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  • Can I Tell Someone They Need Therapy?

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    You’ve seen the signs for months: the spiraling texts, the ill-timed meltdowns, the same painful story on repeat. You care about this person. You’re exhausted by this person. And you’re starting to wonder: Can you tell them they need therapy?

    The short answer is “yes,” experts agree. But the delivery makes all the difference. “It needs to happen in a very gentle and vulnerable way,” says Melissa Gluck, a psychologist in New York whose clients often ask her how to suggest that their boyfriend, best friend, or mom go to therapy. “Your vulnerability is the greatest asset you have when you’re trying to encourage someone else to be vulnerable.”

    We asked experts how to suggest that your loved one try therapy without pushing them away.

    Setting expectations

    Almost anyone could benefit from seeing a therapist, but certain signs suggest it’s time to move from “maybe someday” to “sooner rather than later.” If your friend or family member is struggling to keep up with daily responsibilities, constantly ruminating about relationship issues, or expressing a sense of hopelessness, consider bringing it up, says Francesca Emma, a therapist in New York. The same is true if you’ve noticed a consistent shift in mood. “It’s not just having a bad day. When you see someone you love with either a really anxious mood shift or a depressing mood shift,” it’s time to urge them to seek help, she says.

    Some people—especially those in older generations—aren’t sure what therapy entails; or, they picture a Freudian-like scene featuring a patient stretched out on a leather couch while a silent analyst takes notes. It can be helpful to explain exactly what to expect. Therapy isn’t just about talking through feelings; rather, it often centers on practical skill-building. Therapists teach their clients how to set boundaries, express their needs clearly, navigate conflict, recognize unhealthy dynamics, repair after disagreements, and much more. “We’re not fixing you,” Emma says. “We’re helping make you a better version of yourself.”

    Read More: The Worst Things to Say to Someone With OCD—and What to Say Instead

    Your friend might protest that they already have people to talk to—hello, aren’t they in conversation with you? When that happens, remind them that having supportive friends isn’t the same as having professional support. “Therapy isn’t the place where you’re just venting about all the things that are wrong,” Gluck says. While she’s happy to listen to people blow off steam when they need to, therapy is so much more than letting it all out to a sympathetic ear. “It’s about having a space where you have someone who’s in the driver’s seat who’s going to help guide you through whatever problem you’re going through, and help shift your perspective,” she says. “They’re going to ask you meaningful questions. They’re going to challenge you when you’re feeling really resistant, and they’re going to push you to get out of your comfort zone and grow.”

    Finding the right words

    When you approach your friend or family member, keep your tone casual yet straightforward. Gluck suggests wording your initial check-in like this: “Hey, I feel like we’ve been talking about X, Y, and Z a lot, and I’ve noticed you’re really struggling. I’ve struggled like this in the past, and I tried therapy and it’s really helped. Would you want to explore that?”

    The more you open up about your own experience with therapy, the better, Gluck says. You don’t need to reveal the nitty-gritty of what your sessions focus on, but a bit of personal context can go a long way toward easing their resistance. For example: “I thought it would be scary, too, and it actually isn’t.” 

    If you feel like your partner could benefit from therapy—and you’re having a tough time in your relationship because they’re not working on themselves—it can help to explain how their stress is affecting you, too. Gluck suggests leading with empathy: “You’ve been dealing with all that stuff with your family, and I’m feeling like it’s taking away from our relationship. That’s making me scared and sad. You know how much I love you and want to be with you, and it’s really important to me that you take care of yourself and have a space outside of our relationship to talk about this.”

    Read More: The Worst Thing to Say to Someone Who’s Depressed

    No matter which exact words you choose, focusing on “I” statements is key, Emma stresses. For example, you might say: “I hear what you’re saying right now, and it sounds really difficult. I think a therapist might be able to help with that.”

    “You” statements, on the other hand—“You need help”—rarely land well. “The minute we use that word, it takes on more of a defensive nature,” she says. “To someone who can’t handle constructive criticism, it feels as though there’s something wrong with them, or they did something wrong.”

    There are other harmful comments to avoid, too. “You definitely don’t want to say, ‘You’re crazy,’ or ‘You’re never going to get better if you don’t get therapy,’” Emma says. Ultimatums and threats don’t work. They’ll only drive the person you care about deeper into defensiveness.

    When to drop it

    In order to benefit from therapy, somebody has to want to be there. Gluck has had plenty of clients shuffle into her office because their parents or romantic partner pressured them to make an appointment, yet they weren’t actually open to the idea. “If you’re not invested, you’re not going to get anything out of it,” she says. “Don’t force anyone.”

    If your friend is adamant that therapy won’t help them, Emma suggests letting the conversation go. “You put it out there and let it simmer, because if you continue to go back and forth, it’s like you’re the expert in something,” she says. “We are not the expert in someone else’s life.”

    Gluck, meanwhile, is partial to this phrasing when someone resists: “I totally get that—I used to feel the same way. Sometimes it’s nice to have a third party, but if you’re really not interested right now, I’ll drop it.” Or you could keep it short and sweet: “No worries, it was just a suggestion.”

    Read More: Stop Saying These 5 Things to People With Social Anxiety

    If a few weeks or months pass, and your loved one is still struggling, it’s OK to try again. Gluck recommends bringing it up like this: “I know we talked about therapy a couple months ago. It sounds like whatever you’re going through is still really intense, and I think it’s time we figure out a plan, because you shouldn’t have to live like this.”

    “It’s all coming from, ‘This isn’t fair to you to be living with your head like this,’” she says. “There could be another path.”

    When and where to bring it up

    You don’t need to wait for the perfect environment to start talking about therapy. Whenever and wherever the topic comes up organically or feels natural is best. “As mental-health professionals, we’re really pushing toward destigmatizing therapy,” Gluck says. She wants more people to normalize mental-health care as part of everyday life. “If you’re at dinner and someone’s talking, you could just be like, ‘Hey, have you thought about therapy? I feel like you would really like it,’” she says.

    If you dramatically pull someone aside, on the other hand, and tell them you need to have a talk, they’ll probably be freaked out by your serious tone—and are less likely to respond well to your suggestion. It risks turning a supportive nudge into a confrontation.

    “This doesn’t need to be a life-or-death conversation. You’re having a conversation with someone you love and talking about this really normal, healthy thing,” Gluck says. “If your friend came to you and said they were getting migraines and they were feeling nauseous all the time, you would say, ‘You need to go to a neurologist. Go see a doctor right now.’ Let this be the exact same thing.”

    Wondering what to say in a tricky social situation? Email timetotalk@time.com

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    Angela Haupt

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  • Inside the Growing Scientist Migration to Europe

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    It all started promisingly enough. French biologist Gabriela Lobinska had enjoyed her Ph.D. training, researching how organisms change over time. Arriving at Harvard Medical School in September 2024, she hoped for more of the same. She planned to look at how, over the course of a lifetime, healthy cells change into diseased ones.

    Donald Trump won the presidential election shortly after her arrival, and before long, things went downhill. In the spring, the grant paying her salary—along with thousands of others—was cut. In April, the White House proposed cutting by 40% the budget of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the country. Then the government withdrew Harvard’s ability to provide visas for international researchers like Lobinska. While a court allowed Harvard to sponsor visas for the time being, Lobinska was questioning why she was in the U.S. “There are places where I could go to do science,” she recalls thinking, “without all this.”

    Soon she had a job offer from AITHYRA, a new institute for biomedicine and AI in Vienna. And when she heard of a new Austrian fellowship called APART-USA—specifically for people leaving American institutions, with a generous four years of research funding—she applied, and got it.

    Now, she lives in the city where, before Vienna’s scientific community was devastated by World Wars I and II, blood types were discovered, cosmic rays were first identified, and psychoanalysis was born. All around her are architectural remnants of those heady days, like the 1910 Art Nouveau observatory on the edge of the Danube Canal—reminders that a place’s status as a scientific powerhouse is only as secure as the geopolitics that surrounds it.

    Read More: Why Michael J. Fox Sees Parkinson’s as a ‘Gift That Keeps on Taking’

    Lobinska is just the kind of scientist that Heinz Fassmann, president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, hoped to lure to Austria with the APART-USA fellowship. He saw the instability in the U.S., while regrettable for science, as an opportunity for Austria to reclaim some of this scientific glory. If the U.S. keeps cutting budgets, he says, we will keep scooping up the good people. By September 2025, 25 candidates had been accepted, including Lobinska. 

    The APART-USA fellows weren’t the only ones looking beyond U.S. borders. Nature, a leading science journal, reported in April 2025 that through the job board it maintains, “U.S. scientists submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad between January and March 2025 than during the same period in 2024.” U.S. page views of job postings abroad also spiked: “In March alone, as the administration intensified its cuts to science, views rose by 68% compared with the same month last year,” Nature wrote.

    It goes on. In May 2025, the E.U. granted 500 million euros in funding for the “Choose Europe” initiative, intended to help draw international researchers. In April, the president of Germany’s Max Planck Society announced the Max Planck Transatlantic Program, stating it will include roles for researchers who are looking to leave the U.S. The French government also revealed 100 million euros in funding to attract international scientists.

    “The United States profited from the migration flow of highly qualified persons, decades after the Second World War,” Fassmann says. “And now, it’s maybe the first time that we can move around this migration direction—that Europe can profit from the talents that are educated in the United States.”

    The U.S. wasn’t always a magnet for scientists. “Hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America in 1840. In the late 19th century, Germany was the global leader in scientific research. It would be quite some time before the image of Americans as unimaginative backwoodsmen began to shift, and in the early 20th century, apart from agricultural research, American science was often supported by philanthropy and individual states, rather than by the federal government.

    Heinz Faßmann, President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, spearheaded in
    2025 the fellowship program, APART-USA, to attract top researchers from the U.S. to Austria.     Koekkoek for TIME

    After the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, however, European researchers—including Albert Einstein, most famously—headed in greater numbers to the U.S. In 1939, just before war was declared, Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Germany had the brain-power and resources to create atomic weapons. FDR responded with the Manhattan Project, which employed many fleeing physicists and eventually developed the atomic bomb. Congress had new respect for the possibilities of research after that, and the flow of scientists into the U.S. accelerated.

