Andrew Weil: It has been difficult. As I moved from writing about addiction, drugs and consciousness, to writing about health and medicine, I soon realized this was no less a controversial area to operate in. When I first became interested in alternative medicine in the early ’70s and began writing about it, I saw the same kind of polarization I had seen around the drug issues. “You’re for it or against it!” There were very few people who were trying to bring science to bear on these questions, and carve out a kind of middle position. I have a very strong sense of my own — of what’s right — and I’m able to operate fairly independent of all that kind of storm that goes on. And maybe I would relate that to my upbringing, and as I said, being an only child and having learned to be independent, and think for myself, and operate on my own. I would say, more than difficult, it was lonely for a long time. Because there were not other doctors out there who were advocating the kinds of things that I was doing. And I was often attacked from both sides. From the alternative side for being too mainstream, and from the mainstream side for being too alternative.