Liza May wrote:

> Do you think that toxins are stimulants because they are irritating? So the
> body tries to expel them? I'm trying to understand why and how the body
> handles something as a stimulant, when it might at another time be handled as
> a benign substance (say in the case of a food - for instance, today your body
> doesn't need apples, but today you were given an apple in your lunch box so
> you ate it.).

If your body can't use the nutrients in the apple, it considers them
toxic and tries to eliminate them, or it has to store them up as toxins
and they may become stimulatory, that is, they can trigger detox events
in nerve cells. Other cells may just die and be replaced, but nerve
cells repair portions of the cytoplasm. It's irony that the very things
that trigger needed detox events are toxic themselves. This is why
alcoholics in recovery tell active alcoholics to keep drinking until the
pain of the detox crises is sufficient that they want help.

My best, Ellie