Video: Finding Arizona

Dr. Weil recalls the early days of his medical practice, and how he came to make his home in Arizona.

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Video Transcript: Finding Arizona

So all the other Harvard M.D.s are beginning lucrative practices, I remember as late as the early 80’s you were talking about how your washing machine didn’t work or something and then basically you are leading a sort of Nomadic…

I didn’t have the money to fix it, the point of the story. Right, I was a freelance writer, mostly making a living as a freelance writer, and I had written a few books, but I was being a journalist, I financed my travel through journalism, I did some consulting work. I didn’t really practice medicine and, although, patients began showing up on my doorstep. They had read things I had written or heard me talk and they wanted my advice, and I discovered that I was very good at a few things. One was diagnosis, which I mostly do by listening to people carefully and asking questions, and I’m also good at what I call being a therapeutic marriage broker, knowing who goes with whom, how to arrange happy alliances between patients and practitioners whether that’s in the conventional world or beyond it.

Now where does Arizona enter the picture, why are you here? My car broke down here. What year was that? 1973, it was in February of a very warm, wet winter, the desert was in full bloom, it took 6 weeks to get, it was an English Land Rover that I had driven to South America, it took 6 weeks to get parts and I never left. So I would never imagine that I would be living in Arizona, it’s turned out to be a very good place for me.

Aside from your car breaking down, why else are you in Arizona? Well I was really entranced by the natural beauty here and the, I’d say the mystery, beauty of the desert, the flora and fauna here, and especially having grown up in a row house in Philadelphia, you can imagine, you know, how spectacular Arizona looked.