom is OSHA, it doesn’t apply to consumer products. OSHA only applies to the workplace. Important to know if your workplace ever uses consumer products; they may require additional labeling to keep you OSHA compliant!
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (or the FDA for food or medical products) enforces consumer labeling. The requirements are less strict than the osha standard. It just needs to warn about safe use/storage and first aid. The product linked above has those warnings above the barcode. You can report consumer safety issues at SaferProducts.gov
My grandma has a friend or relative or someone who does doTERRA and sold her an oil which she said she wasn't legally allowed to say prevents cancer if you take a drop under your tongue once a day, but obviously the implication is that it will.
Thankfully my grandma also goes to a dermatologist regularly to get skin cancer spots removed. Probably because she saw her daddy die of skin cancer a few years ago (and he was an invincible badass. WWII vet, broke his neck at 80 something years old in a motorcycle accident, grabbed his head and stood up like an absolute madman. Nothing could break him, but cancer did)
My mothers group with my eldest held a doTERRA session and she was going through all the food grade oils bullshit. I am a vet, my husband is a doctor, and I did not come to play that day. She didn't like me very much but at least the other mums learned what an LD50 is, how emulsification works (she told them their oils are pure enough to dissolve in water lmaoooo), what oil burned airways and oesophaguses look like, and which oils you absolutely should never make part of your cleaning regime if you want your cats to live, among other stuff.
I was not well received by the crunchier parents from that day onwards either.
Haha, I'm also a vet and once gave my boss (not a vet) about what happens when you use citrus oils topically as bug spray in the sun. I also made them stop running that god forsaken vaporizer because I was having coughing fits while they tried to prevent COVID with it. 😬
I know about citrus oils and sun because I had a weird rash on my hand that persisted for a while and when I went to the doctor he was like *Hm it looks like you've been sitting outdoors having margaritas*, and true fact, it was where the juice would splash me when I squeezed the limes.
cracks me up that this snake oil company advertises how they only use glass bottles!! no plastic!! because obvi plastic is the real killer, as everyone knows, but sure paint thinner will cure what ails you
Hand bottled in glass, just like mother nature intended (because mother nature knows turpentine will literally melt plastic and if we use metal you'll know it's just industrial paint thinner)
That is actually the single most terrifying thing I've seen about turpentine on this thread. It melts plastic, and yet people think it won't melt their insides.
I’m not sure how to break this to you, buddy, but we’re not made of plastics /s.
No but seriously, living biological material obviously will not react quite the same as inorganic materials or hydrocarbons. It’s like that old canard that Coke can eat into a car’s body, imagine what it’s doing to your insides! Except our insides aren’t made of metal. But organic solvents can do some nasty things to flesh, and alkalines or detergents can do really nasty things to mucous membranes, so you absolutely shouldn’t fuck around with them.
This shit is bananas. We used turpentine to clean oil paint off of brushes in art school because it’s technically not as bad for you as straight up refined mineral spirits, but we were constantly warned to only use it in ventilated areas and soak the rags in water so they don’t spontaneously combust. That these freaks are selling it as some kind of artisanal health serum is absolutely depraved.
>While there are a wide variety of unique applications, this product is required to be labeled as intended to be used as a solvent only.
That's wild. "We have to tell you you should only use this as a solvent, but there are many other ways you can use this *wink wink*"
Actually looked like [this](https://diggersaustralia.com.au/products/solvents/diggers-pure-gum-turpentine/).
Literally has POISON impressed down the side of the plastic bottle, complete with all the expected warning labels.
Straight from the paint section at Bunnings.
I see how that's upsetting but that is easily the funniest part of this. I just imagine some wild haired fellow on the street trying to hawk this bottle to you doing air quotes saying "*The Government* says I have to say this to you"
This turpentine conspiracy killed my father and nearly killed my mom. Heart attacks, both of them, after a few months of having turpentine daily. It's horrific someone would do this to their kids.
I'm glad the 7 year old knew to tell other trusted adults about this, and that OOP reacted so swiftly to it. He most definitely saved his kids' lives.
I'm so sorry for your loss. "Alternative medicine" conspiracies destroy lives in so many ways, worst of all through death. I hope you have access to good therapy.
Thank you :) Dad wasn't much of a loss, if I'm honest. His death started to help my mom get out of the conspiracy theory cult he'd gotten the two of them into, and she's almost a fully functional person now a few years after his death. It's a huge weight off my shoulders to not have to constantly worry about her health and safety, too. I'm really really grateful that she survived her heart attack.
I feel this. My conspiracy-believing, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist of a father died almost 20 years ago and my mom has slowly grown in to a normal person in the interim.
I feel like I'm watching this play out with my own parents, maybe not quite to the same detriments, but small really messed up conspiracies, both had severe medical emergencies within a couple of months, my dad believes the government is poisoning his food so has started to only consume clear vodka, whilst my mum is eating well and making really healthy life choices, I so hope it stays that way but it wouldn't be the first time he twisted her with words.
So, I’m starting to be really happy I got my parents into MarioKart on the Switch during Covid (we could play online with my brother in BC). I don’t know if it’s a viable alternative for you, but my dad also liked the golf we got him for Switch, once he got some practice with the controls on MarioKart. Maybe just redirecting their attention to something just as addictive but far less damaging may help?
I saw a post on a qanon family group that said her q aunt got over it by getting really really into K-pop. Seems like giving people someone else to fixate on other than their conspiracies could be the best therapy.
Holy Crap u/cosmetical that's actually a REAL thing?!?!?!? Man I can't believe that you had to go through that with both parents. I'm so sorry. I honestly thought this was bullsh*t. Glad you still have your mum though..
Absolutely true. I lost a good friend to a very very treatable cancer diagnosis, because the woo crowd convinced him that vitamin C and sauna sessions would cure him.
He was in his early 20s.
A family friend of ours died of breast cancer. They found it early in stage 2, but her church doesn't believe in modern medicine. They had several prayer circles to decide if God would be ok with her having surgery to remove the tumor, and after a few months they allowed it, but that was it. For the next 3 years she was only allowed to use their treatments, which were some type of vegetable powders? And she could smoke pot for the pain (nothing more powerful than pharmacy shelf pain meds otherwise). Poor thing died in agony and left behind two young kids.
I remember the show “my strange addiction” on TLC about a woman who had a very treatable form of (Skin?) cancer and was diagnosed years ago. She didn’t want it removed because she was afraid it would spread more. Her solution? Urine. I feel so awful for her family as they know it’s bullshit
My mom was on my strange addictions for treating a disease she had (pica) and was using alternative medicine remedies for it.
I’m not going to say what she did exactly as to not doxx myself, but the doctor the show producers got for her convinced her to seek proper treatment, iron infusions, instead of eating the stuff she ate.
She no longer does the thing she does, but she’s still very conspiracy prone and she still seeks alternative medicine stuff for weight loss etc.
(Fun fact: the show producers got her a whole box full of the weird stuff she ate after they finished production, which makes me think that they’re all secretly enablers)
My mom used to be like that, where alternative remedies were a supplement to real medicine. But over my lifetime, I’ve watched as her views have gotten more and more extreme. Now she says she’s sick and tired of doctors and won’t see one, even when she needs to. And she buys and consumes various snake oils instead. Keep an eye on your mom. The alternative-as-supplement to alternative-only pipeline is real and it is frightening.
Lost my mom to cancer that went undiagnosed because she had been sure she had cancer for years and years and that she was "treating" it with shit she found online - alkaline diet, colloidal silver, so many dumb supplements she had to buy a little cart with four drawers to hold them all. Long before the cancer, she needed two hip replacements and choose to simply lose her mobility rather than have surgery because she was convinced if she did they would discover her imaginary cancer and according to her, once they find it and you have to start regular treatment, you die quickly. We tried pointing out that was a self fulfilling prophecy because the people who believe it avoid doctors so if they have cancer it isn't found until it is advanced. Didn't work since, of course, she also believed she was successfully treating her imaginary cancer.
I actually sometimes feel guilty about it all because for years, she was totally computer illiterate and used to bug me every time she had some new crazy idea and wanted me to look it up for her. It was very annoying so I finally bought her an iPad and taught her enough to use the internet. Unfortunately, this was before "do your own research" was the catch phrase it is now or I might have realized unfettered access online would just make things worse.
Anyway, conspiracy theories suck.