    By the mid-20th century, the U.S. had turned into a haven for international talent. Before the war, American science had been notably less hierarchical than in many European institutions. Instead of having to spend years as an assistant to a senior professor, as in Germany, a young professor in America was largely a free agent, explains Daniel Kevles, a retired science historian at Yale University: “There was a great deal of freedom to do what you wanted.” And after the war, European science lay in shambles; there was no comparison between what awaited European scientists in the U.S. and what they could do at home.

    The U.S. also had an unusually large system of nationally funded labs, notable for their dedication to basic research. The peculiar openness of American society—scientists could bring their families and become citizens—added to the appeal, says Catherine Westfall, a science historian now retired from Michigan State University.

    Read More: The New Way to Predict Your Risk of a Heart Attack

    This was part of a particular mindset in the government, explains sociologist of science Olof Hallonsten of Sweden’s Lund University. “You maintain a big brain trust in the universities, in these big research centers, and you let people do more or less what they want,” he says, “because when the time comes that this whole brain trust needs to be mobilized…we can then pool all these resources into specific problem solving.”

    To be sure, American science has had its ups and downs. Senator Joseph McCarthy targeted scientists in his 1950s red-baiting campaign, including prominent figures like physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The center of gravity for nuclear physics moved back to Europe after American funding for a new collider collapsed in 1993. And it has never been unusual for researchers trained in the U.S.—American or otherwise—to move abroad, taking a job wherever their particular flavor of science is in demand. But in recent years, U.S. public and private sources were the largest funders of all research and development on the planet, and the country was a net importer of scientists. For many scientists, the U.S. had become a hub, where many were educated and hoped to stay.

    Now, that status may be shifting. Italian physicist Andrea Urru moved to the U.S. in 2023 to work on magnetism at Rutgers University. He was considering the possibility of securing a faculty position in the U.S., at the same time that he looked at jobs closer to home. “Developing an academic career in this country would be absolutely great,” he says. However, after the National Science Foundation, a major funder of basic science, came under threat from government cuts last year, that option “became even fainter, and I decided to direct my efforts towards getting funds in Europe.” Urru will soon move to the University of Cagliari in Sardinia.

    American geneticist Audrey Lin studies evolution using ancient DNA, with a particular focus on how dogs were domesticated. In the spring of 2025, when she was applying, “the job situation in the U.S. was very unstable, with a lot of faculty job searches being canceled or postponed,” she says. But “science doesn’t stop. I’ve spent almost a decade of my life training and working on my research, and this is what I’ve chosen to dedicate my life to. And I have to go where I can do this.” She too is now an APART-USA fellow, and arrived in Austria in February.

    Europe likely can’t compete with what the U.S. traditionally spends on science. As a whole, the continent funds about 20% of the world’s research and development, compared with the U.S.’s roughly 29%, according to numbers compiled by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. What’s more, large investments in basic science are usually the purview of a rapidly growing economy, Hallonsten says, which Europe’s is not. “The reason that China has been investing so much in science and technology in the past 20 to 30 years, of course, is that they have the money. They need to invest in something,” he says. “The same thing was true for the United States after World War II.” China now funds around 28% of the world’s R&D, but Hallonsten and other experts aren’t convinced the country will build a similar research environment to that of the U.S. Many researchers moving to China from abroad these days are U.S.-educated Chinese scientists, says Deborah Seligsohn, a professor of political science at Villanova University—people returning home, rather than immigrants.

    But Europe can try to provide some of what has historically been appealing about American science. At the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, in the Vienna Woods, new buildings have been springing up like mushrooms of steel and glass, labs where that culture of freedom is being carefully cultivated.

    Read More: 8 Phrases That Will Instantly Get Your Doctor’s Attention

    Italian biologist Elia Mascolo, who uses information theory to study how genes work, was attracted by the cluster of researchers already at ISTA. Working with specific people was also why he had spent four years in the U.S., and why he might have stayed longer if the right job had come along. But when the APART-USA fellowship was announced, he signed on. “It’s so niche, my research,” he says, sitting in a glass-walled pavilion on the campus, which is studded with quirky public art and bridges between buildings. It’s a common refrain among scientists: they have to go where the funding and support for their specific work is. 

    What does the U.S. stand to lose, if it is no longer a hub for science? “I think what we’re going to see now is a dispersal of scientific talent, and I think that’s costly, not just to the United States, but to the world,” says Seligsohn. “If you think about a long-term history of global development, there’s usually been a scientific hub when there are a lot of advances, whether that hub was Paris or Berlin or the United States.” As well, work from economists who study technological innovation has found that it increasingly depends on basic science. Since 1975, the percentage of new U.S. patents drawing on federally funded science has roughly tripled, to nearly a third of all patents filed.

    What the U.S. gives up, others stand to take. Fassmann says that Austria is not rescuing these scientists—it’s making a calculated attempt to redirect the flow of scientific migration.

    Since Trump took office in January 2025, nearly 8,000 research grants have been canceled or frozen, and around 25,000 federal scientists and employees of research agencies have lost their jobs, Nature has reported. The effects are still rippling through American institutions, and the long-term consequences of this upheaval remain to be seen.

    However unstable the landscape is for scientists in the U.S., there’s no guarantee of solid ground abroad, either. The world is a tumultuous place. Westfall, the American science historian, attended a recent physics meeting at CERN, one of the world’s largest institutions for scientific research. She sensed that European scientists also did not feel particularly at ease. “Everybody is feeling the insecurity about Russia and Ukraine,” she says, and there are fears that government spending in Europe might increasingly turn toward defense at the expense of funding for science.

    The picture in the U.S. continues to be uncertain and hard to read. There have been some changes since Lobinska’s stressful spring: Harvard enrolled a record number of international students in 2025, and Congress has pushed back against the budget proposed by the Administration, refusing many funding cuts to science. In the meantime, scientists continue to have to decide where they are going to take their work, each one making the call on where they think they’ll best be able to thrive.

    For chemist Yasin El Abiead, an APART-USA fellow, leaving the U.S. led to a homecoming. He grew up not far from Vienna and was educated there; he spent several years in the U.S. mainly because he, like Mascolo, wanted to work with a particular researcher. “[The U.S.] is where the money is, and that’s what brings more people there,” he says on a cold morning in January in his new lab. “That’s how it rolls. And if that ever turns around…I don’t know.” He sighs.

    Finally he puts words to what’s on his mind. “All the greatest researchers used to be in Germany,” he says, and in other parts of Europe. “You can still see many of these old buildings in Vienna…Austria was huge in science.” At the University of Vienna, in the chemistry department, there still stands a lecture hall that looks just as it did when Einstein was photographed attending a lecture there, not all that long before Nazis took over the country.

    The U.S. is where people go to do science, for the moment. “But things change,” El Abiead says. “Let’s see what happens.”

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    Veronique Greenwood

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  • IRC 280E Still Applies to Your Marijuana Business, Unfortunately – Canna Law Blog™

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    In the last year or two, we have seen a growing number of marijuana businesses take the position that IRC 280E no longer applies to them. Some of these businesses have taken that position in consultation with lawyers and CPAs. This shift in strategy predates Trump’s Executive Order of December 18, 2025, to reschedule marijuana under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). In any case, I believe this is a misreading of the law and a dangerous position for these businesses to take.

    What is IRC 280E?

    IRC 280E is a federal tax provision that prohibits businesses engaged in the “trafficking” of Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances from deducting ordinary and necessary business expenses on their federal tax returns. This rule applies to state-legal marijuana businesses, and it forces many of them to pay federal income tax on gross income (revenue minus cost of goods sold) rather than net income (profit). It’s harder on some businesses than others, but overall IRC 280E is a scourge for any marijuana taxpayer.

    Has IRC 280E been challenged?

    Yes, cannabis businesses have challenged the law repeatedly over the past decade or so, on constitutional and “as applied” grounds. We have supported those efforts, including in litigation brought by clients of this law firm. Still, I’ve explained that “except for Champ v. Commissioner, no cannabis taxpayer has won an IRC 280E case (and there have been a bunch of them).”

    I stand by the statement, while acknowledging that parties have achieved limited successes via COGS adjustments and refund requests. Overall, though, courts have consistently upheld the validity of IRC 280E as applied to marijuana businesses, and they have cast aside every constitutional challenge to date. It’s just a very difficult situation.

    The current litigation to watch is a tax court case known as New Mexico Top Organics, Inc. d/b/a Ultra Health v. Commissioner (“NMTO”), filed last October. The primary argument is that marijuana is no longer “within the meaning” of Schedule I of the CSA, despite being listed there. The case relies on a 2023 determination by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that marijuana should be placed in Schedule III. It also relies on Congressional spending bills, and finally, on the proposed rescheduling that began under President Biden.

    I don’t find the arguments persuasive. Without analyzing the merits, though, it’s important to note that the NMTO plaintiff is a medical marijuana business. The plaintiff is not arguing that IRC 280E doesn’t apply to generalized adult-use sales (which are most sales nationwide, at this point). It’s also important to note that any decision by the tax court could be appealed by either party to the Tenth Circuit, and a ruling likely would not grant immediate relief to anyone–let alone non-litigants.

    What advice are marijuana businesses getting these days on IRC 280E?

    I’d like to think that most of advice is along the lines of what we tell our clients, viz. that marijuana is still a Schedule I controlled substance, unfortunately, and IRC 280E still applies. And I think that is what a clear majority of attorneys and CPAs are saying. That said, we’ve seen outlying and aggressive advice from professionals on whether marijuana businesses are still subject to IRC 280E, and even on whether marijuana remains in Schedule I (it does). Here’s a prominent example:

    Screenshot of a LinkedIn post by Vicente LLP stating cannabis has been rescheduled to Schedule III, with a comment from Vince Sliwoski disputing the claim and warning of potential consequences.

    I’m not sure what the law firm there was thinking, and to be fair, they deleted the post following my comment. On the CPA side, the position I first vetted last year parrots the arguments in NMTO. The CPA I spoke with argued that marijuana is no longer “within the meaning of Schedule I” (despite its placement there), and that NMTO’s arguments apply equally to income from adult-use sales. The kindest thing I can say, euphemistically, is that it’s an interesting position.

