Hypodermic Needles and Blue Balls

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I told the story of finding blue balls on the beach, while running in Marina del Rey. I went for a run again on Tuesday but this time I wasn’t expecting to find any blue balls, since it hadn’t rained in the past two weeks.

When I run I sometimes listen to music, and then I sometimes randomly listen to spoken word such as stuff by Eckhart Tolle. During my run on Tuesday and Eckhart Tolle audio presentation came on called Touching the Eternal. So here I am running along the shoreline between Venice Beach and Marina del Rey (no Dolphins today) and listening to Eckhart talking about death, Western culture, and old people’s homes as ashrams and sacred places, and a blue ball washes up onto the shore just as one did two weeks before. I picked it up knowing that my Labrador would love it and kept on going.

I put in about another mile, while listening to tips on understanding the nature of the universe and entering a surrendered state, and I was in a nice rhythm when I saw the next object in the sand. I stopped to pick up what turned out to be a plastic lion and I was pondering the significance of this object. Is I blew the sand off of it, Eckhart Tolles voice said… you are aligned with the universe. I know I made a jump there comparing ‘lion’ with ‘aligned’ but it worked for me at the time. I smiled and put the lion in my pocket and kept on going.

I wasn’t necessarily planning on finding or picking up any other items until hypodermic needle washed up in front of me. It really is a lovely beach, but it’s amazing how much ‘trash’ washes up on the shoreline each and every day. There was a brief second where I didn’t pick up the needle because I must have felt it didn’t hold any significance and then I stopped to pick it up. I didn’t necessarily want to put it in my pocket, for fear of jabbing myself in the thigh, so I held it in my left hand and I kept on running.

Someone had asked me earlier that morning what I was doing to help the world be a greener place. I can tell you I’m not polluting the oceans with empty pharmaceutical bottles and discarded hypodermic needles. I don’t know if that needle was used to save someone’s life, end someone’s life, prolong someone’s life, enhance someone’s life, or destroy someone’s life, but I know it didn’t and up in the hands of a child walking along the beach.

Those living in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California probably don’t realize that items entering storm drains in places as far as Northridge, can travel many miles into the Ballona creek, and washing out into the Santa Monica Bay. Many of those items end up on Southern California coastal shorelines and they endanger the lives of dolphins, seals, fish, birds, wildlife, pets, and humans.

If you’re using hypodermic needles, please be conscientious of others, and dispose of them properly.