Acupuncture has never called me, at least no more than acuripping, aculeeching, or acu-kicking-you-in-the-groin. Besides, if acupuncture worked so well, how come porcupines get sick?

But my headaches were that bad, and Dr. Lynn, my dealer, didn't know why.

"We can't figure out what's happening, Jason, so we're just going to rub some more insurance money on it and see what happens."

Dr. Lynn may have been sharp in his prime, but now you get the feeling that when he laughs too hard, he pees his pants just a little. Sure, he pokes around in your ear like other doctors, but does he remember what he's looking for or is he just keeping up appearances?

Lynn wouldn't refer me to a specialist until he had "explored all the options," by which he meant "billed for the maximum number of office visits." Finally, mercifully, he sent me to acupuncturist Cho Han-seung, who, bless his heart, did not mind my calling him Han Solo.

Cho is a gentle man who may or may not touch the ground when he walks. He drifts to the sound of wind chimes, quick but no hurry.

Unfortunately, we faced a communication barrier: Cho is a hundred percent Korean, and I'm fifty percent moron.

He waved at me to sit.

"I need check your purse," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Your purse. I need check purse."

Cho placed two fingers on my pulse, so I tossed my purse back down. We rolled over to the computer, where Cho snapped a photo of my eye. He measured my eyeball defects against a chart on the wall, making ah-so noises as he went. This is called "iridology," a science dating back to about the same time as schizophrenia.

"You have ploblem with stomach?" he asked.

"No."

"How 'bout lungs? Tlouble bleathing?"

"No, I have migraines."

Cho smiled warmly. He had no idea what I meant.

And with that we floated to a room that smelled like the inside of a health pill. Cho laid me down and asked me to stare at a bulls-eye on the ceiling. He had a good explanation for this; I just didn't understand it.

Cho assured me that his needles were --

OUCH!

Cho smiled warmly and pricked me again.

Acupuncture functions on the principle of distraction: A headache will always go away when someone is JABBING YOU WITH NEEDLES.

"Lelax," said Cho, humming in Korean. "First needle worst."

Cho got to pecking pretty quickly at the language, and from what I could tell, my headaches would either disappear altogether or I would die in three weeks.

Wait ... No ... He wanted me to visit three times a week, which is roughly more often than I report to work. So it goes.

When Cho finished, there were spikes in my eyebrows, between my toes, and in places that I wouldn't dare look. But he was right -- after that initial sting, it wasn't too bad. Staring at the big red dot in the sky, I nodded off for the most expensive nap in town.

Over the next week I started to feel -- and excuse the medical parlance -- funkadelic. My dreams were so intense that when I woke up, it took me a minute to recall my gender. I also got mushy over music and called friends that I hadn't seen since Purple Rain.

But ultimately I couldn't maintain the schedule. It's not that I overlook the value of Cho's work; it's just that he was seriously cutting into my sittin'-around time.

I just hope that Cho understands. God knows what that man could do with a voodoo doll.

My wife is a crackhead. She eats sunflower seeds by the silo -- chewing, spitting, crack-crack-cracking. I suppose she eats like a bird.

The seeds have nothing to do with it; Yahaira is after the salt. Glorious, iodized, vein-bloating salt. Each bag of seeds comes with enough sodium to kill the Niagara Falls.

But it's okay, see, because my wife has only "one more handful." That is the crackhead's mantra -- "one more handful." Yahaira has been on her last handful since August.

An important part of crack addiction is that you do not, for any reason, stop moving your lips. It dates back to Freud's oral stage, where people get hooked on things like sunflower seeds and, say, cigars.

Once Yahaira's teeth reach fifth gear, the best you can do is keep your hands and feet away. She crams in new seed even as the old falls out, a gerbil with one day to live.

Finally her jaws grow tired and she turns to me with those pouty lips and says, "Could you please take these from me?"

And I take the bag, saying, "Honey, is this moment perhaps a red flag for you?"

Yahaira doesn't answer. Her mouth isn't up to it.

We tried to wean her from the habit, but pumpkin seeds were too bland, peanuts were too oily, and she just didn't take to the morphine. I tried to scare her straight by swearing that the Morton Salt girl died of sodiumiatris, which first ravaged her girlish physique.

Yahaira considered this a moment, fondled her bag, and decided it was worth the risk. So it goes.
But I see the pain in her eyes and know that she longs for the freedom she knew in the days before lockjaw. Here is how she put it in one Barbara Walters moment:

"Each seed is like a chore on a to-do list, and when I get to the bottom of the bag, I feel a strange sense of accomplishment."

Strange sense indeed.

Yahaira is making efforts, bless her heart. She promised to eat seeds only in the car, her favorite hidey-hole. You'll find spent shells in her glove compartment, on the dashboard, in the carburetor...

That was all very well until Yahaira missed work while "trying to finish her bag." I listened to the story with an open mind -- sickness and health and all that -- then asked, "Now what if you lose your job? Would that be a red flag?"

Maybe it's time for an ambush. I could take Yahaira to a field where all her friends jump out from behind a billboard.

"I'm sorry, Love. This is not, in fact, Seed Fest '06. It's an intervention."

And though she'll hate us at first, her veins will finally return the blood to her brain and she will see that there are no elevators, only twelve steps.

If you or someone you love is a crackhead, please act now. Do not let it go as we have. The other day I found a bowl of shells beneath the living room couch. Confronted with the evidence, my wife lied with the conviction of O.J. Simpson.

"Those are definitely, one hundred percent, absolutely not my shells."

Left unchecked, your loved one could end up in some alley, hair turned to pedals, leaning pathetically toward the light. As people pass she will cry through puckered-shut lips, "Help me." A man will reach for a dollar, but his wife will stop him, saying, "No -- she'll only use it to buy more seed."

And then, at her absolute low, your loved one will grab his coat and say, "Can I at least lick your skin?"

So you see the urgency of this situation. My wife and I stand here with a banner reading "SOS," only her end keeps dropping while she reaches for the stash.

"One more handful... One more handful..."