    What does the IRS say? What about Congress?

    In June of 2024, following the HHS recommendation that marijuana be moved to Schedule III, the IRS published a memo titled “Marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance; IRC 280E still applies.” The Service stated that this would be true “until a final federal rule is published.” That never happened under the Biden administration’s flawed rescheduling process, and still hasn’t occurred following Trump’s executive order.

    For good measure, the IRS followed on its memo six months later with another straight-ahead publication, observing that “some taxpayers have taken the position of disregarding the section 280E limitation using a variety of rationales that do not constitute reasonable basis.” The term “reasonable basis” is a relatively high standard of tax reporting (see 26 CFR 1.6662-3(b)(3)), and a myriad of penalties may ensue where the standard is not met. Straight talk.

    For its part, Congress has failed to pass legislation to nullify the effects of IRC 280E, and every bill to de- or reschedule marijuana has ultimately failed. However, the Congressional Research Service, which I like, issued relevant guidance on IRC 280E earlier this month. The February 6 report is titled: “The Application of Internal Revenue Code Section 280E: Selected Legal Issues.” Notwithstanding the IRS publications discussed above, the CRS report maintains there is “little tax guidance concerning the application of Section 280E.” It then discusses a series of proposals that, if enacted, “would no longer prohibit marijuana businesses from taking deductions and credits.” In other words, without the enactment of any of these proposals, IRC 280E still applies.

    Conclusion

    I’m sure any business paying tax on gross receipts would love to enjoy the same deductions as other U.S. taxpayers. For this reason, and because certain advisors have jumped the shark with rescheduling in the air, we’ve seen more cannabis businesses filing returns that ignore IRC 280E. We’ve also had clients file amended returns seeking refunds for taxes paid under the IRC 280E regime, contrary to IRS warnings (not to give anyone any ideas!). Some of these refunds have been processed, and our best advice is “set that cash aside, at least through the audit window.”

    Let’s hope the rules change for tax year 2026, and that the Department of Justice picks up the ball with President Trump’s rescheduling order. Specifically, let’s hope for a final rule, or better. For now, though, I believe the correct advice is that IRC 280E still applies to marijuana businesses. Unfortunately.

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    Vince Sliwoski

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  • I Was Wrong About the Hippies

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    It’s difficult to admit this—especially to the readers of High Times—but for most of my life, I flat-out hated the hippies. That’s curious, considering I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and, for a quarter of a century, have lived just three blocks from Golden Gate Park—ground zero for the very counterculture I went out of my way to avoid.

    But my aversion to dancing bears and patchouli oil didn’t come out of nowhere. It was forged last century in a scene I can only imagine has played out in households across America over the past sixty years—when one member of the family starts wearing tie-dye, smoking weed, dropping acid, and then takes off to follow the Grateful Dead.

    My Hippie Brother

    As a teenager in the 1980s, I remember how painfully embarrassed I felt by my brother, who wore Birkenstocks and wooden beads, and looked like a mashup of Charles Manson, Jesus Christ, and a street poet carrying a tambourine. He danced around our high school with abandon, sharing messages of peace and love with everyone he met. I was mortified. But my brother was just being himself.

    At the time, I was too young to grasp what I was witnessing. All that I could see was that my brother worshipped a band named after dead people—who seemingly all used drugs—and had images of skeletons wearing top hats plastered everywhere. None of it seemed the least bit fun or whimsical then. In fact, it scared the living daylights out of me.

    That fear became real when my brother disappeared one day and couldn’t be found. Eventually, word arrived that he’d overdosed at a Dead show after ingesting an entire sheet of LSD, resulting in a full-blown medical emergency and a stint in rehab—which created a staggering amount of chaos in an already fractured family.

    With all eyes on my brother, everyone forgot about parenting me. It went unnoticed that I was dyslexic and failing all of my classes, or that I, too, had been using drugs but simply hadn’t been caught. At just sixteen years old, I dropped out of high school and beauty college—both at the same time—and none of it was pretty.

    Then, as often happens to people who live in a black and white world without a touch of grey, I buttoned up, flung myself in the opposite direction, and never looked back. After enrolling in community college at seventeen, I figured out some learning hacks, earned a master’s degree, and accomplished things I didn’t know were possible, which made me feel responsible.

    But somewhere along the way, I let judgment take the wheel and distanced myself from anything counterculture. Burning Man, psychedelics, or even a whiff of kombucha was a hard pass for me, and I doubled down on my boycott of the Grateful Dead. It felt like self-protection rather than what it really was: a hardened heart. 2009 was the last time I’d seen or spoken to my brother.

    How I Changed My Mind

    Eventually, all of that unprocessed trauma caught up with me; it always does. For twenty years, I did all the “right things,” dragging myself to doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions all over town, spending incalculable amounts of time and money in the process. None of it moved the needle.

    Having exhausted all available options and ready to give up, I reluctantly agreed to try therapist-assisted psychedelic therapy—a process where a trained facilitator administers psychedelics and guides patients to release deep-rooted trauma. Because these treatments are still largely illegal, I wasn’t a good sport about it at first and backed out several times before my first session. But much to my astonishment, it worked, and each session unlocked something new.

    It wasn’t inexpensive, but I learned the hard way that chipping away at those layers cannot be done alone and requires a professional who can help navigate the process. I would never recommend this work without a qualified facilitator.

    Eventually, I became curious to try psychedelics out in the wild. My friend Lisa came over with a boombox and a bag of mushrooms, and we walked to Golden Gate Park. I quickly realized I didn’t like it, as the medicine had become too sacred for casual use.

    Then, as a group of people passed by, a humbling truth finally landed: I’d become the person I’d once criticized—fuzzy vest and all—doing psychedelics in the park. I snapped a photo so I couldn’t unsee the cold, hard truth: I owed my brother an apology.

    I reached out shortly thereafter, sharing my journey and apologizing for being such a profound asshole. He received it with immense grace, and we began repairing our relationship one text at a time. Then, something truly unbelievable happened.

    Facing the Music

    The universe has a way of rewarding a humble heart with a bit of magic. I’d just taped a quote to my computer monitor that I’d heard for the first time in a meeting moments before. It arrived with a sense of urgency that compelled me to write it down: “The fortune is in the follow-up.”

    Staring at the directive, I immediately thought of a business advisor I hadn’t spoken to in a while and picked up the phone. He mentioned he’d just been given an extra ticket to an upcoming benefit concert at the Oakland Zoo for a charter school he supports, and he invited me along.

    The performer? Bobby Weir and the Wolf Brothers.

    I had only recognized the name as being connected to the Grateful Dead, but I didn’t fully grasp the profound significance of what I was about to encounter—even as I drove from San Francisco to Oakland, crossed the bridge, and rode a gondola to the top of the zoo, a place I’d visited often as a kid.

    Once there, I spotted my advisor among the small group of guests, and we discreetly stepped outside to smoke a joint before finding our seats. It was only then that I was struck by the irony that I wouldn’t be leaving this earth without seeing a Dead show after all.

    As the performance got underway, I finally understood exactly who I was looking at, despite having never laid eyes on him before. Standing just ten feet away from me, in all of his glory, was a man who had started an actual revolution—right down the street from where I live—whose influence extended far beyond music. He was also the same person that I’d unfairly held responsible for the pain in my family I’d experienced growing up.

    While I may have refused to hear his message before, I had somehow found myself face-to-face with Bobby Weir in a moment of reckoning. As he stared directly into my eyes with a haunting, soulful intensity, it became clear to me that I was meant to hear his message now—so I listened.

    It was a formal, seated event, but after a few songs, I got up and danced anyway. I danced for my brother. I danced for the good fortune that I had ended up in that room. I danced because the things that had felt stuck inside me wanted to move. I danced with abandon.

    Bobby sang the Bob Dylan cover “When I Paint My Masterpiece” right to my face. I’d never heard it before, but it struck a chord, and the lyrics mirrored the places I’d been—and what I’m quietly building. I decided to make it my song and use the title’s words as my new mantra.

    I took very few photos that evening, remaining fully present as I opened my heart as wide as possible and took everything in. Then, with tears in my eyes, I chose to close a very difficult chapter of my life once and for all, silently apologizing to the beautiful spirit that had been serenading me, until I felt something inside me shift.

    Arriving Full Circle

    Following the incredible evening, I went online to learn more about Bobby Weir and was surprised to find out that like me, he had undiagnosed dyslexia and had dropped out of school. I’ve since done a deep dive on all things Bobby Weir & The Grateful Dead, but on that occasion,  as I made my way to his personal website, I discovered that tickets for Dead & Company’s sold-out residency at The Sphere had just been released for its opening weekend—which also happened to be my birthday. 

    Knowing that a private concert with a few dozen people was hardly the same as attending a true “show,” and without any hesitation, dropped a small fortune for two VIP tickets and a suite at the Venetian and invited my boyfriend to join me. It was, hands down, the best concert I’d ever seen.

    The same magic happened when Dead & Company played their final three shows in Golden Gate Park in August 2025. When I noticed that tickets had become available for the sold-out performances, I bought super VIP “Golden Road” passes for the first and last shows. I invited my brother to join me, but he told me his concert-going days were already behind him. With my fella out of town, I walked the last few blocks of my long spiritual crossing alone, and made up for lost time.

    But the most important full-circle moment took place in Oregon, after I boarded a plane to visit my brother and his family for the first time in fifteen years. We stayed up until the wee hours sharing stories of our parents—who had both since passed away—and compared notes about our childhood. It was a revelation for him to learn how much I had struggled growing up, and his sadness for my younger self felt like a final layer of ice melting away.

    In a special moment I’ll never forget, he gave me an olive green medicine pouch that had been a sacred part of his own healing journey. He wanted me to have it for mine. As we bonded over the music that I had now come to also love, we watched videos of old concerts while he told me what it was really like to leave home and follow the Dead. I looked at the gentle, kind person I’d distanced myself from for decades—and realized with a shock of joy that we had actually become a lot alike.

    The Final Revolution

    When the sad news broke that Bobby Weir had passed away, I felt a quiet, profound sense of awe—not just for the music I came to love, but for the miracle of giving me my brother back.