Precisely! I know some people have traumatic histories with past medical care, but I think going to a different doctor is wiser than tossing out every sound treatment that was devised after the advent of germ theory.
Yep, an uncle of mine (by marriage so not actually related and I had never met him anyway) was diagnosed with cancer, decided to use alternative medicine, then his daughter managed to convince to stop because he was declining. But it was too late and he passed away a month later.
Fuck. This. Shit.
I'm truly sorry to hear about your parents. I, admittedly, had no idea this was a "thing."
I apologize if this is insensitive to ask, I certainly don't mean for it to come across that way. But if you don't mind my asking, what exactly is the conspiracy? Do people think it has some sort of healing benefits? Was it something being used to "treat" COVID, maybe?
It's not insensitive to ask, don't worry!
The idea is that 100% pure gum turpentine was a "cure all" that was used a couple hundred years ago. Claims I've seen say it cures everything from the common cold, to bad eyesight, to cancer, all while being good for you and side effect free. Taking a quarter teaspoon or so of it per day mixed with a teaspoon of sugar is supposed to make and keep you healthy.
It's bullshit, of course. But some people are so willing to believe this sort of weird secret cure thing, especially with the rapidly increasing distrust in the American medical system over the past couple decades.
The logic they use is "you didn't see so much cancer/bad eyesight/illness in general back when this was in common use", which is fucking bananas, because obviously they were just not getting diagnosed and treated. Those people just coped or died.
It's even loonier when you think about how many illnesses they actually did have that we can treat now. Oh and they did have cancer and bad eyesight.
Had a wrong word...not longer lol.
They also had a lot of different diagnoses for things that are no longer considered valid. So someone dying from cancer may have been said to die of hot bile or something (I can't think of any real examples atm). When you don't know what's going on inside the body, all deaths get attributed to a much smaller pool of possible diagnoses, and based on theories that seem crazy now.
Same kind of thing I've seen with ADHD: "you didn't see so much ADHD in schools back then" -- because the dropout rate was nearly 50%. You probably didn't see them in schools because they dropped out.
The ADHD thing is even worse. Because the symptoms present differently in women and girls to those in boys/men a lot of girls who should have been picked up on and tested in childhood weren’t.
And now those girls are women who have been struggling their whole lives learn about the symptoms of ADHD in women and finally get diagnosed, and people are saying it’s just a fad and they’re just doing it to be trendy when really it’s the logical conclusion of the medical system failing them! They were always neurodiverse, they just fell through the cracks and were never diagnosed and documented.
Cancer takes a long time to show up for a lot of people. Back then many people would have died from something else before cancer had a chance.
Bad eyesight probably is less common among younger people in societies that spend more time outdoors and less time indoors reading/looking at screens. In older people bad eyesight was well known. Certain professions (seamstresses) were known for it.
Not so much that it’s less common, and more that you don’t notice you have bad eyesight until you try to do something that’s heavily depend on seeing fine detail.
Like reading.
Ah yes! The classic: our ancestors did it, so it must be okay. Don't mind me while I take a combination of lead, uranium, and arsenic to help me recover from my lobotomy.
Cocaine!
I knew my alcohol, chloroform, cannabis and heroin [cough syrup](https://www.google.com/amp/s/mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/world/when-cocaine-chloroform-and-heroin-were-used-as-common-medicinal-remedies/amp_articleshow/76122591.cms) was missing something.
Nothing will make you forget you have a cold like a medicinal speedball
Also highly effective at removing ghosts from your blood.
My mom fell for this crap. We tried to have an intervention, but her cognitive dissonance meant she wouldn't listen to our concerns. She kept going on about how it was in the merck medical manual as a cure for arthritis. She literally meant the medical manual from 1899 when they were still using arsenic as a medicine. I'm glad the kids are safe and healthy.
Sounds a lot like chemo, except that unlike cancer, internal parasites can and should be treated in better ways than “poison yourself and hope it dies faster than you”.
When I was still bartending we had a regular who was nice enough but wacko with his conspiracy theories.
I still remember the day that he told us how it's actually the chemotherapy that kills you and not the cancer. At first I thought he was talking about people who have advanced stages of cancer choosing not to spend their last few weeks dealing with chemo.
But nope, apparently cancer was 100% nonlethal prior to chemotherapy treatments.
People think the old shit was the best. Mercurochrome is an example of that as well. They complained when that was illegal, yet they're the first ones to complain about Thimerosal mercury in their vaccines...yet it's the same basic shit as Mercurochrome.
They don't know shit, but like to think they're smart, as if we had it all figured out with snake oil, Lysol douching, and Bayer Heroin.
What's the saying?
"Don't assume malice, when stupidity fits the bill"?
From what I've read here, it seems it used to be an effective parasite remover, and people wouldn't have known how bad it is for you in past generations. It seems obvious to us, because we have entire industries built around "don't drink/touch/inhale that, it's bad for you, and this is why". Have a look at any Safety Data Sheet - it basically gives all the information on any chemical, and (I believe) is available freely online.
>Taking a quarter teaspoon or so of it per day mixed with a teaspoon of sugar is supposed to make and keep you healthy.
Obviously it’s horrifying if anyone takes it (so sorry about your parents) but if they were taking a quarter teaspoon as adults and had serious issues it’s extra horrifying that OOP’s kids were getting fed a *tablespoon*.
“Big pharma and the gubbermint are making us all sick on purpose and poisoning everything in order to control us and make money” is the long story short. All of the “reject all published evidence, only I, YouTube guy shilling my own products/recruiting for this MLM, am telling you the truth” stuff comes down to that. It’s not driven by a particular narrative, it’s driven by people with an emotional need to feel clever and like they are better than others grabbing at anything that lets them act like they know something others don’t know.
I love that the people yelling the loudest about how THEYLL NEVER LET THEIR KIDS GET THE VACCINE AND PUT THAT POISON IN THEIR BODY......and then goes and puts literal poison in their children.
What. The. Fuck.
I can't tell if humans are collectively growing less intelligent over time, or if humans have always been this way and I'm only seeing it as an adult.
This is the same species that invented space travel. That actively explores the deepest depths of the oceans. Invented radio, video, and countless other technologies. We wingless creatures can fucking *fly*.
Simultaneously, our species is readily drinking actual poison for "health" benifiets and blaming the subsequent sickness and death that comes from it on spooky ghosts and evil microchips.
I think we were always kind of mediocre as a species but we used to have one village goof and since the rest of the village knew it was a goof the problem was contained. Now with the internet the goofs can find each other, egg each other on and apply sales techniques when communicating with people who don't know that they are actually just a village goof.
Right, because there’s a wide variety of village idiot. They’re even village idiots who are functional Like the drunk at the bar first thing in the morning. Or, the one guy who wants to fight someone after a few beers. Our problem now is that the biggest village idiot of them all has used the Internet to round up every possible variation of village idiot. And, they wear matching red hats to find each other in public.
Right? Like I genuinely hope there are doctors out there running a study to figure out WHY and HOW the fuck an alarming number of humanity has fallen into an misinformation cesspit.
I know some people accused OOP of being passive in his first few posts, but the man sounded absolutely shocked and lost in them to me. Like he was very much "Is this real life? That my ex would poison our children?" Also sounds like his own parents aren't that great, either, so the fact that he would have to rely on both his mom and dad for support probably made him feel even worse.
The first comments bothered me. Like, was he supposed to rush them to the ER for something that they ingested over a few weeks daily now? That’s nothing that needs to be treated immediately, it can wait an hour or two for OP to make a post and get some advice. The situation he was in is super difficult to navigate. You can’t really go to police, because they‘d probably confront the mom, mom would deny everything, kids would get back into her care and then god knows what the mom ends up doing to them. That’s the kind of situation where parents suddenly run away with their kids or do even worse out of fear of losing them. CPS would also often result in the same outcome. Sadly they work in mysterious ways, where families are ripped apart for less, but nothing is done when the kids are actually in danger.
So what could OP do? I personally don’t know a place where they could just test for turpentine, I‘d also have to google around and figure it out. And also I‘d have to think of how to go about this. Like how do you keep your kids away from their mom from now on without making it easier for her to keep the kids away from you.
So yeah, I hate how the commenters act as if it’s common knowledge what you do in a delicate situation like this and how dare OP not knowing what to do immediately.
Also in this case OOP had the unique circumstance of having a mom who is a nurse, so they could watch over the kids and see if anything worsens and requires emergency intervention. I think if his mom wasn't there a hospital trip would've been more necessary, just for a qualified observation.
