Let me tell you a story.
Mexico circa 2019. I get off the plane in Mexico City, coming from Bogota, Columbia. I'm there to negotiate a large-scale deal or rather keep us from giving away the farm in a stupid large-scale deal, and my counter party is aggressive, and connected, so I am looking forward to this somewhat like tearing fingernails off with pliers. My colleague and I are met by our driver, my code word back then was Mr. Mike Salazar, not my real name, so we get our bags and hop in our black suburban. We are out of the airport 100 yards and are pincered to the curb by two Federal Police Suburban's, and all but one are wearing balaclavas and speak zero English. My Spanish is decent, my Portuguese better, a story for another time, but these folks are all business and immediately we are held with weapons at forehead, and it's blazing hot and the sweat is rolling. They tear the Suburban apart and then start in on our luggage. Coincidentally, that week my wife had suggested a new homeopathic vitamin regimen for me, always trying to make me healthier, and it's liquid format in small brown pharmaceutical bottles. When they find those, they come after me for narcotics and I am trying to explain they are "vitaminos" - not a fun moment. After two hours of this bullshit, and the continuing, call it pestering thought in my head that these cops are being paid by my counter party so I will miss the negotiation, and just getting tired of staring at the sweaty finger on the trigger of the HK MP5 pointed at my head, I say to the one guy not masked, "I've had enough of your bullshit, it's time to take us to jail, or take us to the US Embassy", I immediately get whacked in the leg with a baton, and told to shut up. What do you do when you are a stubborn Irish dude, you rinse and repeat. I just kept it up until the guy got tired of hitting me and decided to take action. Next thing you know, he looks at his watch, and signals his crew, and they are gone as fast as they showed up. I did end up validating it was a paid gig by my adversary, and I did keep us out of that crappy deal. Upon returning home, I told my wife, never again will I take some new-fangled vitamin thing on my foreign travels, which in that era were over a million miles a year, offshore about 80-% of the time. The morale of the story: vitamins are for pussies, an MP5 only hurts when it goes off and is pointed at you, and be a Lion, not a Lamb, as lambs get slaughtered on someone else's schedule, Lions walk across the divide to what's next when they choose.