    In the days that followed, I watched two outstanding documentaries—The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir and the six-part Long Strange Trip—to catch up on everything I’d missed, and finally understood the full message of the Grateful Dead. It turns out that I was wrong about the hippies.

    Bobby Weir presented a masterclass in life and demonstrated for everyone—especially those of us who see the world differently—how to create a blueprint that hadn’t existed before but will echo for generations.

    “The fortune is in the follow-up” wasn’t a business quote or a concert ticket after all. It was the immense value of making things right. I saw the masterpiece he created by staying true to himself—even when the world wasn’t wired for him. I chose to follow his lead—and now I’m part of the song.

    All images courtesy of LL St. John.

    This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

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    LL St. John

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  • Another Measles Death Is Coming

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    Of every 1,000 people the measles virus infects, it may kill as few as one to three. In a way, this can seem merciful. But the mathematics of measles is also unforgiving. The virus is estimated to infect roughly 90 percent of the unimmunized people it encounters; each infected person may pass the infection on to as many as 12 to 18 others. In large part owing to an ongoing outbreak in South Carolina, the United States is watching those risks unfold in real time. As of last Thursday, the CDC is reporting 982 cases of measles. That count is expected to break 1,000 this week; a tracker run by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that many experts consider more reliable has ticked past 1,000 already. By the numbers alone, another death seems inevitable, and inevitable soon.

    Probabilities aren’t guarantees, of course. So far, 2026 may be seeing some improvements over 2025, when the U.S. documented more than 2,200 measles cases—more than in any year since 1991. This year, just 4 percent of measles cases have led to hospitalization, compared with 11 percent last year. Several factors could be contributing to that discrepancy, including how hospitals in South Carolina are reporting measles admissions or of more mild cases being diagnosed to begin with; experts aren’t yet sure.

    That 4 percent, however, still represents 40 or so people who have ended up in the hospital with at least one of the conditions that can make measles so devastating—among them, pneumonia, respiratory failure, and brain disease. In South Carolina, multiple people, including children, have been hospitalized with a form of brain swelling called encephalitis, which can lead to permanent intellectual disability or deafness, and in some cases turn fatal.

    Outbreaks are brewing elsewhere in the country too—Florida, Utah, Arizona. The nation is on the verge of losing the measles-elimination status it has held for 26 years, which would officially mean that the virus was once again routinely circulating in the United States. The majority of measles cases will remain somewhat mild. But as outbreaks continue, Americans will see where percentages mislead. Even if the rates of death and disabling disease remain roughly the same, as case numbers grow, so too will the absolute amount of suffering.

    The calculus of the measles vaccine, meanwhile, should be comforting: A single dose of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine can protect people against measles for decades at rates of 93 percent; two doses can protect at 97 percent. Some vaccines work mostly to keep people from getting very sick, but the measles one is powerful enough to prevent many infections from taking hold at all. Only 150 or so of 2025’s measles cases—7 percent—occurred in people known to have received at least one MMR dose. (The CDC and Johns Hopkins haven’t been reporting on hospitalizations by vaccination status.)

    If those numbers still sound uncomfortably high, consider that 90 percent of American kids have gotten at least one MMR dose. The higher the vaccine coverage, the more cases will occur among the vaccinated—but also, the far fewer cases will occur overall. And studies have consistently found that when vaccinated people do contract measles, their cases are much milder and potentially less contagious than unvaccinated cases.

    Still, certain factors, including genetics and immunocompromising conditions, can alter the level of protection a person gets from an immunization. Age, too, naturally erodes defenses, especially for people decades out from their most recent measles-vaccine dose. And not all vaccinated people are vaccinated in an optimal way. Some Americans, for instance, are too old to have been vaccinated with both modern MMR doses; children generally don’t receive their second injection until they’re about to begin kindergarten. The more a virus transmits broadly, the more easily it can exploit any vulnerability it finds. During a measles outbreak that began in the Netherlands in 1999, more cases were detected in vaccinated people living in mostly unvaccinated communities than in unvaccinated people in highly vaccinated communities—simply because low-vaccine communities were giving the virus far more chances to spread.

    Unvaccinated people living among other unvaccinated people remain at the highest risk, Maia Majumder, an infectious-disease modeler at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, told me. The current statistics reflect that: The large majority of measles infections—93 to 94 percent—are still happening in unvaccinated people. Last year’s largest outbreak, centered on West Texas, killed two school-age children, both of whom were unvaccinated.

    Other consequences of measles can take years to become obvious. Because of a quirk in its biology, the virus can erase a person’s preexisting immunity against other pathogens, leaving them more vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses. The more severe the measles infection, the more thorough the damage. Another of measles’ worst and most insidious outcomes is subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), an untreatable neurodegenerative condition that can take nearly a decade to manifest. Alex Cvijanovich, a pediatrician in New Mexico, told me that about two decades ago, she treated a middle schooler who had caught the virus as a seven-month-old, still too young to be vaccinated. The initial illness was tame, seemingly inconsequential. But around the age of 12, the boy—an honor student—“started getting lost between his classes,” Cvijanovich said. A spinal tap eventually showed that the virus had lingered in his neural tissue for more than a decade, causing irreversible brain damage. In the following months, the boy’s nervous system deteriorated until he could no longer control the flow of fluid into his lungs. He asphyxiated on his own body’s secretions just a few years after measles had been declared eliminated in the United States.

    “It was the most horrible, devastating death of all my years of training and doing pediatrics,” Cvijanovich said. “I comforted myself by telling myself, I’ll probably never see this again.”

    Now she is no longer so sure. SSPE, like many other measles complications, is rare, occurring in perhaps one out of every few thousand infections among the unimmunized. (Cases among the vaccinated are virtually nonexistent.) But children who catch the virus in infancy seem especially vulnerable.

    To protect their patients from infection, Cvijanovich and her colleagues keep a “rash phone” outside of their office, for families bringing in children who look especially blotchy and red, so that a nurse can inspect them far away from other vulnerable kids. James Lewis, the health officer for Snohomish County, Washington, which has been battling a smaller measles outbreak for several weeks, told me that his department has been advising any patients with suspicious symptoms and a potential measles exposure to call ahead, so they can wait outside the doctor’s office until they can be seen inside. Some may even be evaluated in their car.

    Not every place has the resources for such investments, or for the testing, contact tracing, isolation rooms, vaccine clinics, and other measures necessary to help stop measles outbreaks. And some experts worry that as measles continues to appear in confined environments—such as, recently, an ICE facility in Texas—adequate infection-prevention measures will too frequently fall short.

    Measles is one of the most contagious viruses ever documented and requires near-comprehensive levels of vaccination—roughly 95 percent or more—in a community to prevent it from spreading. But uptake of the MMR vaccine has ticked steadily down in recent years. Experts anticipate further drops under the Trump administration, especially as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department and Health and Human Services and a longtime anti-vaccine activist, continues to restrict access to vaccines, dismiss vaccine experts, challenge vaccine manufacturers, and question vaccine safety. (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.) One recent modeling study found that a drop in nationwide MMR uptake of just a few more percentage points could lead to millions more measles cases over the next 25 years. And the more measles moves around, the more the risk to everyone will increase.

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    Katherine J. Wu

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  • Can Onions Help with Weight Loss, Cholesterol, and PCOS? | NutritionFacts.org

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    Let’s talk about treating weight loss, cholesterol, and PCOS with diet. What can an eighth of a teaspoon a day of onion powder do for body fat, and what can raw red onion do for cholesterol?

    In one of my previous videos about onions, I talked about the data supporting—or not supporting—the role of onions in boosting testosterone in men, protecting bone health, controlling allergies, and dealing with the side effects of chemotherapy. What about weight loss? Enter the “Effect of Steamed Onion (ONIRO) Consumption on Body Fat and Metabolic Profiles in Overweight Subjects.” Researchers used steamed onions, which aren’t as spicy and have a weaker smell, so they could better disguise them as a placebo. They dried them into onion powder and gave people a minuscule amount—about an eighth of a teaspoon (300 mg) a day. Surely, a little daily dusting of onion powder wouldn’t affect people’s weight. But check out the results reported in the abstract: Measurements using a DEXA scan showed a significant reduction in body fat mass, and a CT scan revealed a significant decrease in whole, visceral, and subcutaneous fat areas.

    Hold on. If a little onion powder is so effective for weight loss, why wasn’t it featured in my book How Not to Diet? Because, as so often happens in studies, the spin in the abstract doesn’t accurately represent the actual data. The DEXA scan results measured no significant change of fat in the group that got the placebo capsules. They only appeared to lose about a spoonful (7 g) of fat, whereas the group unknowingly taking an eighth of a teaspoon of onion powder stuffed into capsules lost nearly one and a half pounds (0.64 kg) of body fat—a significant drop from baseline, but not a statistically significant drop compared to the placebo group, meaning the loss could have just been due to chance. Same thing with the CT scan results: 5 times more loss of overall fat and over 30 times more loss of the dangerous visceral fat, but the results did not reach statistical significance compared to placebo.

    A more recent study tried four teaspoons (9 g) of onion powder a day and similarly failed to accelerate the loss of visceral, total, or subcutaneous fat compared to placebo—but the placebo was also four teaspoons (9 g) of onion powder a day. They used yellow onions versus white onions, and it seems they both may have caused a loss of abdominal body fat, without a significant difference between them. Either way, you might look at these two studies and think, sure, but what are the downsides? It’s only an eighth of a teaspoon of onion powder a day, so why not give it a try? It can’t hurt, but we just don’t have enough evidence to be confident it will actually help.

    Let’s talk about polycystic ovary syndrome, also known as PCOS. It’s one of the most common hormone disorders, affecting 5% to 10% of reproductive-aged women. In addition to causing symptoms like irregular periods, “PCOS is a pre-diabetic state, with decreased insulin sensitivity.” PCOS treatment is challenging due to medication side effects. So, are there dietary options? How about a randomized controlled clinical trial of raw red onion intake?

