What is the effect of drinking blood vs adrenochrome?
There are thousands of people drinking blood in the US alone
Was the blood-feeding a religious ritual, a delusion, or a fetish? Before he had met any vampires, Browning suspected they had just blurred the line between fact and fiction. “I’d assumed that these people were bonkers and had just read too many Anne Rice novels.”
By the time he had offered himself as a donor, however, his opinions had taken a U-turn. Many real-life vampires have no belief in the paranormal and have little more than a passing knowledge of True Blood or Dracula; nor do they appear to have any psychiatric issues. Instead, they claim to suffer from a strange medical condition – fatigue, headaches, and excruciating stomach pain – which, they believe, can only be treated by feeding on another human’s blood.
“There are thousands of people doing this in just the US alone, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s a fad,” says Browning. Their symptoms and behaviour are a genuine mystery…
Perhaps now the vampire community is opening to outsiders, scientific enquiry will be able to explore these questions and finally offer some answers. In the meantime, a group of vampires, led by Kinesia, are taking the first steps themselves. Using commercial companies such as 23andme and uBiome, for instance, she is starting to profile the genes and microbiomes of other med sangs. “The point of inquiry is not about validation for our ‘vampirism’. It is to find more socially practical ways to fulfil whichever deficiency or need that we ultimately have, basically we are seeking more treatment options,” says CJ!.
Whatever they find, Browning’s encounters have taught him that we should treat them with the same respect we afford other minority groups. “When I first went into the study, I just assumed I’d meet kooky people, but within a year, I realised that vampires didn’t have the problem. It’s us non-vampires that have had the perceptual problem.”
Just because we don’t yet understand their experiences, doesn’t mean we should scorn them or dismiss them out of hand, he argues. The vampire identity is, after all, a way for some people to cope with mysterious and debilitating feelings. “What’s happening to them is real. We don’t understand what it is, and they don’t understand what it is – but they are doing their best to deal with it.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151021-the-people-who-drink-human-blood