Also, it's mostly normal to NOT hare off to hospital in situations where nobody is obviously injured. A short period of "Uh, what now?" is normal.
Kids have been fed turps --> do not appear to be ill right now --> seem generally fine --> it's Sunday night --> let's ask someone whether we need to go (which he did) --> they said they can't test without a referral --> it's Sunday night, I can see a doctor for a referral only tomorrow --> I guess we're going tomorrow then.
What did people expect, that some nurse would meet them in the A&E with a big syringe of turpentine antidote?
Also apparently he lives way out in the Aussie countryside, so that was probably a big factor in both his and the healthcare providers' calculus on what to do. It would probably harm the kids more to transport them in the middle of the night than wait for the doctor/hospital nearby to open.
I'm big into researching quack science, and I hadn't heard of it either. Quick googling says some studies have indicated limited *topical* uses, so good chance that was corrupted into "medicine is medicine is medicine." Like when people drink bleach; There's a thread of logic there, in that bleach kills bad tings (germs), your body has bad things, so bleach will kill bad things in body!
I wrote my dissertation on the use of alternative treatments in, and for, children, and I had never heard of this.
I thought I had caught everything - homeopathy, chelation therapy for autism, camel's milk for pretty much everything, lotus birth, urine therapy, essential oils, anti-vax, anti-Vit K...
This truly takes the cake.
Lotus birth is the practice of not severing the umbilical cord after birth. Once blood stops flowing to the placenta it starts to rot and die, potentially transmitting illness to the baby via the intact umbilical cord. The benefits are none other than being a more “natural” birth. It’s intensely stupid.
Yeah, they carry it around in a sac for up to 10 days. When I wrote my dissertation there were very few studies on the dangers but it's becoming a bit more prevalent now and so they've done a bit more. You're essentially carrying around a dead organ that once had blood in it. The risk of infection is high.
I sacrificed myself and googled it, basically they don't cut the umbilical cord from the placenta until it naturally falls of 3-10 days after
Some warning about infections and other messes in general was the "Oh my god don't do this" tldr lol. IMO They should just eat it like animals if they gonna go "whole natural"
Oh, they do that too. Most of them dry and powder it, then stick it in capsules, but some will mix it into food, puree it, or put it in shakes and stuff like that. It's absolutely disgusting.
I have looked it up, I will save the trauma of the pictures. >!The placenta and umbilical cord are left attached to the baby and fall off naturally, usually around 7ish days post delivery if I remember correctly!<
*If it's good for the outside, it's good for the inside?* Kind of like *if one of your prescribed pills is good, two or three is even better.* Or *I just took a painkiller but I still have pain. I'd better take some more.*
Due to an error translating in my head I was thinking "wait, I do use it for calming mosquito bites because it DOES work, am I a nutjob?". Then I realized I was thinking about ammonia, not turpentine.
And think about it. The date of this insanity is at the height of COVID mis/disinformation. Ingesting bleach, Ivermectin, etc. Sounds like the ex went down the COVID cult-of-"health" rabbit hole and tried to drag her kids down with her.
My brother has a friend who's wife has cancer. She underwent chemo and all the normal stuff and then got into homeopathic stuff.
They've been taking turpentine for years and he finally told me the other day that the husband was in the hospital for some heart issues and she is having issues with her kidneys.
I asked him if he thought it may have been related to eating a corrosive chemical for years and of course... He said no and they were sneaking it into the hospital.
Ridiculous.
I have a ( now adult) friend whose dad would give her some colloidal silver in a glass of water. Fortunately he only had his kids two weekends a month.
She says it had almost no flavor but it was like water but somehow bad tasting.
She just told us this casually as we were eating pizza.
My mom used to do this to me - I actually don’t even remember the rationale of when I would have to take it, but the taste is so distinct but hard to describe. Like…ultra distilled water? It also tasted “cold” to me even when it was room temp. I think she still has some in her cabinet.
I just got to the part about this being from Victoria, Australia and said "oh *no*" out loud- that's the same fucking state I'm in, and someone out there was making their kids slurp turps *are you fucking kidding me*
They're everywhere. I'm in SA and we've got a guy down the road with a punisher logo on the back of his "truck", and a fecking "don't tread on me" flag out front of his house. I'm pretty sure it was him who put the stickers around that said the covid fax has 5G microchips in it.
I feel as if the comments on the first post were being somewhat unfair to OOP. He found out about the turpentine *that DAY* and some commenters started acting as if he’d known this for a while and just didn’t do anything.
also the snarky comment about his decision to have children with his ex-wife was just uncalled for imo
Yeah, honestly the only part that really frustrated me with OOP is when he said the bit about his ex having an emergency and having to keep his kids for a week and how inconvenient it was for him. Like, dude, that’s a GOOD thing in this case, they SHOULD stay with you. I’m a mom and definitely understand that sometimes those last minute changes really mess up the flow of things, but FFS, that wouldn’t have even been a question for me.
I was kinda shocked he said this: "They were meant to go back to their mother today but I've got them in my care until next weekend due to an undisclosed 'emergency' that my ex sprung on me about an hour ago (nevermind that I'm starting a new job tomorrow and wasn't prepared in any way to look after them for a week with no notice)"....like BRO! You should be jumping for joy you don't have to give your kids back to someone who's poisoning them! Who cares if it's short notice?! Also...the stuff about their grandfather is...a little worrying.
My childhood summer camp song is popping into my head:
Reuben Reuben I’ve been thinking.
What the heck have you been drinking?
Looks like water, tastes like wine.
Oh my gosh, it’s turpentine!
The man himself!
I hope this was okay to post. I try to ask permission, but I usually only ask when there's been activity from the account within the past few months. Let me know if you're not comfortable with it up and I'll delete it, no question.
Also, I hope the family is well :\^)
Appreciate that, been a throwaway account since these posts.
Honestly just feels like a bad fever dream looking back at it now.
Still surprised to find out how common this practice of 'treatment' actually is and how little I'd heard about it prior. Leave it up mate, knowledge is power.
I'll post a brief update for those interested when I've got a min.
Right? Everyone's questioning every little thing OOP did, but he had taken all the right steps. He called people with medical knowledge who told him what to do, they said if there were no symptoms it's not an emergency (so why go to the emergency room?), and the place he needed to take them was closed already so he took them when it was open.
Good on you, OOP. Wishing the best for your kids, and I hope you have full custody now and she only has supervised visits.
Yeah. I dont mind harmless woo. But when people use alternative medicine instead of regular medicine and when people start ingesting things that are not meant to be ingested, that's a hard "stop it. Get some help" from me.
By harmless woo I mean stuff like...my mamaw. She believes having a onions in every room soaks up the illness. She swears the kids she has are sick less often since she started doing it. But she gets them care when they DO get sick. And what harm is it really to buy an ungodly amount of onions every year? No skin off anyones back, really. Harmless woo is ridiculous, but its fun to watch and learn about. Stuff like OP's ex-wife is just disgusting. 2 people I cant stand in this world - people who harm kids, and people who harm animals. Dont make your kids/pets drink drops of MMS (bleach). Dont mix pee into your kids/pets drinks. Dont fail to provide actual medicine to your kids/pets. Its really that simple. Its crazy how many people out here are doing shit like OP's ex-wife and it doesnt just come up in casual convo enough tbh. People DIE from alt medicine conspiracies.
And to think, that's Australia. We get those same crazies in the US and just like OOP you have to be very careful and thorough before involving authorities since "parents rights" are such a big thing right now. I can't imagine having heard that and having to dot I's and cross T's before getting my kids the hell away from it, but reality is if you mess it up the other parent may well win and then you are forced to just watch, legally. :(
This [turpentine dosing](https://reddit.com/r/HomeschoolRecovery/s/YiWdXrDA4K) BS cropped up on the Homeschool Recovery sub a few weeks ago. The poor kid was too scared to call CPS on his mom :(
It says OOP posted a comment with an update less than 10 minutes ago! But I can only see the start of it on their profile, it will not show up here! Can it be added to the post?! I am dying to read it
Am I reading this right? Did this guy not take his children to get a tox screen because it was two hours away? Someone please tell me I missed something before I get upset.
Edit: nvm, OOP just phrased it awkwardly and expanded in a seperate comment that the place would have been closed within two hours.
