Shayla Love

Last month, during Elon Musk’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, as he hoisted a chain saw in the air, stumbled over some of his words, and questioned whether there was really gold stored in Fort Knox, people on his social-media platform, X, started posting about ketamine.
Musk has said he uses ketamine regularly, so for the past couple of years, public speculation has persisted about how much he takes, whether he’s currently high, or how it might affect his behavior.

In a Massachusetts cellar in 1873, Lydia Pinkham first brewed the elixir that would make her famous. The dirt-brown liquid, made from herbs including black cohosh and pleurisy root, contained somewhere between 18 and 22 percent alcohol—meant as a preservative, of course. Within a couple of years, Pinkham was selling her tonic at $1 a bottle to treat “women’s weaknesses.” Got the blues? How about inflammation, falling of the womb, or painful menstruation? Lydia E.

You probably remember when you took your last shower, but if I ask you to examine your routine more closely, you might discover some blank spots. Which hand do you use to pick up the shampoo bottle? Which armpit do you soap up first?
Bathing, brushing your teeth, driving to work, making coffee—these are all core habits. In 1890, the psychologist William James observed that living creatures are nothing if not “bundles of habits.

In 1829, the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham invented a cracker made from coarse wheat that he believed would help restore American health. He lamented the “miserable trash” that made up the average diet, especially white bread, and thought his eponymous crackers would curtail masturbation, which he deemed deleterious to both moral and physical well-being. (As someone who condemned sweet treats, he would have seen the s’more as an abomination.

A person who is “on the couch” is known to be in therapy, but most therapists these days don’t ask their clients to lie down. The first time mine did, I resisted. I didn’t want to be on display or unable to see her reactions. Plus, the idea seemed antiquated. Sigmund Freud was inspired to use the couch more than a century after observing dramatic hypnotherapy demonstrations by his teacher Jean-Martin Charcot.

Americans are anxious about the election. The American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey found that, as of August, politics was the leading cause of stress for seven out of 10 adults across party lines. In a poll from a mental-health-care company the same month, 79 percent of respondents reported that the presidential election made them feel anxious this year, and more than half thought about the election every day.

Ibogaine, a psychedelic compound found in plants native to central Africa, is notorious for the intensity of the trips it induces. Those who consume it are plunged into vivid hallucinations, often preceded by a loud buzzing noise, that last between 24 and 48 hours. In one case report, a 29-year-old woman from Gabon met her dead relatives, and later looked into a mirror and saw a woman crying and holding a baby.

Of the first three elements to appear after the Big Bang, only one is available to buy as a bath soak. The Sads Smashing Anti-Stress Bath Treatment, which comes in shiny silver packaging, lists lithium as an ingredient and promises to take users “from weighed down to mellowed out.” It’s one of dozens of over-the-counter lithium supplements that claim to support a healthy mood.

On a recent Sunday morning, I sat on a cushioned mat across from Sister True Vow, a Buddhist nun at Blue Cliff Monastery. I had traveled two hours north from Brooklyn to Pine Bush, New York, to seek her perspective on the human tendency to want. “Desire and craving mean forever running and grasping after something we don’t yet have,” Sister True Vow told me, making gentle but unwavering eye contact. There was something else I wanted to know about desire, though.