    Why onions? Well, onion extracts can evidently improve blood sugar and insulin sensitivity in rats with diabetes and, more importantly, were found to reduce blood sugar levels in humans with diabetes, but evidently not in non-diabetic humans. People with PCOS are kind of pre-diabetic, so would it work for them? First, let’s look at those other two studies. To study the “Metabolic Effects of Onion and Green Beans,” people with diabetes spent a week eating either a small onion (60 g) each day or the same diet with about six cups (600 g) of green beans instead—and both approaches worked. The onion lowered people’s blood sugar levels by about 10% compared to a non-onion control diet, while the green beans lowered them by roughly 15% compared to the control.

    Here’s the study that supposedly shows no blood sugar benefits for people without diabetes. It’s true—onions don’t seem to lower normal blood sugar levels, which is a good thing, but check out what happens when you feed people sugar. Have people consume about two and a half tablespoons (50 g) of corn syrup, and their blood sugar levels shoot up over the next two hours before their body can tamp it back down. But give people the exact same amount of sugar along with more and more onion extract, and the blood sugar spike is significantly dampened, almost as much as if you had instead given them an antidiabetic drug, as you can see below and at 4:00 in my video Onions Put to the Test for Weight Loss, Cholesterol, and PCOS Treatment.

    We see the same blunting effect on blood sugar when people get a shot of adrenaline and eat onion extract, compared to receiving adrenaline without the onion extract, as you can see below and at 4:11 in my video.

    So, are there blood sugar benefits for both people with and without diabetes? No difference was found in blood sugar levels or other markers of insulin resistance between the high-onion and low-onion groups of PCOS patients, nor were there any differences in a marker of inflammation between the two groups. But women with PCOS aren’t just at higher risk for diabetes and inflammation—they are also at higher risk for high cholesterol.

    Women with PCOS are over seven times more likely to have a heart attack and develop heart disease, the number one killer of women. But consuming raw red onion appears to be effective in lowering cholesterol, though the group that ate more onions only dropped their LDL cholesterol about 5 points (5 mg/dL), which was not significantly different than the group that ate fewer onions.

    I did find this study from 50 years ago where researchers fed people nearly an entire stick (100 g) of butter, and their cholesterol shot up about 30 points within hours of consumption but by only 9 points or 3 points when combined with about a third of a cup (50 g) of raw or boiled onion. The moral of the story: Don’t eat a stick of butter.

    Doctor’s Note

    Check out the previous video I mentioned: Friday Favorites: Are Onions Beneficial for Testosterone, Osteoporosis, Allergies, and Cancer?.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Hospitals Fighting Measles Confront a Challenge: Few Doctors Have Seen It Before – KFF Health News

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    ASHEVILLE, N.C. — At around 2 a.m., 7-year-old twin brothers arrived at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Both had a fever, a cough, a rash, pink eye, and cold symptoms.

    The boys sat in one waiting room and then another. Two hours and 20 minutes passed before the two were isolated, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services records obtained by KFF Health News. Then two more hours ticked by.

    As the sun rose, an emergency room doctor called the state epidemiologist and described the symptoms. The public health official told him to keep the kids in the hospital and quarantine them. Shortly after that call, the patients were diagnosed.

    It was measles.

    Hospital staff gave the father instructions on how to quarantine the family and sent them home.

    The virus exposed at least 26 other people in the hospital that January day, federal investigators determined. Health inspectors for CMS investigated the measles infections and other failures in care and concluded that the twins’ symptoms should have triggered an isolation procedure for which Mission Hospital staffers had trained seven months earlier. CMS designated Mission in “Immediate Jeopardy” for the exposures and other unrelated issues, one of the most severe sanctions a hospital can face, threatening to pull federal funding unless it remedied the problems.

    A spokesperson for Mission said its staff was trained to manage airborne sickness and is following federal rules.

    As U.S. hospitals face an increasing risk of encountering measles, and pressure to immediately spot it, health care workers face an unusual barrier: Many don’t know what it looks like.

    “There’s a word, ‘morbilliform’ — it means measles-like, and there are lots of viruses that can cause a rash that looks like a measles rash in children,” said Theresa Flynn, a pediatrician in Raleigh and the president of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. In 30 years in health care, she’s never seen a measles case, she said.

    North Carolina has reported more than 20 cases since mid-December, and more than 3,000 people nationwide have been infected since the beginning of 2025.

    Children in areas with low immunization rates have been especially susceptible to outbreaks, triggering public health campaigns to promote the measles vaccine. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz encouraged vaccination in a CNN interview on Feb. 8.

    With two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, a person has a 3% chance of getting the virus after exposure. If exposed, an unvaccinated person has a 90% chance of being infected, according to the CDC. It can take a week or two before someone infected with measles shows symptoms.

    But for the past year, the Trump administration has sown doubt about vaccine effectiveness. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a longtime anti-vaccine activist before taking office, and under his leadership the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced the number of shots recommended to children.

    After measles erupted in West Texas last year, Kennedy publicly recommended unconventional and unproven treatments for the virus, including steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil.

    Infectious disease experts and doctors said federal policies have left health care workers to lean on their own experience or guidance from their state public health systems to fight a disease that many are preparing to see for the first time and that initially may behave like the common cold.

    “As measles becomes more common, all of us are leveling up in our ability to recognize and immediately respond to suspected measles,” Flynn said.

    Three C’s

    Officially, the U.S. has maintained “measles elimination status” since 2000, meaning the U.S. has avoided significant spread of the virus. After outbreaks in Texas, Arizona, Utah, and now South Carolina, the nation is on track to lose that designation before the year is out. Its own adopted regulations tie elimination status to a lack of a continuous viral spread persisting for 12 months.

    One county in South Carolina, an hour’s drive from Asheville, has had more than 900 cases in the current outbreak — more than Texas reported in all of 2025.

    Symptoms of measles, a virus that attacks the lungs and airways, can include fever, cough, a blotchy rash, and red, watery eyes. Researchers consider measles among the most contagious diseases, and the virus may remain active for up to two hours after an infected person leaves a room.

    It can be lethal, with 1 to 3 deaths per 1,000 cases in children.

    In 2025, two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico died of measles.

    Along with tracking data, the CDC provides detailed summaries on its website for diagnosing measles. State public health agencies and some counties have developed dashboards tracing the disease as it surfaces in such places as hospitals, schools, grocery stores, and airports. Large hospital systems developed staff training protocols last year and shared them with area clinics.

    Look for the three C’s, that guidance said: cough, coryza (cold symptoms), and conjunctivitis (pink eye). According to CMS inspection records, HCA Healthcare, which owns Mission Hospital, trained Mission staff on the three C’s early last year. On top of failing to isolate the twin patients right away, Mission staff didn’t have a designated area for patients with respiratory symptoms, federal inspectors found.

    The CDC advises health workers to immediately place patients with measles or suspicious symptoms in a special isolation room, where airflow is controlled inward. The Mission patients were separated from other patients only by plastic partitions, according to the CMS records.

    Mission spokesperson Nancy Lindell said the hospital was equipped and staffed to manage airborne illnesses like measles.

    “Our hospital has been working with state and federal health officials on proactive preparedness, and we are following guidance provided by the CDC,” Lindell said.

    (Dogwood Health Trust, a private foundation established as part of HCA’s purchase of Mission Health, helps fund KFF Health News coverage.)

    Most U.S. clinics and hospitals have never experienced measles cases, said Patsy Stinchfield, a former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a nurse practitioner. She called CMS’ Immediate Jeopardy penalty for Mission “extreme,” given the virus can be so difficult to identify.

    “In the middle of winter right now, measles looks like every other viral respiratory infection that kids come in with,” Stinchfield said.

    The CDC has been less communicative in the past year with clinics about their response to outbreaks, said health workers and infectious disease experts. This disconnect began soon after Trump took office, according to a KFF Health News investigation finding that health officials in West Texas were unable to talk with CDC scientists as measles surged last February and March.

    “We certainly do not feel the support or guidance from the CDC right now,” said Brigette Fogleman, a pediatrician at Asheville Children’s Medical Center, where staff members have come up with their own method of staving off the virus: screening patients over the phone and in their cars before a visit.

    In response to questions about how the CDC is supporting health care organizations during the measles resurgence, spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that “state and local health departments have the lead in investigating measles cases and outbreaks” and that the CDC provides support “as requested.” He pointed to numerous guides and simulation tools the agency has developed as the virus has spread.

    Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, acknowledged that diagnosing measles is a major challenge, emphasizing that coordination among public health agencies is critical in overcoming that challenge.

    Stinchfield attributed the spread of measles to CDC leaders’ lack of communication to clinics and to the public — no ads on buses, no social media campaigns, no sense of urgency. “When you are at the highest level of measles cases in 30 years, we should be seeing lots more from our federal government,” Stinchfield said. “And I think it’s harming kids and causing an inordinate amount of work and expense that really doesn’t belong in health care right now.”

    State Prepares for More Measles Cases

    In North Carolina’s Buncombe County, home to Asheville and Mission Hospital, health officials had counted seven measles cases by mid-February and anticipated many more, according to state epidemiologist Zack Moore. It’s unclear how many of those are connected to the Mission exposure.

    “We are preparing for a future in which we follow a trajectory like South Carolina,” Moore said, “where we see sort of a gradual accumulation of cases, and then all of a sudden it reaches kind of a tipping point, and we see a more explosive growth in the outbreak and spread across the state.”

    Fogleman, who is also a pediatrician, and Buncombe health department director Jennifer Mullendore spoke during a recent Facebook livestream hosted by the county, urging families to get their children vaccinated, debunking vaccine misinformation, and updating parents on local case numbers.

    Days before, a local private school had quarantined about 100 students after an exposure. Only 41% of students there were immunized, according to state data.

    At Fogleman’s clinic, parents are asked to wait in their vehicles with their children, and staffers come out to screen them there. Some parents resist vaccination and note recently weakened federal recommendations around measles vaccines for children under 4, she said.

    Kennedy handpicked the committee members who made those recommendations, with several members having spread medical misinformation in the past.

    One parent recently told a nurse, “It’s only measles. It doesn’t kill anybody,” Fogleman said.

    That’s not true, her team must explain.