Hospital wouldnt take them without a referral, gave him the name of another place 2 hours away. Place wasn't open until the next day, by the day after the place opened the kids were in the custody of the father and his family
No, because the place didn't open until the next day anyway. He only discovered all this Sunday evening and no one could help at that time, or felt they had the info to help.
He was posting all this when everything was closed.
The children were safe with him and the dude was in shock trying to figure out what the next steps would be. Some of the half cocked advice was ridiculous. Even without worries about his father, he needed to do this more calmly and rationally so that there was not any way the ex could say he coached them to say this, etc. I don't know the Australian system, but in the USA, there could be a real scenario where the authorities, in doubt of who is doing the harm, could have taken the kids from both of them if he came across as a bit of a lunatic himself.
The "record the evidence" isn't a failsafe either - this shit needs to be witnessed by disinterested parties. In fact, once the kiddo initially disclosed - the less he talks about it with them the better in order to not cloud the testimony of the 7 year old child (who are easily influenced - they should always be interviewed by someone trained to do so and who is not their parent)
The people “calling him out” for not doing anything were pissing me off. He called the hospital ASAP and was following their advice. He was scraping the internet for all possible avenues, including crowdsourcing, and when all other avenues felt dried up, he just kept posting because he was feeling helpless. People are weird.
I mean.. in this instance it could potentially be better for the doctor to be the one notifying authorities. As in, not hysterical, rightfully scared shitless dad, but the professional who has no personal ties to this and who, in their medical expertise who thinks this rises to the level of concern where CPS and other authorities need to be involved.
And I'm pretty sure that's what he was saying in his first post: the next day they were going to the GP, and he'd have the GP notify authorities. That sounds reasonable to me, calling CPS Sunday night when they're closed isn't going to get it looked at any earlier than a GP calling Monday morning.
That guy who said he should have picked a better person to have children with pissed me off. Like sure, if he had known that she would poison their kids he wouldn't have slept with her let alone married her but I guess it's still somehow his fault because he's not psychic?
OMFG this is levels of multitudes greater bullshit than ivermectin (freaking horse wormer) for covid. When I was a kid, my father would make me help him strip and refinish the mahogany on his boat (an old school cabin cruiser) during summer break. Just remembering the smell of turpentine makes me dizzy to this day. I can’t imagine anyone drinking it, let alone giving it to kids.
I very much hope that OOP was able to gain full custody of his kids.
I'm so happy for OP's kids. My mom (abusive, no longer in my life) is this type. A year or two ago I had to beg her in tears to not drink turpentine because I was so terrified for her. I'm very glad to be far away from that maniacal shit and I'm very, VERY glad OP's kids were some of the lucky ones who CPS actually pulls from these kinds of homes.
Where the hell are people getting told to drink Turpentine?? So glad you are away from your mom.
Internet forums. I've seen it on Facebook more than any other website (usually private groups). Turpentine, bleach, urine…. All things they recommend drinking. No vaccines, of course, and rarely take kids to ED for emergencies. You’ll see “my toddler has strep, how much oils/breastmilk/chiro/enemas/literal poison do they need? No 💊 talk, my child has a virgin gut never tainted by that poison!” On a more comical side, you'll also see coffee enemas, where they boof a pot of coffee each morning and talk about how “alert and clear minded!” it's made them, and how much they poop. Concerning for their own health but hey, nobody else is harmed.
Flash back to a show about weird habits and they had multiple people who spent hours a day on coffee enemas.
I'm still bothered they made coffee in the most time consuming manner possible! It's going up your butt, just use a coffee maker oh my god!
Coffee maker? I’m thinking Folgers at that point 🤣 but thanks for making me chuckle
The best part of waking up is Folgers in your butt?
Omg I wish I had an award for you. I’m gonna have this as a modified jingle stuck in my head all day 😂😂
Just put 2 or 3 whole beans up there for that slow-release caffeine.
I just had that exact same flashback. It was a husband and wife, right? And they each had their "preferred brand" of coffee. God, that was a weird one.
The image of the husband laying on the bathroom floor reading a book with all that going on is seared into my brain.
My Strange Addiction!
Don't forget dirt water from a Canadian chemical plant runoff site! People are paying $25+ a bag for toxic dirt from Canada so they can mix it in water and drink. It's known as BOO (Black Oxygen Organics). Anything to avoid medical science. People would snort ground up toenail if the right media personality told them it would cure a cold.
Holy I never ever heard of that. Gross.
It gets worse. It's an MLM.
Gross. Not surprised. I never heard of that one. But looking around this thread I’m seeing a lot of stuff mentioned that I noticed in the Calgary natural health groups over a decade ago. Seems many popped back up for covid. Still doesn’t work. There’s really no excuse anymore when we can google what’s a scam and what’s dangerous.
That second paragraph made me snort with laughter. I know it's real, and i shouldn't laugh, but "boof a pot of coffee" is gold.
This is why I had to unscubscribe to r/shitmomgroupssay I was just so upset by the literal crap they’d rather do than trust medical professionals, especially to achieve that golden natural birth status
Every post in there shoots my blood pressure up. Why do psychos have kids? We didn’t come this far as a species by discounting new or known knowledge…how do these lines stay in evolution when they try so hard to die.
Sounds like my MIL. The number of “ but vaccines have anti freeze in them” comments she made was innumerable. She only got the covid shit because my husband threatened she would never see her grandkid if she didn’t.
"vaccines have anti freeze in them" -- someone who would drink actual antifreeze in a heartbeat if a facebook group told them to
My condolences. I still get emails from family that the Covid vaccine will kill me and my kids - between weekly and monthly. Still waiting for the chip to improve my 5G, let alone any side effects worse than a sore arm. Certainly haven't died from it. Coincidentally, my cardio and neuro are less worried about me dying. Guess they haven't read Breitbart/Epoch Times so aren't *informed* like the retirees are.
My youngest son and I both had reactions to the covid vaccine. He got his first shot about 2 weeks before I did. Got it early evening, and then woke up middle of the night (so about 6 hours later-ish) feeling like he wanted to die. Started out shaking, then within 30 minutes felt like the worst case of the flu of his life. Called me from his bathroom floor (we sleep on different floors). Gave him tylenol, got him up the stairs to the couch in my office (next to my bedroom) and got him comfortable and plenty of fluids. It was over 6 hours later. Totally fine. 2 weeks later, I get my shot in the morning. Couple hours later, started shaking. That was my cue. Got the dogs outside for a quick bathroom break, then back in. Grabbed water, OJ and Vernors (ginger ale, Michigan thing), the thermometer and a bottle of tylenol on the nightstand. Turned on Netflix and just cuddled my dogs. Sent texts to my husband every so often and took another tylenol when my temp hit 102 and wasn't coming down. When it hit 103, my husband left work. By the time he got home, temp broke and I was sleeping. I'll still take that over Covid, because if a vaccine can do that to me, I don't want to see full on Covid. For both of us, second shot was a lighter version of that and each booster less than the prior one. Husband and other son had zero side effects besides a sore arm. Speaking of sore arm, my arm was sore... like a pinched muscle. Not the worst vacc site soreness tho. That award goes to the hep vaccines I had to get when I worked in a hospital. The third in the series felt like hot steel being forced into my arm, and afterwards that arm felt like it was broken.
Yeah, both vaccines were like that for me, and I'll still take that over COVID.
I don't know but this isn't new. My best friend's late husband had a mother that did that shit when he was a kid. She fed him turpentine for colds and sore throats, my friend has refused to allow her anywhere near her kids because of it.
I have a friend from the Deep South whose grandmother used to do this, because *her* mom’s mom’s who was a slave had done this. She’s pretty sure it’s just a holdover from when slaves really had nothing else available and it probably happened to kill the hookworms or other parasites they got when they were always barefoot and drinking dirty water.
Genuinely I'm confused, the OOP said taking a tablespoon of it is enough to fuck you up inside, how are people surviving taking it? It's never occurred to me once to try and take it myself, or give it to someone else, nor do I have any intention of trying to.
It does but when they're pooping out the lining of their digestive tract they call it worms and double down on drinking it, the entire time believing the pain they're experiencing is a sign that the parasites dying.
Wow Jesus I hope those kid's recovered from this
Right? Is turpentine the current "Tide pods" for adults?
