Wellbeing

It's a classic conundrum: You're in the mood to smoke, but you also need to drive to meet up with a friend in your pod tonight. Sure, you can sort of predict how long your high will last based on factors like the concentration of…

This last week in a tiny pharmacy, I was vaccinated against COVID-19 — a once in a lifetime upgrade, via Moderna. The shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, or Johnson & Johnson would also have been welcome, too, of course. While I waited for my turn to get…

The latest vaccine drama here in the U.S. seems to involve figuring out the exact risk of side effects. Three states — Georgia, Colorado, and Michigan — recently shut down Johnson & Johnson vaccine sites after some people had adverse reactions. But…

Fashion Nova’s recent, oblivious text encouraging customers to spend their stimulus checks on its latest sale confirmed my irking suspicion: that our current financial reality is a confusing one. We’re just beginning to crawl out of an era that…

If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what would it be? Would you choose to be nine years old, absolved of life’s most tedious responsibilities, and instead able to spend your days playing with friends and practicing your times…

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on my sleep cycle and I cannot function on low sleep. So lately, I've been using bedtime stories to fall asleep. Yes: I allow people with soothing voices on an app to lull me to sleep. A lot of other people have caught…

The thick sauce of boredom and dread I’ve been marinating in throughout the pandemic has manifested itself in some … interesting ways. Random crying spells. Nightmares. Ridiculously long hikes. A few weeks ago, I decided to channel it into something…

A loved one of mine recently gifted me a jar of aromatic rose tea, a current wellness influencer fan fave. I was thrilled, not only because the tea itself — made from actual petals and buds of a rose bush — is beautiful, but also because the notion…

Despite the fact that mental illness is quite common, it’s still heavily stigmatized across cultures and sometimes even challenging to diagnose and treat. Even if you are lucky enough to have good behavioral health care, your doctor has to combine…

Whether baked as chips into a cookie, melted into a sweet warm drink or molded into the shape of a smiling bunny, chocolate is one of the world’s most universally consumed foods. Even the biggest chocolate lovers, though, might not recognize what…

I came out as nonbinary nine months ago, in what felt like a euphoric frenzy of personal liberation. But despite the fact that I’m very public about being queer and gender non-conforming and clear about my pronouns, I get “she”-ed every day — often…

Early on, Basma Eid, the national programs manager at Freedom To Thrive, an abolitionist organization, realized the pandemic contained a sort of blessing in disguise. Without general life demands taking her away from home, it became easier for Eid…

Over the course of the pandemic, researchers have sought to understand the lingering effects of coronavirus on survivors’ mental health. Now, new research has surfaced more details on these effects, as well as their frequency. A study published in…

Calling this past year a long and arduous one is quite the understatement, but with President Biden’s most recent move to open up vaccinations to a broader demographic, hope is finally on the horizon. According to CDC statistics, as of Mar. 30,…

Doing your taxes during a pandemic is stressful enough. Filing your taxes for the first time during a pandemic can feel even more stressful. Before you start spiraling, though, some words of reassurance: “As a young person, it’s actually pretty…

More and more states are loosening restrictions on cannabis to varying degrees, with New York becoming the 15th state to legalize the herb for adult recreational use last week. Ensuring the safety and potency of cannabis products remains a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a number of new behaviors into daily routines, like physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitizing. Meanwhile, many old behaviors such as attending events, eating out and seeing friends have been put on…

At Toledo Correctional Institution in Ohio, a state with one of the highest rates of coronavirus deaths among incarcerated people, Johnnie Cook has been taking diligent notes. Since the prison reported its first positive case in early April 2020,…

I love reading books. I love sex. Naturally, you might think that means I love reading books about sex — otherwise known as literary erotica. You would be wrong. It’s not that I have anything against erotica as a literary genre; in fact, I’m 100% in…