    As the clinic holds families in the parking lot, trying to figure out whether symptoms point to the dangerous virus, it’s difficult to get the message across, Fogleman said, especially when the nation’s top disease agency hasn’t conducted a widespread information campaign about the risks from measles — or the vaccine’s ability to almost entirely prevent it.

    “We can’t change the past,” Fogleman said. “All we can do is try to educate and move forward.”

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    Andrew Jones

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  • Protein Brownie Batter Bites

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    In high school and college I was addicted to all the processed junk food and sweets. Since then I’ve swapped out the mini snack cakes for real food options that are much healthier and way more delicious! These brownie batter bites are the latest creation to come out of my kitchen.

    They’re a good source of protein and healthy fats for steady energy. Plus, they’re naturally sweetened, no highly processed sugar necessary! My kids love these and they’re gone pretty quickly once the batch is done. 

    Healthy Brownie Batter Bites

    One of the best things about making brownies isn’t even the brownies, but getting to lick the bowl. While I’m not afraid of raw egg from pastured chickens, there are other things lurking in most brownie recipes I’m not a fan of. Not only is this version packed with protein, but it skips the flour entirely. They’re also egg free for anyone who needs to avoid eggs. 

    The nut butter gives it a creamy base and adds healthy fats. Then of course there’s antioxidant rich cocoa powder for a rich, chocolatey taste. My kids like mini chocolate chips too for extra chocolate. The maple syrup or raw honey add a touch of sweetness without overdoing it. And even better, these natural sweeteners are full of minerals and micronutrients for cellular health and energy that won’t give you a crash. 

    Protein Packed

    I’m all about prioritizing protein. After years of undereating my metabolism was much happier when I started nourishing my body. Part of that includes making sure I hit my protein goals. While I like to eat at least 40 grams of protein for breakfast, I want my snacks (and even desserts!) to support my goals. 

    Here are some more protein rich desserts if you’re looking for more options!

    These brownie batter bites taste like you’re eating a spoonful of sugary brownie batter, but they’re actually good for you. We’ll eat them as a dessert or snack. And if you’re packing them for lunches, freeze them before popping them into the lunch container so they keep their shape.

    High Protein Brownie Batter Bites

    A rich, chocolatey snack that tastes like a treat but fuels like a real-food meal.

    • Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

    • Blend cottage cheese, protein powder, cocoa powder, nut butter, maple syrup, and vanilla in a blender or food processor until smooth and thick.

    • Transfer to a bowl and stir in almond flour until the mixture is firm enough to scoop. Fold in chocolate chips if using.

    • Scoop and roll into 12–16 brownie batter bites. Place the dough onto the parchment lined baking tray and chill for at least 30 minutes before serving. If your dough is really soft, then chill the bowl for about 10–15 minutes first before scooping.

    Nutrition Facts

    High Protein Brownie Batter Bites

    Amount Per Serving (1 bite)

    Calories 65
    Calories from Fat 27

    % Daily Value*

    Fat 3g5%

    Saturated Fat 1g6%

    Trans Fat 0.004g

    Polyunsaturated Fat 0.3g

    Monounsaturated Fat 1g

    Cholesterol 7mg2%

    Sodium 61mg3%

    Potassium 69mg2%

    Carbohydrates 6g2%

    Fiber 1g4%

    Sugar 3g3%

    Protein 5g10%

    Vitamin A 23IU0%

    Vitamin C 0.01mg0%

    Calcium 47mg5%

    Iron 0.2mg1%

    * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

    If your house is like mine, rolling them smaller helps stretch the batch. I’ll often make 16 mini bites so everyone gets one and the older kids can grab seconds.

    Storage and Shelf Life

    These brownie batter bites will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days or the freezer for up to 2 months. Whenever I make a batch they’re usually gone the same day! You can also double or triple the batch to freeze for later.

    What are some of your favorite healthier treats to make? Leave a comment and share below!

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    Katie Wells

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  • Norman Yousif’s Off The Charts Oxnard Now Open | Cannabis Law Report

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    Oxnard, CA – Off The Charts, the fast-growing cannabis retail brand founded by Norman Yousif, has officially opened a new dispensary in Oxnard. Located at 220 S A St, Oxnard, CA 93030, the new store expands the company’s footprint on California’s Central Coast and brings its signature combination of value, selection, and service to the local community.

    Off The Charts has built a strong reputation across California for offering premium cannabis products at highly competitive prices. Under Norman Yousif’s leadership, the company has steadily grown into a multi-location retailer known for customer education, transparency, and a welcoming in-store experience.

    Off The Charts – Dispensary in Oxnard

    The newly opened Oxnard location is designed to serve both recreational and medical cannabis consumers with a focus on accessibility and value. Customers can expect:

    • A huge selection of top-tier cannabis flower, edibles, concentrates, vapes, and wellness products
    • Best-price guarantee, beating any local competitor’s price by $1
    • A highly rated shopping experience with knowledgeable staff
    • Cashback and loyalty rewards for returning customers

    Hours: Daily from 9 AM to 9 PM
    Phone: +1 805-253-0065
    Website: https://offthechartsshop.com/oxnard
    Map: https://share.google/jFVzkkYrZFib6rMTE

    About Off The Charts

    Founded by Norman Yousif, Off The Charts is a family-owned cannabis retailer focused on combining quality products with fair pricing and exceptional customer service. The brand has expanded to numerous locations throughout California, consistently emphasizing community engagement and responsible cannabis retail.

    Norman Yousif’s vision for Off The Charts has always centered on creating dispensaries where customers feel comfortable, informed, and confident in their purchases. This philosophy continues to guide the company as it opens new locations and enters new markets.

    “We’re excited to officially open our Oxnard location and become part of this community. Our goal has always been to offer the best cannabis products at the best prices while providing an experience that makes customers want to come back,” said Norman Yousif, Founder of Off The Charts.

    With its Oxnard opening, Off The Charts continues its mission of making high-quality cannabis accessible, affordable, and approachable for communities across California.

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    Sean Hocking

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  • Arizona Senate Bill Would Ban ‘Excessive’ Cannabis Smoke | Cannabis Law Report

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    An Arizona Senate committee last week advanced a proposal seeking to create a new misdemeanor crime for excessive cannabis smoke and odor, 13 News reports.

    The bill, SB1725, would treat the issue as a public nuisance concern, making it a class 3 misdemeanor to cause or create “excessive” cannabis smoke — even on private residential property. Another bill, SCR1048, seeks to put an identical proposal before voters as a ballot initiative.

    Neither bill explicitly defines what “excessive” means in the context of what qualifies as a public nuisance. The bill does, however, state that “it is presumed that a person who creates excessive marijuana smoke and odor causes a condition that endangers the safety or health of others.”

    The bills’ sponsor, state Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R), said the proposal is not looking to solve “some sort of major crime issue, but it is trying to highlight what has become a growing problem.”

    Mesnard said that he’s encountered the issue at his own home, having detected the smell of cannabis smoke outside of his childrens’ bedroom windows.

    “If we’re going to have recreational marijuana in Arizona, we need to be responsible about it, especially as it could impact kids.” — Mesnard, in a statement

    The Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee voted 5-2 to advance the proposal on Friday.

    Source: https://ganjapreneur.com/arizona-senate-bill-would-ban-excessive-cannabis-smoke/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=arizona_bill_would_ban_excessive_cannabis_smoke_denver_fines_licensed_cannabis_lounge_10k_and_more&utm_term=2026-02-23

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    Sean Hocking

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  • How Legalizing Organic Drugs Is the Only Way to Win America’s Chemical War with China

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    Let me tell you something they won’t say on cable news, something that makes too much sense to survive the standard political discourse: the United States is losing a chemical war, and the only way to win it is to get its citizens legally, safely, and gloriously high.

    Not on the Chinese stuff. Not on the fentanyl — those microscopic grains of synthetic death that are killing 75,000 Americans a year. Not on the K2, the bath salts, the grey-market research chemicals that have been slowly filling the void left by decades of prohibition. No. I’m talking about the real thing. The plants. The molecules that humanity has been dancing with for ten thousand years before a bunch of suits in Washington decided to make them illegal.

    I’m talking about MAGA Drugs. Make America’s Goods Again. Homegrown. Quality-controlled. Taxed. Educated. Safe. American.

    Before you click away, let me walk you through what is actually happening in the world right now, because the full picture will make your head spin — and not in the fun way.

    The Chemical War Nobody Wants to Name

    In December 2025, the United States government did something unprecedented. They classified illicit fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Let that land for a second. The same legal category as nerve agents, anthrax, and dirty bombs. Fentanyl. A drug you can measure in grains of salt. A drug that is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

    At the same time, eight major cartels — including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel — were designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The U.S. military was authorized to engage “narco-boats” and disrupt what Washington is now openly calling “narcoterrorists.”

    The architecture behind all of this is grimly fascinating. Congressional investigations have revealed that Chinese chemical companies, with the backing of PRC government tax rebates, are subsidizing the manufacture and export of fentanyl precursors directly to Mexican cartels. These companies advertise on social media. They ship precursors in containers labeled as furniture parts, makeup, vases. When U.S. law enforcement sends formal requests for assistance to Beijing, PRC security services reportedly tip off the targets before they can be interdicted.

    “This isn’t a drug problem. It’s a geopolitical assault using chemistry as the weapon and addiction as the delivery system.”

    The financial mechanics are equally jaw-dropping. Chinese Money Laundering Networks — CMLNs — have become the preferred financial infrastructure for cartel money. Through a system called mirror transactions, cartel cash in Los Angeles gets converted into pesos in Mexico without a single dollar crossing a border. Wealthy Chinese nationals use the same networks to move money out of China and into U.S. real estate. Between 2020 and 2024, financial institutions flagged over $53.7 billion in suspicious CMLN-linked activity. It’s a circular economy of devastation, elegant in its structure and catastrophic in its consequences.

    This is not a drug problem. It’s a geopolitical assault using chemistry as the weapon and addiction as the delivery system.

    So what do you do? You send in the military? You bomb the labs? You impose tariffs? Sure, try all of that. The United States has been doing versions of it for fifty years. The Mérida Initiative poured billions into Mexico. The kingpin strategy took out cartel leaders one after another. The result? The cartels fragmented, diversified, and got more dangerous. The drugs got cheaper and more lethal. The “whack-a-mole” approach has a 100% failure rate because it treats the symptom — supply — while ignoring the engine — demand.