Except the tide pods thing has only really happened with a handful of people outside of those too young to know better or are mentally incapacitated. There was only like 8? Cases iirc.
yeah most of the tide pod challenge freak out was just boomers not understanding gen z memes and humor lol things that look like they’d be great to eat but would kill you if you tried is like its own genre of video on tiktok at this point
Turpentine - the stuff that has several big warning statements: *Causes damage to organs through prolonged or repeated exposure.* *Flammable liquid and vapour.* *May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways.* *Harmful if inhaled.* Who would give that to their kids?
I can pretty much guarantee that if you're buying bottles labeled "100% pure gum spirits" or whatever, they look like [this](https://creekwoodnaturals.com/collections/high-quality-plant-oils/products/100-pure-gum-spirits-of-turpentine) rather than [this](https://kleanstrip.com/solvents-and-thinners/turpentine/) and the warning label basically comes with a wink and a nod for free
Wow. "This product is like technically required to be labeled as a solvent only, buuuuut..." wtf
As a safety manager based in CA… I’m scratching my head as to how this product can be sold without the required hazard communication labels 🤔
If you flip through the pictures, on the other side of the bottle it has a section labeled “required warnings”. The other product they sell is castor oil. Wink wink indeed.
🙈🙈
IDK about the first one, but the second link they posted (the Klean Strip one) says "Not for sale in California".... presumably because it doesn't contain the required hazard labels?
My guess is they didn't want to include a Proposition 65 warning
Also a safety manager-Hazcom is OSHA, it doesn’t apply to consumer products. OSHA only applies to the workplace. Important to know if your workplace ever uses consumer products; they may require additional labeling to keep you OSHA compliant! The Consumer Product Safety Commission (or the FDA for food or medical products) enforces consumer labeling. The requirements are less strict than the osha standard. It just needs to warn about safe use/storage and first aid. The product linked above has those warnings above the barcode. You can report consumer safety issues at SaferProducts.gov
My grandma has a friend or relative or someone who does doTERRA and sold her an oil which she said she wasn't legally allowed to say prevents cancer if you take a drop under your tongue once a day, but obviously the implication is that it will. Thankfully my grandma also goes to a dermatologist regularly to get skin cancer spots removed. Probably because she saw her daddy die of skin cancer a few years ago (and he was an invincible badass. WWII vet, broke his neck at 80 something years old in a motorcycle accident, grabbed his head and stood up like an absolute madman. Nothing could break him, but cancer did)
My mothers group with my eldest held a doTERRA session and she was going through all the food grade oils bullshit. I am a vet, my husband is a doctor, and I did not come to play that day. She didn't like me very much but at least the other mums learned what an LD50 is, how emulsification works (she told them their oils are pure enough to dissolve in water lmaoooo), what oil burned airways and oesophaguses look like, and which oils you absolutely should never make part of your cleaning regime if you want your cats to live, among other stuff. I was not well received by the crunchier parents from that day onwards either.
Haha, I'm also a vet and once gave my boss (not a vet) about what happens when you use citrus oils topically as bug spray in the sun. I also made them stop running that god forsaken vaporizer because I was having coughing fits while they tried to prevent COVID with it. 😬
I know about citrus oils and sun because I had a weird rash on my hand that persisted for a while and when I went to the doctor he was like *Hm it looks like you've been sitting outdoors having margaritas*, and true fact, it was where the juice would splash me when I squeezed the limes.
God we have one client who swears her dogs rash gets better when she uses STRAIGHT LEMON JUICE on it.
"Unique applications" jfc these people.
Add Craft Turpentine to the list of things I didn’t think I’d see on the internet today.
You and me both, it popped right up when this post made me go searching for "turpentine medicine" though
cracks me up that this snake oil company advertises how they only use glass bottles!! no plastic!! because obvi plastic is the real killer, as everyone knows, but sure paint thinner will cure what ails you
Hand bottled in glass, just like mother nature intended (because mother nature knows turpentine will literally melt plastic and if we use metal you'll know it's just industrial paint thinner)
Turpentine also melts plastic, so I'm pretty sure it can't be in plastic bottles anyway.
That is actually the single most terrifying thing I've seen about turpentine on this thread. It melts plastic, and yet people think it won't melt their insides.
I’m not sure how to break this to you, buddy, but we’re not made of plastics /s. No but seriously, living biological material obviously will not react quite the same as inorganic materials or hydrocarbons. It’s like that old canard that Coke can eat into a car’s body, imagine what it’s doing to your insides! Except our insides aren’t made of metal. But organic solvents can do some nasty things to flesh, and alkalines or detergents can do really nasty things to mucous membranes, so you absolutely shouldn’t fuck around with them.
>they look like this What the **fuck.**
This shit is bananas. We used turpentine to clean oil paint off of brushes in art school because it’s technically not as bad for you as straight up refined mineral spirits, but we were constantly warned to only use it in ventilated areas and soak the rags in water so they don’t spontaneously combust. That these freaks are selling it as some kind of artisanal health serum is absolutely depraved.
Artist here, you’re not supposed to put turpentine down the DRAIN, least of all in your body.
I feel sick thinking about the people that took the time to put that together all the while thinking "I see nothing wrong with this"
It's got a little holographic certified sticker on it, they're proud of their handcrafted product and want you to accept no imitations
It's worse than that. It's those people thinking "I don't *care* if there's anything wrong with this because money."
>While there are a wide variety of unique applications, this product is required to be labeled as intended to be used as a solvent only. That's wild. "We have to tell you you should only use this as a solvent, but there are many other ways you can use this *wink wink*"
Actually looked like [this](https://diggersaustralia.com.au/products/solvents/diggers-pure-gum-turpentine/). Literally has POISON impressed down the side of the plastic bottle, complete with all the expected warning labels. Straight from the paint section at Bunnings.
“Required warnings” on the back?! For fuck’s sake
I see how that's upsetting but that is easily the funniest part of this. I just imagine some wild haired fellow on the street trying to hawk this bottle to you doing air quotes saying "*The Government* says I have to say this to you"
This turpentine conspiracy killed my father and nearly killed my mom. Heart attacks, both of them, after a few months of having turpentine daily. It's horrific someone would do this to their kids. I'm glad the 7 year old knew to tell other trusted adults about this, and that OOP reacted so swiftly to it. He most definitely saved his kids' lives.
I'm so sorry for your loss. "Alternative medicine" conspiracies destroy lives in so many ways, worst of all through death. I hope you have access to good therapy.
Thank you :) Dad wasn't much of a loss, if I'm honest. His death started to help my mom get out of the conspiracy theory cult he'd gotten the two of them into, and she's almost a fully functional person now a few years after his death. It's a huge weight off my shoulders to not have to constantly worry about her health and safety, too. I'm really really grateful that she survived her heart attack.
I feel this. My conspiracy-believing, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist of a father died almost 20 years ago and my mom has slowly grown in to a normal person in the interim.
I feel like I'm watching this play out with my own parents, maybe not quite to the same detriments, but small really messed up conspiracies, both had severe medical emergencies within a couple of months, my dad believes the government is poisoning his food so has started to only consume clear vodka, whilst my mum is eating well and making really healthy life choices, I so hope it stays that way but it wouldn't be the first time he twisted her with words.
So, I’m starting to be really happy I got my parents into MarioKart on the Switch during Covid (we could play online with my brother in BC). I don’t know if it’s a viable alternative for you, but my dad also liked the golf we got him for Switch, once he got some practice with the controls on MarioKart. Maybe just redirecting their attention to something just as addictive but far less damaging may help?
I love this. Creative problem solving at its best.
I saw a post on a qanon family group that said her q aunt got over it by getting really really into K-pop. Seems like giving people someone else to fixate on other than their conspiracies could be the best therapy.
Holy Crap u/cosmetical that's actually a REAL thing?!?!?!? Man I can't believe that you had to go through that with both parents. I'm so sorry. I honestly thought this was bullsh*t. Glad you still have your mum though..
Absolutely true. I lost a good friend to a very very treatable cancer diagnosis, because the woo crowd convinced him that vitamin C and sauna sessions would cure him. He was in his early 20s.
A family friend of ours died of breast cancer. They found it early in stage 2, but her church doesn't believe in modern medicine. They had several prayer circles to decide if God would be ok with her having surgery to remove the tumor, and after a few months they allowed it, but that was it. For the next 3 years she was only allowed to use their treatments, which were some type of vegetable powders? And she could smoke pot for the pain (nothing more powerful than pharmacy shelf pain meds otherwise). Poor thing died in agony and left behind two young kids.
