Melanie and Damion,
First of all, I am not a fully trained or professional macrobiotic, so though I have more than thirty-two years of personal experience, I can not take you Damion through all of the steps that you will need to heal yourself, macrobiotically.
For that, you will need a trained macrobiotic counselor and I can point you to two of them, one in Cincinnati:
Inner Spaces Unlimited LLC by Charley Kabenji,
and one in Cleveland:
The East West Center of Cleveland with Bob Carr
My perception is that you will probably want to be patient and heal slowly as the discharge will be so close to your brain and other crucial organs in your head.
Taking an extreme step like going "cold turkey" or quitting smoking, and changing your diet drastically might be okay, I feel, if you are relatively healthy, but for someone like yourself, who is very sick, it could be quite detrimental.
Though the diet you will be moving to will be one consisting of organically grown whole grains, temperate climate vegtables, legumes, sea vegetables, dark leafy greens, and pickled vegetables in additional to a variety of nourishing soups, I feel that you make the change gradual so that your discharge will be gradual and less discomforting.
Smoke less dope and cigarettes each day, as you are eating less meat and dairy and gradually, add macrobiotic foods to your daily regimen.
If you are smoking regular or menthol cigarettes, then I recommend switching to natural cigarettes like
American Spirit so that you can be ingesting less chemical additives, perservatives, flavorings, and stuff that is usually added to most commercial cigarettes.
Decide on a plan than is most comfortable like smoking one less cigarette every one, two, or three days depnding on what you feel you can do as you are also gradually reducing the dope, meat and dairy.
Start eating miso soup using a light sweet organic miso in the early days and gradually work your way up to darker, stronger, healing
miso.
Besides the gradual inclusion of tofu and tempeh in you diet, start to include a little bit (about a sixth of whatever amount of whole grains you eat) of either
aduki beans, chickpeas, lentils, or black soybeans (if you can't find them then black beans will be alright) in your daily rotation.
If you don't already have these two books:
The Self-Healing Cookbook: A Macrobiotic Primer for Healing Body, Mind and Moods With Whole Natural Foods by Kristina Turner
and
The Macrobiotic Path to Total Health: A Complete Guide to Preventing and Relieving More Than 200 Chronic Conditions and Disorders Naturally
by Michio Kushi and Alex Jack , get them.
And then thoroughly skim both of them before seeng a counselor so it can be easier for him or her to explain what is going on and what you will need to do.
And later, you will use these books to help you cook, continue your healing process, and keep your eye on the proverbial ball.
Macrobiotics is not a quick fix so you will have to be ready to change a little bit a day at a time (remember, Damion, you did not get this way over night, so you will not alleviate your condition, overnight!).
And again, if the counselor says anything that contradicts anything I've said, listen to them, they are trained professionals with a lot of experience helping others heal themselves.
Thank you, very much.
Get and be well!
Bruce Paine