by Peggy Walker
- Published: Friday, April 05 2013 17:00
Every April I scramble (like all other AWB astronomers) to make plans to jump in to GAM. The longer I am involved with AWB, the more I appreciate the “placebo effect” I experience every year.
A Placebo by definition is a substance given that evokes a sense of well being for an ailment – but it does not have any true medicinal qualities and does not cure. These placebos are used quite frequently in the medical industry to check the viability of a drug during their testing process. When I dug deeper, I found the word deception, for it said that, “there is a level of deception involved because no one knows who has the real drug or the placebo – a simple sugar pill.”
All this process really demonstrates is the true power of the human will and mind….
I have stated all of this, to say that I look forward to my month of not having to face the world and all that ails it. So I take my GAM pill and share my sense of well-being with those in my local community and the world at large. I look forward to the huge network of people, (all who take their dose of their GAM pill too) and all embark on our sense of well-being together. Miraculously my symptoms of not wanting to hear all that is going on everywhere else via news casts disappears when I connect with my friends a broad.
Gone are the sick feelings of wars and rumors of wars, economic dips and valleys, pandemics, natural disasters, sick folks with guns, healthcare issues……….. I can go on and on. But I am excited that I can escape into the cosmos with other like minded GAM pill popping people.
In regards to the second part of the definition, ”has no true medicinal qualities and does not cure,” that just falls back on the power of the human mind and will of any person. People can, and do accomplish anything they set their minds on. The fact that we can talk and communicate via emails, telephones, cell phones, Skype, blogging twitter, etc, was someone’s “mind” at work.
Of course we have no mechanism to derive data to prove if there is absolutely no cure…. But to change the thinking of one person, to be more open-minded, patient, friendly, caring and reach out from the comfort of their borders to another person, cannot be measured anyway. But somehow year after year, we have more people commenting how they experienced a sense of well being during GAM.
Truth be told, after every GAM, I have to say that there really is a “curative” potential at work.
So maybe our GAM placebo that we take to escape the world’s ills, is more powerful than we thought. The placebo effect I wind up having every April is that GAM restores my faith in mankind. And that is a pretty healthy outcome, because after all, it is “One People – One Sky.’
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Peggy Walker is AWB’s U.S. National Coordinator, N.C. Network Coordinator, Co-Chair GAM Working Groups – Observing and People With Disabilities, GAM Blogger
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