chiropracticum

For the first time in my life, i've allowed my vertebrae to be touched by a chiropractor. In general, i've always lumped spine professionals in with other medicos: snake-oil quacks happy to pick your pocket. Drug company lapdogs. As Carlin said, doctoring is just guesswork in a white coat. Some people have said wonderful things about chiropractors, but the biggest criticism i've heard is that they get you hooked. You need to return for undending readjustments, to stave off the aches and pains of skeletal life. So i've avoided them, just as i've avoided any doctor or drug.
But for the past few years, i've suspected that something in my neck has been out of alignment. When i would do stretching exercises, there were crackling noises in my neck. I adjusted by doing neck stretches from a handstand position. This diminished the crackling, but not entirely. Then last month i wrenched my neck, and was out of commission for over a week. For the first couple nights, my sleep was fitful due to the pain, and the act of raising my body from a prone position made me cry out. When i went to the chiropractor two weeks later, i'd resumed heavy labor, but the pain wasn't 100% gone.
The chiropractic experience was...not surprising, but fascinating. I felt pretty comfortable in the chiropractor's presence, he seemed a decent fellow. During the questioning period, he seemed to think that my blood pressure would be abnormally high, but this didn't turn out to be the case. After the preliminaries, came the moment we were all awaiting: me facedown on an inclined table. He touched and prodded, then warned me that something shocking was coming.
Indeed it was. He held my shoulder, and pushed my head a certain way. POP-PUH-DUH-POP-POP! He then did a mirror move on the right side of my neck, but this only produced a tiny pop. It wasn't...painful, but it wasn't exactly pleasant, either. It was a little exciting, i suppose, and it didn't feel like he had done anything wrong.
I walked away feeling quite bizarre. For the next couple days, i carried my head lightly, just on the off chance it might fall off.
The results? Positive, i reckon. The crackling in my neck seems to be mostly, if not entirely, gone. More compellingly, the remnants of pain i'd been feeling (when i read with two pillows under my head) are gone.
And though he did invite me back for future adjustments at half the price of the initial visit, he didn't sell me snake oil.
No, he gave it to me.
Anybody want some analgesic samples for $5 a pop?
(postscript: a couple months later, i still feel better and looser, yet there's a slight feeling of almost-injury which i can feel in my neck from time to time)