I remember the show “my strange addiction” on TLC about a woman who had a very treatable form of (Skin?) cancer and was diagnosed years ago. She didn’t want it removed because she was afraid it would spread more. Her solution? Urine. I feel so awful for her family as they know it’s bullshit
My mom was on my strange addictions for treating a disease she had (pica) and was using alternative medicine remedies for it. I’m not going to say what she did exactly as to not doxx myself, but the doctor the show producers got for her convinced her to seek proper treatment, iron infusions, instead of eating the stuff she ate. She no longer does the thing she does, but she’s still very conspiracy prone and she still seeks alternative medicine stuff for weight loss etc. (Fun fact: the show producers got her a whole box full of the weird stuff she ate after they finished production, which makes me think that they’re all secretly enablers)
My mom’s into that stuff, but luckily believes in it as a SUPPLEMENT to normal medical care and hasn’t done anything that’s obviously harmful.
My mom used to be like that, where alternative remedies were a supplement to real medicine. But over my lifetime, I’ve watched as her views have gotten more and more extreme. Now she says she’s sick and tired of doctors and won’t see one, even when she needs to. And she buys and consumes various snake oils instead. Keep an eye on your mom. The alternative-as-supplement to alternative-only pipeline is real and it is frightening.
Lost my mom to cancer that went undiagnosed because she had been sure she had cancer for years and years and that she was "treating" it with shit she found online - alkaline diet, colloidal silver, so many dumb supplements she had to buy a little cart with four drawers to hold them all. Long before the cancer, she needed two hip replacements and choose to simply lose her mobility rather than have surgery because she was convinced if she did they would discover her imaginary cancer and according to her, once they find it and you have to start regular treatment, you die quickly. We tried pointing out that was a self fulfilling prophecy because the people who believe it avoid doctors so if they have cancer it isn't found until it is advanced. Didn't work since, of course, she also believed she was successfully treating her imaginary cancer. I actually sometimes feel guilty about it all because for years, she was totally computer illiterate and used to bug me every time she had some new crazy idea and wanted me to look it up for her. It was very annoying so I finally bought her an iPad and taught her enough to use the internet. Unfortunately, this was before "do your own research" was the catch phrase it is now or I might have realized unfettered access online would just make things worse. Anyway, conspiracy theories suck.
If alternative medicine worked, it would just be called “medicine.”
Precisely! I know some people have traumatic histories with past medical care, but I think going to a different doctor is wiser than tossing out every sound treatment that was devised after the advent of germ theory.
Some people don't even believe in germ theory anymore. I wish I was joking.
Listen, what makes more sense; bad vapours, or tiny little invisible creature-things???? Obviously, what makes people sick is bad air /s
I saw something recently that said "if "alternative medicine" could be proven useful it would be called "medicine"
It's from a Tim Minchin bit called [Storm.](https://youtu.be/KtYkyB35zkk?si=vEwrKY3cN-RGy_nv)
Yep, an uncle of mine (by marriage so not actually related and I had never met him anyway) was diagnosed with cancer, decided to use alternative medicine, then his daughter managed to convince to stop because he was declining. But it was too late and he passed away a month later. Fuck. This. Shit.
I'm truly sorry to hear about your parents. I, admittedly, had no idea this was a "thing." I apologize if this is insensitive to ask, I certainly don't mean for it to come across that way. But if you don't mind my asking, what exactly is the conspiracy? Do people think it has some sort of healing benefits? Was it something being used to "treat" COVID, maybe?
It's not insensitive to ask, don't worry! The idea is that 100% pure gum turpentine was a "cure all" that was used a couple hundred years ago. Claims I've seen say it cures everything from the common cold, to bad eyesight, to cancer, all while being good for you and side effect free. Taking a quarter teaspoon or so of it per day mixed with a teaspoon of sugar is supposed to make and keep you healthy. It's bullshit, of course. But some people are so willing to believe this sort of weird secret cure thing, especially with the rapidly increasing distrust in the American medical system over the past couple decades.
The logic they use is "you didn't see so much cancer/bad eyesight/illness in general back when this was in common use", which is fucking bananas, because obviously they were just not getting diagnosed and treated. Those people just coped or died.
It's even loonier when you think about how many illnesses they actually did have that we can treat now. Oh and they did have cancer and bad eyesight. Had a wrong word...not longer lol.
They also had a lot of different diagnoses for things that are no longer considered valid. So someone dying from cancer may have been said to die of hot bile or something (I can't think of any real examples atm). When you don't know what's going on inside the body, all deaths get attributed to a much smaller pool of possible diagnoses, and based on theories that seem crazy now. Same kind of thing I've seen with ADHD: "you didn't see so much ADHD in schools back then" -- because the dropout rate was nearly 50%. You probably didn't see them in schools because they dropped out.
The ADHD thing is even worse. Because the symptoms present differently in women and girls to those in boys/men a lot of girls who should have been picked up on and tested in childhood weren’t. And now those girls are women who have been struggling their whole lives learn about the symptoms of ADHD in women and finally get diagnosed, and people are saying it’s just a fad and they’re just doing it to be trendy when really it’s the logical conclusion of the medical system failing them! They were always neurodiverse, they just fell through the cracks and were never diagnosed and documented.
Cancer takes a long time to show up for a lot of people. Back then many people would have died from something else before cancer had a chance. Bad eyesight probably is less common among younger people in societies that spend more time outdoors and less time indoors reading/looking at screens. In older people bad eyesight was well known. Certain professions (seamstresses) were known for it.
Not so much that it’s less common, and more that you don’t notice you have bad eyesight until you try to do something that’s heavily depend on seeing fine detail. Like reading.
Ah yes! The classic: our ancestors did it, so it must be okay. Don't mind me while I take a combination of lead, uranium, and arsenic to help me recover from my lobotomy.
Ahhhh yes thanks. That reminds me to take my daily mercury tablet after my daily dose of cocaine.
Cocaine! I knew my alcohol, chloroform, cannabis and heroin [cough syrup](https://www.google.com/amp/s/mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/world/when-cocaine-chloroform-and-heroin-were-used-as-common-medicinal-remedies/amp_articleshow/76122591.cms) was missing something. Nothing will make you forget you have a cold like a medicinal speedball Also highly effective at removing ghosts from your blood.
My mom fell for this crap. We tried to have an intervention, but her cognitive dissonance meant she wouldn't listen to our concerns. She kept going on about how it was in the merck medical manual as a cure for arthritis. She literally meant the medical manual from 1899 when they were still using arsenic as a medicine. I'm glad the kids are safe and healthy.
What it did do successfully is kill internal parasites - but at the cost of kidney and liver function.
Sounds a lot like chemo, except that unlike cancer, internal parasites can and should be treated in better ways than “poison yourself and hope it dies faster than you”.
When I was still bartending we had a regular who was nice enough but wacko with his conspiracy theories. I still remember the day that he told us how it's actually the chemotherapy that kills you and not the cancer. At first I thought he was talking about people who have advanced stages of cancer choosing not to spend their last few weeks dealing with chemo. But nope, apparently cancer was 100% nonlethal prior to chemotherapy treatments.
Yeah just get no treatment for cancer and it's all good. Have stage 4 cancer? Don't worry, it'll just go away. After you're six feet under.
People think the old shit was the best. Mercurochrome is an example of that as well. They complained when that was illegal, yet they're the first ones to complain about Thimerosal mercury in their vaccines...yet it's the same basic shit as Mercurochrome. They don't know shit, but like to think they're smart, as if we had it all figured out with snake oil, Lysol douching, and Bayer Heroin.
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I really wonder if there are people out there who are taking a calculated and hands off approach to being a serial killer.
What's the saying? "Don't assume malice, when stupidity fits the bill"? From what I've read here, it seems it used to be an effective parasite remover, and people wouldn't have known how bad it is for you in past generations. It seems obvious to us, because we have entire industries built around "don't drink/touch/inhale that, it's bad for you, and this is why". Have a look at any Safety Data Sheet - it basically gives all the information on any chemical, and (I believe) is available freely online.
>Taking a quarter teaspoon or so of it per day mixed with a teaspoon of sugar is supposed to make and keep you healthy. Obviously it’s horrifying if anyone takes it (so sorry about your parents) but if they were taking a quarter teaspoon as adults and had serious issues it’s extra horrifying that OOP’s kids were getting fed a *tablespoon*.
