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Weil rather enjoys his role as epistolary medicine man and most times would be perfectly content to spend his days answering his mail, writing his books and rarely leaving his desert redoubt, which he shares with his wife, their five-year-old daughter and his wife's three children by her first marriage. "I'm rather shy," Weil says. "If I had my druthers, I'd do most of my work without ever leaving home."
It's been a while, however, since Weil had his druthers; this year the congenitally shy physician has gone decidedly public. A recent, typical fortnight saw him making book-tour appearances in Miami on a Saturday, Austin on Sunday, Minneapolis the following Thursday, Chicago on Friday, Cincinnati on Tuesday and Phoenix the next Saturday. He has breezily chatted up hosts on morning talk shows, shared his thoughts on evening-newsmagazine shows and kept studio audiences captivated for 90 minutes at a stretch discussing nothing more dramatic than antioxidants, ginseng and the value of regular exercise. Weil's crinkly smile, easy manner and Father Christmas beard certainly help. But what really sells Andrew Weil is the good-health message he comes bearing; and what's most remarkable about that message is just how unremarkable it is.
Readers of Spontaneous Healing and 8 Weeks to Optimum Health are introduced to very little they haven't heard about before from other self-styled healers, including exceedingly familiar treatments like biofeedback and gingerroot, alternative medicine's universal solvents in which virtually all sickness is said to dissolve. No matter how many times consumers have been shown this shopping list of cures before, however, only a comparatively small percentage of them have expressed any interest. When Weil shows it to them, they tend to buy. Weil thinks he knows why.
"I think people are fed up," he says. "They want to be more in charge. Throughout the world there's a growing suspicion of non-natural things and a growing belief that Western medicine doesn't have all the answers. Perhaps I speak to that belief."
Many mainstream doctors aren't so sure, dismissing Weil as more huckster than healer. While this is almost certainly unfair, it's also true that for much of his life he has indeed had a perfect-pitch sense of how to attract attention to himself.
Weil's first brush with demi-fame came in 1962, when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. Writing for the Harvard Crimson, he fell into an unlikely assignment: poke around the psychology department and investigate rumors that students and professors there were openly experimenting with illegal drugs. The substance of choice was the so far little-known hallucinogen LSD. The professors providing it were the so far little-known Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary.
Weil recognized a scoop when he was handed one, and he struck a deal with the university administration: if the Crimson provided Harvard officials with enough information to help them get rid of Leary and Alpert, Harvard officials would keep the scandal quiet until Weil published his exclusive story. Harvard agreed, Weil went to work, and when he proved the rumors true, his subsequent Crimson articles caused such a stir that Look magazine commissioned him to write a similar piece for national publication. To the surprise of no one at Harvard, Leary and Alpert were soon forced out.