Life, Therapy, and the Pursuit of Wellness: 12 Things We Tried To Feel Better

Hormones, healing touch, magic mushrooms, IVs, and more.

For all its prevalence in our culture, “wellness” is a frustratingly vague term. What is it, exactly? Spa days? Yoga? “Alignment,” as if you need to bring yourself into the shop for your 80,000-mile tune-up? We can agree that wellness encompasses more than just physical health, although that’s a big part of it. What about other kinds of health—emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, chemical—and the cocktail of practices, treatments, and levels of awareness that gets us there?

Let’s accept this as a starter and a given: There’s no formula. Everyone’s different. That settled, you can consider this package a wellness cocktail starter kit, less a prescription than a survey of options. It covers more territory than it would have a few years ago, because here’s another inarguable fact: COVID expanded our notion of what it means, and takes, to be well.

In the early months, wellness had a hard, preventive core: Do everything you can to not get sick. But day after day of isolation, disruption, and uncertainty drew us into other spaces, in our heads and out of doors. By choice and necessity, many of us rediscovered refuge in nature. The absence of connection sharpened the need for talk therapy. The legalization of substances that might have gotten us arrested a generation ago opened a new range of therapeutic possibilities.

And, if we’re being honest, some risk. We can’t vouch for all these services and treatments or guarantee you’ll see results. As with anything, we assume you’ll exercise sound judgment and know your needs and limitations. (Put another way: Your mileage may vary.) But the options are there to explore, and that may be another fixed point in a wide-open field: Whatever benefit you realize from any or all of these choices ultimately depends on you.

1. Cannabis-Infused Beverages

2. IV Hydration

3. Healing Touch for Pets

4. Hormone Therapy and Menopause Care

5. Nature as Therapy

6. Psilocybin Treatment

7. Psychotherapy for Men

8. Sober Curiosity

9 – 12. Cryotherapy, LED Light Therapy, Supplements, and Salt Therapy