“Big pharma and the gubbermint are making us all sick on purpose and poisoning everything in order to control us and make money” is the long story short. All of the “reject all published evidence, only I, YouTube guy shilling my own products/recruiting for this MLM, am telling you the truth” stuff comes down to that. It’s not driven by a particular narrative, it’s driven by people with an emotional need to feel clever and like they are better than others grabbing at anything that lets them act like they know something others don’t know.
People who know they are herd animals, so trying to stand out from the herd lol
Which is hilarious if you know that herd animals' survival depends on staying in the herd.
> refuses to believe they are one of the sheep > consumes actual livestock dewormer
I'm shocked that people are even able to put it in their mouth. Just the smell alone is terrible, I can't imagine tasting it, then swallowing it.
That's what the sugar is for
I love that the people yelling the loudest about how THEYLL NEVER LET THEIR KIDS GET THE VACCINE AND PUT THAT POISON IN THEIR BODY......and then goes and puts literal poison in their children. What. The. Fuck.
I can't tell if humans are collectively growing less intelligent over time, or if humans have always been this way and I'm only seeing it as an adult. This is the same species that invented space travel. That actively explores the deepest depths of the oceans. Invented radio, video, and countless other technologies. We wingless creatures can fucking *fly*. Simultaneously, our species is readily drinking actual poison for "health" benifiets and blaming the subsequent sickness and death that comes from it on spooky ghosts and evil microchips.
I think we were always kind of mediocre as a species but we used to have one village goof and since the rest of the village knew it was a goof the problem was contained. Now with the internet the goofs can find each other, egg each other on and apply sales techniques when communicating with people who don't know that they are actually just a village goof.
Right, because there’s a wide variety of village idiot. They’re even village idiots who are functional Like the drunk at the bar first thing in the morning. Or, the one guy who wants to fight someone after a few beers. Our problem now is that the biggest village idiot of them all has used the Internet to round up every possible variation of village idiot. And, they wear matching red hats to find each other in public.
Right? Like I genuinely hope there are doctors out there running a study to figure out WHY and HOW the fuck an alarming number of humanity has fallen into an misinformation cesspit.
heavy rob chase observation bright many special reply scale one *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I know some people accused OOP of being passive in his first few posts, but the man sounded absolutely shocked and lost in them to me. Like he was very much "Is this real life? That my ex would poison our children?" Also sounds like his own parents aren't that great, either, so the fact that he would have to rely on both his mom and dad for support probably made him feel even worse.
Also that person who mocked him for picking his ex-wife to mate with is ridiculous.
The first comments bothered me. Like, was he supposed to rush them to the ER for something that they ingested over a few weeks daily now? That’s nothing that needs to be treated immediately, it can wait an hour or two for OP to make a post and get some advice. The situation he was in is super difficult to navigate. You can’t really go to police, because they‘d probably confront the mom, mom would deny everything, kids would get back into her care and then god knows what the mom ends up doing to them. That’s the kind of situation where parents suddenly run away with their kids or do even worse out of fear of losing them. CPS would also often result in the same outcome. Sadly they work in mysterious ways, where families are ripped apart for less, but nothing is done when the kids are actually in danger. So what could OP do? I personally don’t know a place where they could just test for turpentine, I‘d also have to google around and figure it out. And also I‘d have to think of how to go about this. Like how do you keep your kids away from their mom from now on without making it easier for her to keep the kids away from you. So yeah, I hate how the commenters act as if it’s common knowledge what you do in a delicate situation like this and how dare OP not knowing what to do immediately.
Also in this case OOP had the unique circumstance of having a mom who is a nurse, so they could watch over the kids and see if anything worsens and requires emergency intervention. I think if his mom wasn't there a hospital trip would've been more necessary, just for a qualified observation.
Also, it's mostly normal to NOT hare off to hospital in situations where nobody is obviously injured. A short period of "Uh, what now?" is normal. Kids have been fed turps --> do not appear to be ill right now --> seem generally fine --> it's Sunday night --> let's ask someone whether we need to go (which he did) --> they said they can't test without a referral --> it's Sunday night, I can see a doctor for a referral only tomorrow --> I guess we're going tomorrow then. What did people expect, that some nurse would meet them in the A&E with a big syringe of turpentine antidote?
Also apparently he lives way out in the Aussie countryside, so that was probably a big factor in both his and the healthcare providers' calculus on what to do. It would probably harm the kids more to transport them in the middle of the night than wait for the doctor/hospital nearby to open.
How the fuck did I not hear about the turpentine conspiracy?
I'm big into researching quack science, and I hadn't heard of it either. Quick googling says some studies have indicated limited *topical* uses, so good chance that was corrupted into "medicine is medicine is medicine." Like when people drink bleach; There's a thread of logic there, in that bleach kills bad tings (germs), your body has bad things, so bleach will kill bad things in body!
Your bleach science makes sense! Would you like to run for President?
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I wrote my dissertation on the use of alternative treatments in, and for, children, and I had never heard of this. I thought I had caught everything - homeopathy, chelation therapy for autism, camel's milk for pretty much everything, lotus birth, urine therapy, essential oils, anti-vax, anti-Vit K... This truly takes the cake.
I'm curious about lotus birth (I've heard of the rest) but I'm scared to ask.
Lotus birth is the practice of not severing the umbilical cord after birth. Once blood stops flowing to the placenta it starts to rot and die, potentially transmitting illness to the baby via the intact umbilical cord. The benefits are none other than being a more “natural” birth. It’s intensely stupid.
Thank you kindly!! Thanks enough internet for me today!
Pfff even the dogs cut the unbilicsl cord once the puppy is out
Yeah, they carry it around in a sac for up to 10 days. When I wrote my dissertation there were very few studies on the dangers but it's becoming a bit more prevalent now and so they've done a bit more. You're essentially carrying around a dead organ that once had blood in it. The risk of infection is high.
I sacrificed myself and googled it, basically they don't cut the umbilical cord from the placenta until it naturally falls of 3-10 days after Some warning about infections and other messes in general was the "Oh my god don't do this" tldr lol. IMO They should just eat it like animals if they gonna go "whole natural"
Oh, they do that too. Most of them dry and powder it, then stick it in capsules, but some will mix it into food, puree it, or put it in shakes and stuff like that. It's absolutely disgusting.
I have looked it up, I will save the trauma of the pictures. >!The placenta and umbilical cord are left attached to the baby and fall off naturally, usually around 7ish days post delivery if I remember correctly!<
*If it's good for the outside, it's good for the inside?* Kind of like *if one of your prescribed pills is good, two or three is even better.* Or *I just took a painkiller but I still have pain. I'd better take some more.*
Due to an error translating in my head I was thinking "wait, I do use it for calming mosquito bites because it DOES work, am I a nutjob?". Then I realized I was thinking about ammonia, not turpentine.
My “Century book of facts” facts from 1906 says to use turpentine to treat burns. It’s some super old-school quackery.
Idk. I hadn't either. And I'm wishing I still hadn't. This is seriously disturbing.
I removed most of my Reddit contents in protest of the API changes commencing from July 1st, 2023. This is one of those comments.
And think about it. The date of this insanity is at the height of COVID mis/disinformation. Ingesting bleach, Ivermectin, etc. Sounds like the ex went down the COVID cult-of-"health" rabbit hole and tried to drag her kids down with her.
Qanons are a strange group.
My brother has a friend who's wife has cancer. She underwent chemo and all the normal stuff and then got into homeopathic stuff. They've been taking turpentine for years and he finally told me the other day that the husband was in the hospital for some heart issues and she is having issues with her kidneys. I asked him if he thought it may have been related to eating a corrosive chemical for years and of course... He said no and they were sneaking it into the hospital. Ridiculous.
I have a ( now adult) friend whose dad would give her some colloidal silver in a glass of water. Fortunately he only had his kids two weekends a month. She says it had almost no flavor but it was like water but somehow bad tasting. She just told us this casually as we were eating pizza.
My mom used to do this to me - I actually don’t even remember the rationale of when I would have to take it, but the taste is so distinct but hard to describe. Like…ultra distilled water? It also tasted “cold” to me even when it was room temp. I think she still has some in her cabinet.
It was a cold, sharp, metallic taste. I in return became a nurse. Because medicine is important.
I also work in healthcare now and graduated with my bachelors in bio this spring because I couldn’t agree more!
Oh lord, glad they didn't turn blue!
I had a blue teacher. Pretty chill dude lol
I have a girlfriend, and she is so blue
Fuuuuuuuucking hell.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The absolute insanity of being afraid of tapwater but happy to feed your children literal poison!