    And demand, my friends, is a human constant that no government has ever legislated out of existence.

    K2, Bath Salts, and the Monster Prohibition Built

    Here is something the pharmacology textbooks will confirm and the drug warriors would rather you not think about too hard: K2 and Spice exist because cannabis was illegal.

    When you criminalize a substance that people want — and have always wanted — you don’t eliminate the demand. You redirect it into a shadow market with no quality control, no consumer protection, and no accountability. Into that shadow market crawls the most opportunistic chemists alive, who synthesize novel compounds specifically designed to mimic the effect of the illegal substance while technically existing outside the law.

    The pharmacological difference between natural THC and synthetic cannabinoids like K2 is the difference between a partial agonist and a full agonist. THC, the active compound in cannabis, partially activates the CB1 receptor in your brain. There is a biological ceiling on how activated that receptor can get from natural cannabis. This is why a fatal marijuana overdose is, for all practical purposes, impossible.

    K2 hits the same receptor as a full agonist — maximum activation, no ceiling. Binding affinities 10 to 100 times stronger than THC. The result: seizures, acute kidney injury, cardiovascular failure. These are not cannabis side effects. These are the side effects of a prohibition-manufactured substitute that never would have found a market if the original, infinitely safer plant were available at a licensed dispensary.

    The same logic cascades across the entire drug landscape. MDMA, a relatively well-understood compound with a credible therapeutic safety profile, gets replaced on the street by bath salts — cathinone derivatives with unpredictable psychosis risks. LSD, a substance with perhaps the lowest toxicity-to-effect ratio of any psychoactive compound known, gets replaced by novel research chemicals that nobody has studied and nobody can test for. Natural cocaine, a plant-derived stimulant with a pharmacological profile not dramatically more dangerous than alcohol at recreational doses, gets replaced by fentanyl-laced street product that will kill you by accident.

    “The synthetic drug crisis is not a failure of human virtue. It is the direct, predictable, documented consequence of prohibition policy.”

    The synthetic drug crisis is not a failure of human virtue. It is the direct, predictable, documented consequence of prohibition policy. You banned the agrarian drugs — the ones that grew from the earth, that humanity developed a relationship with over millennia, that the human body has evolutionary context for — and you created a vacuum that industrial chemistry filled with something far more dangerous.

    China didn’t create the fentanyl market. Prohibition did. China just found a way to weaponize it.

    The Case for Organic: Earth’s Drugs vs. The Lab

    There is a simple, elegant truth at the center of this argument that cuts through the politics: natural drugs derived from plants and classical synthesis are categorically less dangerous than the synthetic alternatives that prohibition forces people to consume.

    Cannabis. Psilocybin mushrooms. Peyote. Ayahuasca. MDMA. LSD. Cocaine. These substances share something important in common — they have been used by human beings for hundreds or thousands of years, which means we have extensive observational data on their effects, their risks, and the conditions under which they are and aren’t dangerous. The human body has, in many cases, literal evolutionary context for these molecules. The endocannabinoid system exists. The serotonergic system that psychedelics interact with exists. These are not alien compounds hijacking your neurology; they are keys for which locks already exist.

    The risk profiles, examined honestly, are manageable. Cocaine’s primary danger in 2026 is not the cocaine — it’s the fentanyl that gets mixed into street product, and the complete absence of any dosage information, quality control, or harm reduction guidance. Pharmaceutical-grade cocaine, known purity, known dose, used with awareness of the cardiovascular considerations — this is not a public health catastrophe. It is a substance that lawyers, executives, and entertainers have used recreationally for decades, mostly without ending up in the emergency room.

    This is not a pro-drug argument. This is an argument for honesty about risk. We permit alcohol — a substance with a well-documented association with violence, liver disease, cardiovascular damage, addiction, and approximately 95,000 deaths per year in the United States — while simultaneously treating cocaine as an existential menace. The inconsistency is not accidental. It is the product of a century of political decisions dressed up as public health policy.

    The Licensed Drug Model: A Driver’s License for Your Mind

    Here is the framework that makes this work politically, practically, and ethically. You don’t just legalize everything and put it on a shelf next to the energy drinks. You build a system — intelligent, phased, and grounded in genuine education rather than the abstinence propaganda that has been failing for sixty years.

    Phase one: licensed consumption. Before you can purchase any substance beyond cannabis, you get a drug license. Think of it like a driver’s license, except the vehicle is your own consciousness and you are about to change the channel on your perception of reality. The licensing process is not punitive. It is educational. You learn the pharmacology — what the substance actually does, how it interacts with your body’s systems, what the real risks are. Cardiovascular risks for cocaine. Serotonin syndrome risks for MDMA combinations. The importance of set and setting for psychedelics. Drug interaction contraindications. Dosage guidance.

    Your license comes with a card. On that card, in plain language: “Cocaine increases cardiovascular stress. If you have heart disease or hypertension, this substance poses elevated risk. Know your body.” Not a scare tactic. Not propaganda. A fact, presented like the facts on a pharmaceutical label, because that is what respect for the consumer actually looks like.

    For teenagers, the conversation changes but doesn’t disappear. The new framework isn’t silence — it’s honesty. “Drugs are legal now, but access is licensed and age-gated, and here is why: your developing brain is more vulnerable to dependency patterns than an adult brain. Here is what these substances actually do. Here is how to make informed decisions.” That is actual harm reduction. That is what the DARE program was pretending to be.

    Phase two, after roughly a decade of data collection, outcomes monitoring, and cultural adjustment: remove the licensing requirement for adults 25 and older. By that point you have a population that grew up with honest drug education, a decade of real-world outcome data, and a legal market that has been systematically undercutting the black market’s product quality and price. The cartel’s customer base has been legally poached by Uncle Sam.

    “The cartel’s customer base has been legally poached by Uncle Sam.”

    The heroin and opioid piece requires its own track. This is the Swiss model, and it works. Pharmaceutical-grade heroin, administered in supervised facilities, free of charge, for people dependent on opioids. This is not enabling addiction — the addiction already exists. This is replacing a Chinese-manufactured WMD with a medically supervised, pharmacologically pure alternative. Every person who walks into a supervised consumption site and accepts pharmaceutical heroin instead of street fentanyl is a person who is not funding the cartels, not funding the CMLNs, not funding the PRC’s subsidized precursor industry. They are, in the most literal sense, refusing to participate in a geopolitical attack on their own country.

    Uncle Sam’s H. It’ll get you there. It won’t kill you. And it won’t make anybody in Wuhan rich.

    The National Security Math

    Let’s look at this from a purely strategic angle, because that is what this ultimately is — strategy.

    The fentanyl supply chain runs: PRC chemical manufacturers (subsidized by Chinese government VAT rebates) → Mexican cartels → American streets. The financial counter-flow runs through CMLN mirror transactions into U.S. real estate and back to China. The entire system depends on American demand for illicit opioids being serviced exclusively by this supply chain.

    The moment you introduce a legal, free, supervised alternative for the opioid-dependent population, you sever the demand side of that chain. Not theoretically — empirically. Switzerland did it. The heroin-assisted treatment programs of the 1990s essentially collapsed the street heroin market in participating Swiss cities. Crime dropped. HIV transmission dropped. The cartels lost customers. This is documented, not speculated.

    Extend the same logic to the broader drug market. Every dollar spent on legal, taxed, domestic cannabis is a dollar not flowing to the Sinaloa cartel. Every MDMA purchase from a licensed dispensary is a demand unit that the black market doesn’t get to fill with bath salts. Every cocaine user who can access quality-controlled product through a licensed channel is a consumer who is not buying fentanyl-laced street powder.

    The revenue from taxation funds the education system, the harm reduction infrastructure, and the law enforcement that goes after those who violate the new framework — aggressively, because the rules have been made lenient and the remaining violations are therefore genuinely serious. You want to sell unlicensed drugs to minors? You want to traffic synthetics in competition with the legal market? The consequences are severe precisely because everything else has been decriminalized.

    This is how you MAGA the drug supply. You domesticate it. You regulate it. You educate around it. You strip the cartels of their market, the CMLNs of their revenue streams, and the PRC’s subsidy program of its downstream customers. You do it not by force — force has failed completely and repeatedly — but by the oldest competitive principle in capitalism: give people a better product at a better price with less risk.

    American drugs. Clean. Tested. Taxed. Educated. Against Chinese drugs. Contaminated. Lethal. Criminal. Unregulated.

    For a rational consumer — even one in the grip of addiction — that is not a difficult choice.

    The Sticky Bottom Line

    Human nature does not submit to legislation. The evidence for this is overwhelming and spans every culture, every era, and every substance. People alter their consciousness. They always have. They will continue to do so regardless of what any government decides. The only policy question that matters is: under what conditions does this happen?

    Right now, those conditions are: in the dark, with unknown substances, of unknown purity, at unknown doses, purchased from criminal networks that funnel the proceeds through Chinese money laundering operations into geopolitical leverage against the United States. That is the current system. That is what “keeping drugs illegal” has built.

    The alternative — licensed, educated, quality-controlled, domestically supplied — is not utopia. People will still make bad decisions. Addiction will still occur. There are no risk-free choices in this space. But the comparison is not between the legal model and a perfect world. The comparison is between the legal model and what we have right now: 75,000 Americans dead from fentanyl last year, a WMD designation for a drug that fits in a salt shaker, and a geopolitical adversary that has figured out how to wage chemical warfare with plausible deniability.

    They allegedly got El Mencho yesterday — the man at the top of the CJNG, the biggest fentanyl exporter in Mexico. And if you believe that changes anything structurally, I have a kilo of pharmaceutical-grade optimism to sell you. The kingpin dies. The organization survives. The demand persists. The supply adapts. This is what fifty years of war has taught us, and we keep forgetting it the moment there is a press conference with a trophy.

    The war on drugs cannot be won with bullets, borders, or bans. It can be won with something far more disruptive to criminal enterprise: a legal, affordable, honest alternative.