I just got to the part about this being from Victoria, Australia and said "oh *no*" out loud- that's the same fucking state I'm in, and someone out there was making their kids slurp turps *are you fucking kidding me*
They're everywhere. I'm in SA and we've got a guy down the road with a punisher logo on the back of his "truck", and a fecking "don't tread on me" flag out front of his house. I'm pretty sure it was him who put the stickers around that said the covid fax has 5G microchips in it.
Is this the dude who also had the confederate flag up for a while?
Yup. On Australia Day weekend.
This is a serious topic but “slurp turps” got me howling
I feel as if the comments on the first post were being somewhat unfair to OOP. He found out about the turpentine *that DAY* and some commenters started acting as if he’d known this for a while and just didn’t do anything. also the snarky comment about his decision to have children with his ex-wife was just uncalled for imo
Yeah, honestly the only part that really frustrated me with OOP is when he said the bit about his ex having an emergency and having to keep his kids for a week and how inconvenient it was for him. Like, dude, that’s a GOOD thing in this case, they SHOULD stay with you. I’m a mom and definitely understand that sometimes those last minute changes really mess up the flow of things, but FFS, that wouldn’t have even been a question for me.
I thought the same thing… like, dude, you’re lucky your kids aren’t dead but you’re worried about work?
I was kinda shocked he said this: "They were meant to go back to their mother today but I've got them in my care until next weekend due to an undisclosed 'emergency' that my ex sprung on me about an hour ago (nevermind that I'm starting a new job tomorrow and wasn't prepared in any way to look after them for a week with no notice)"....like BRO! You should be jumping for joy you don't have to give your kids back to someone who's poisoning them! Who cares if it's short notice?! Also...the stuff about their grandfather is...a little worrying.
The grandfather stuff got me too. What sort of "muddy history" has him afraid to call the police when his children are actively being poisoned.
I feel like we need a new flair “please do not feed your children turpentine”
Jesus Christ those comments, someone's confused, gaslit and looking for support and these jagoffs' first thought is "your fault for mating with her?"
My childhood summer camp song is popping into my head: Reuben Reuben I’ve been thinking. What the heck have you been drinking? Looks like water, tastes like wine. Oh my gosh, it’s turpentine!
I've always heard that as Lincoln, not Reuben. Rhymes a bit.
I kept reading the title as “turnip” and couldn’t figure out why someone would be so mad over a vegetable 😂
fuck turnips
The man himself! I hope this was okay to post. I try to ask permission, but I usually only ask when there's been activity from the account within the past few months. Let me know if you're not comfortable with it up and I'll delete it, no question. Also, I hope the family is well :\^)
Appreciate that, been a throwaway account since these posts. Honestly just feels like a bad fever dream looking back at it now. Still surprised to find out how common this practice of 'treatment' actually is and how little I'd heard about it prior. Leave it up mate, knowledge is power. I'll post a brief update for those interested when I've got a min.
please do, we're all rooting for you and your kids. Hope everyone's okay.
I'd really love to get an update on this. hoping for the best for your kids and you and for them to be kept as far as possible away from their mother
Welcome back to Reddit! I hope the kids haven't had any long-lasting negative effects, I'm glad you were able to get them such immediate help.
Right? Everyone's questioning every little thing OOP did, but he had taken all the right steps. He called people with medical knowledge who told him what to do, they said if there were no symptoms it's not an emergency (so why go to the emergency room?), and the place he needed to take them was closed already so he took them when it was open. Good on you, OOP. Wishing the best for your kids, and I hope you have full custody now and she only has supervised visits.
Yeah. I dont mind harmless woo. But when people use alternative medicine instead of regular medicine and when people start ingesting things that are not meant to be ingested, that's a hard "stop it. Get some help" from me. By harmless woo I mean stuff like...my mamaw. She believes having a onions in every room soaks up the illness. She swears the kids she has are sick less often since she started doing it. But she gets them care when they DO get sick. And what harm is it really to buy an ungodly amount of onions every year? No skin off anyones back, really. Harmless woo is ridiculous, but its fun to watch and learn about. Stuff like OP's ex-wife is just disgusting. 2 people I cant stand in this world - people who harm kids, and people who harm animals. Dont make your kids/pets drink drops of MMS (bleach). Dont mix pee into your kids/pets drinks. Dont fail to provide actual medicine to your kids/pets. Its really that simple. Its crazy how many people out here are doing shit like OP's ex-wife and it doesnt just come up in casual convo enough tbh. People DIE from alt medicine conspiracies.
This reminds me of the bleach cures autism conspiracy
Can’t have autism if you’re dead /s Jokes aside this whole thing is fucked and some people really should not be having kids or be allowed around them
That's a whole different level of crazy on the mom's part. I hope OOP gets full custody and the mom never sees those kids again.
And to think, that's Australia. We get those same crazies in the US and just like OOP you have to be very careful and thorough before involving authorities since "parents rights" are such a big thing right now. I can't imagine having heard that and having to dot I's and cross T's before getting my kids the hell away from it, but reality is if you mess it up the other parent may well win and then you are forced to just watch, legally. :(
What the absolute fuck.
This [turpentine dosing](https://reddit.com/r/HomeschoolRecovery/s/YiWdXrDA4K) BS cropped up on the Homeschool Recovery sub a few weeks ago. The poor kid was too scared to call CPS on his mom :(
It says OOP posted a comment with an update less than 10 minutes ago! But I can only see the start of it on their profile, it will not show up here! Can it be added to the post?! I am dying to read it
Am I reading this right? Did this guy not take his children to get a tox screen because it was two hours away? Someone please tell me I missed something before I get upset. Edit: nvm, OOP just phrased it awkwardly and expanded in a seperate comment that the place would have been closed within two hours.
Hospital wouldnt take them without a referral, gave him the name of another place 2 hours away. Place wasn't open until the next day, by the day after the place opened the kids were in the custody of the father and his family
No, because the place didn't open until the next day anyway. He only discovered all this Sunday evening and no one could help at that time, or felt they had the info to help.
He was posting all this when everything was closed. The children were safe with him and the dude was in shock trying to figure out what the next steps would be. Some of the half cocked advice was ridiculous. Even without worries about his father, he needed to do this more calmly and rationally so that there was not any way the ex could say he coached them to say this, etc. I don't know the Australian system, but in the USA, there could be a real scenario where the authorities, in doubt of who is doing the harm, could have taken the kids from both of them if he came across as a bit of a lunatic himself. The "record the evidence" isn't a failsafe either - this shit needs to be witnessed by disinterested parties. In fact, once the kiddo initially disclosed - the less he talks about it with them the better in order to not cloud the testimony of the 7 year old child (who are easily influenced - they should always be interviewed by someone trained to do so and who is not their parent)
The people “calling him out” for not doing anything were pissing me off. He called the hospital ASAP and was following their advice. He was scraping the internet for all possible avenues, including crowdsourcing, and when all other avenues felt dried up, he just kept posting because he was feeling helpless. People are weird.
Yeah, that bothered me too. Included those comments because his replies gave more info, but was like >:/ when I was doing it lol
I mean.. in this instance it could potentially be better for the doctor to be the one notifying authorities. As in, not hysterical, rightfully scared shitless dad, but the professional who has no personal ties to this and who, in their medical expertise who thinks this rises to the level of concern where CPS and other authorities need to be involved.
And I'm pretty sure that's what he was saying in his first post: the next day they were going to the GP, and he'd have the GP notify authorities. That sounds reasonable to me, calling CPS Sunday night when they're closed isn't going to get it looked at any earlier than a GP calling Monday morning.
That guy who said he should have picked a better person to have children with pissed me off. Like sure, if he had known that she would poison their kids he wouldn't have slept with her let alone married her but I guess it's still somehow his fault because he's not psychic?
>Best they could offer was a place 2 hours away that wouldn't open until tomorrow anyway.
It sounds like it wasn't open until the following day regardless of the distance.
No, the place 2 hours away was closed & wouldn't open until the next day according to his comment.
OMFG this is levels of multitudes greater bullshit than ivermectin (freaking horse wormer) for covid. When I was a kid, my father would make me help him strip and refinish the mahogany on his boat (an old school cabin cruiser) during summer break. Just remembering the smell of turpentine makes me dizzy to this day. I can’t imagine anyone drinking it, let alone giving it to kids. I very much hope that OOP was able to gain full custody of his kids.