    Make America’s Goods Again. The drugs of the earth, regulated, taxed, and freely available to educated adults who have chosen to alter their consciousness on their own terms. Against the chemical weapons of a geopolitical rival, dispensed through criminal intermediaries, with the specific intent to devastate the American social fabric.

    That is the choice. And it is not even close.

     

    CHINA ON CANNABIS, READ ON…

    CHINA WARNS ON US LEGALIZATION

    CHINA WARNS ON US CANNABIS LEGALIZATION, READ ON..

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  • NBA Star Tyrese Haliburton Has Shingles. What to Know About the Condition

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    Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton has been diagnosed with shingles, his coach said on Feb. 22. The 25-year-old all-star player was already out for the season after tearing his Achilles tendon in June, but he’d been a visible presence on the sidelines, enthusiastically cheering on his teammates. Now, however, he’s being kept away from team facilities for two to three weeks.

    “It’s a very painful thing,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle told reporters. “He will make a full recovery, but this happened over the last few days. He was meeting us in D.C. and had some odd symptoms and he came back here. It’s a unique case and a unique situation, but I talked to him a few times and he’s always in a good mood, so he’ll get through it.”

    Shingles is a common condition: About 1 million cases occur in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1 in 3 people nationwide will develop it during their lifetime. It’s also known as herpes zoster, and refers to a painful rash caused by the reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox.

    Yet many don’t associate the illness, which is most common in older populations, with healthy, 20-something young people—let alone professional athletes. That perception overlooks how the virus behaves, experts say. Research has found that shingles incidence increased across age groups over several decades, with some analyses noting continued increases among younger adults even as rates in older adults have stabilized.

    Here’s what to know about shingles—and why even young people in peak physical health aren’t immune.

    When dormant viruses wake up

    Shingles is a direct consequence of a previous chickenpox infection. Though they’re distinct illnesses, both are caused by the varicella-zoster virus. “We recover from chickenpox, but the virus remains within our bodies, and 20, 30, 40 years later, it can wake up and come out as shingles,” says Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “The virus is hibernating in us.”

    When the virus reactivates, people often report strange nerve pain—tingling, itching, or burning—for a couple days, but have no idea what’s causing it. “You get the sensation that something’s not right,” Schaffner says. “Then the virus comes out on the skin and makes chickenpox-like blisters on the part of the body that’s being affected.”

    Read More: 12 Weird Symptoms Dermatologists Say You Should Never Ignore

    It’s impossible to pinpoint one exact reason why someone develops shingles, but researchers have identified a range of potential causes. Older age is the No. 1 risk factor—about half of shingles infections occur in people ages 60 or older. But reduced immunity also plays a role, says Jennifer Moffat, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. That includes people who are undergoing chemotherapy or taking medications like steroids that reduce immunity; people recovering from another infection, such as the flu or COVID-19; and those living with HIV or autoimmune diseases.

    “In young people, it’s more mysterious,” Moffat says. “It can be completely out of the blue. Lack of sleep, stress, physical stress, having had the flu or COVID, having had a virus infection—these are all things that can cause a momentary gap, and that’s enough for the virus to say, ‘I’m going to take this chance to wake up now.’”

    What it feels like to have shingles

    Most of the time, fluid-filled blisters form on one side of a person’s body, following the path of a single nerve. They most commonly show up on the chest or abdomen, back, or along the waist, but can also pop up on the face or around one eye. For a professional athlete whose job depends on peak physical condition, even a short bout can be disruptive.

    “The pain is overwhelming,” Moffat says. “People describe it as one of the most painful things they’ve ever felt, because it’s coming from inside the nerve.” Some people find relief by wearing loose-fitting clothes until the blisters heal.

    In addition to ongoing tingling, burning, and sensitivity, people tend to feel generally unwell. Shingles is often accompanied by virus-like symptoms such as fatigue, a headache, and lack of appetite, Moffat says.

    For some people, the pain unleashed by the virus lingers. About 10% to 18% of people who get shingles develop postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), and the risk increases sharply with age. The condition refers to nerve pain that persists for 90 days or more after the rash clears, leading to burning, stabbing, or shooting pain in the nerves and skin. The pain associated with PHN can be so debilitating that some people stay inside because too much movement, touch, and light stimulation could trigger a flare, Schaffner says. While uncommon, it’s also possible to develop shingles more than once, he adds.

    “Younger people get over their shingles more completely than older people,” Schaffner says. “Generally speaking, they have less severe initial infections, and they’re less apt to get the post-shingles pain.”

    How shingles is treated

    If you develop a rash and suspect you might have shingles, it’s important to see a doctor right away. Antiviral treatments like valacyclovir are most effective when started within three days of rash onset. (Even if more time has passed, doctors may still consider treatment, especially if new blisters are forming.) These medications can “shorten the time it takes to heal and reduce the person’s pain,” Moffat says.

    In certain cases, especially if the rash affects the face or eye, doctors may prescribe steroids to reduce swelling, Moffat says. Shingles affecting the eye can threaten vision and requires urgent medical care. For pain, options are limited. Some patients try medications including gabapentin, but results vary. “There’s not a lot of good treatment for the pain,” she says.

    Schaffner’s patients often wonder if shingles is contagious. You can’t “catch” shingles from someone else, he says, but the varicella-zoster virus inside the blisters can be transmitted to people who have never had chickenpox or been vaccinated against it.

    A highly effective vaccine

    Preventing shingles starts at a young age. All children are advised to get two doses of the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine: a first shot at 12 to 15 months, and another when they’re 4 to 6 years old. While the chickenpox vaccine doesn’t eliminate the risk of developing shingles later in life—because it uses a weakened version of the virus that can still lie dormant in nerve cells—research has found it reduces the risk by 70% to 80% compared with those who had natural chickenpox infection.

    Meanwhile, the Shingrix vaccine—which was specifically designed to prevent shingles in adults—is recommended for those ages 50 and up, as well as immunocompromised adults over age 19.

    “Shingrix is turning out to be a miracle vaccine in that it’s super effective at preventing shingles, which is always a good thing, but it also protects your brain,” Moffat says. Observational studies have found that people who receive Shingrix are about 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia in subsequent years, though the data show association, not proof of cause and effect.

    Read More: 10 Symptoms ER Doctors Say to Never Ignore

    Some researchers believe the Shingrix vaccine should be more widely available for younger populations. In an ideal world, Moffat says, kids would continue getting the varicella vaccine as it’s currently administered, and then, around age 30, get vaccinated against shingles. A shingles vaccine given in adulthood could help maintain strong immune defenses against the virus as people age.  Older adults could repeat the vaccination at age 60, she says. But that idea would require more research before health authorities would consider expanding eligibility.

    “We don’t understand why shingles is increasing,” Moffat says. “You can’t point your finger at, ‘Oh, it’s toxins,’ or ‘Oh, it’s global warming.’ You just can’t explain it, and no one is responsible for their own shingles.”

    Haliburton’s doctors expect a full recovery. But his diagnosis is a reminder that shingles isn’t confined to any one age group—or health status.

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    Angela Haupt

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  • Ball Vapes Are the Espresso Machine of Dry Herb Vaporizers

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    Major breakthroughs in dry herb vape tech have pushed performance to new levels of potency and power. At-home vaporists are experiencing stronger, more flavorful sessions than ever before, and a new level of cannabis extraction has emerged.

    What Is a Ball Vape? 

    Ball vapes are a newer type of dry herb vaporizer that can deliver a dab-like flavor and intensity using small doses of dry herb. They’re like a tiny espresso machine, but for weed vapor. Instead of hot water, these vapes use super-heated air. Much like espresso, this vapor can be thick and potent.

    Ball vapes use powerful convection to vaporize dry herb without combustion. Tiny glass or ruby balls inside the convection heater increase surface area and maximize heat transfer while maintaining high airflow. The result is a fast, open, direct-inhale vaporizer designed to extract 0.1–0.3g of dry herb in a single session.

    There’s no secret about what makes these vapes work. The technology was developed by vape enthusiasts and DIY builders seeking more performance than the broader vape market offered. Glass or ruby balls were initially added to existing vapes to increase thermal mass and power. The technique first appeared around 2017, and by 2020, a new category of dry herb vaporizers had emerged.

    Most ball vapes are desktop vaporizers designed for use with a water piece, as their vapor is often hot enough to benefit from additional cooling.

    How Ball Vapes Work 

    The heated balls never touch your herb. Instead, they heat the air, and that air passes through a small pressed puck of dry herb. Trichomes absorb the heat and release vapor as the air moves through.

    Much like an espresso machine, a finer grind and a perfectly tamped bowl yield the best results. 

    Modern ball vapes use a coil heater to warm a ball-filled housing and maintain a stable temperature. The balls store heat, like a battery. Air is drawn through the heated balls and directly through the cannabis. The super-heated air vaporizes the trichome heads using convection. 

    The experience is typically a fast, open inhale, and many users consider it one of the most potent and flavorful ways to consume cannabis. These vapes are designed for rapid extraction, often finishing a bowl in one or two inhalations.

    What Makes a Ball Vape Different? 

    Dry herb vaporizers have used convection for decades, and powerful units have existed for years. However, ball vapes generally require less specialized inhalation techniques and are engineered for higher heat delivery than many traditional vaporizers. After reviewing hundreds of devices, ball vapes clearly represent a distinct category.

    Flower Dabs 

    Ball vapes operate in a class of their own. Their high-heat convection can deliver vapor intensity that some users compare to dabbing. For first-time users, the experience can feel surprisingly strong.

    The hit and overall effect from a ball vape can be intense, especially at higher temperatures. Because there’s no combustion, vapor can feel cleaner and more concentrated. Some models are capable of extracting up to 0.5g in a single session, while others are optimized for microdoses around 0.1g.

    Ball Vapes are Still Evolving 

    These vapes are the cutting edge of dry herb vapor extraction. Today’s innovators are refining the experience to make it more user-friendly while further optimizing the flavor. 

    Many ball vapes aren’t ready for the mainstream. These devices have hot surfaces and require dedicated space. The tech is only pushed by the demands of vapor enthusiasts and early adopters. 

    Consumer-ready ball vapes come as wireless desktop vaporizers. The coil is mounted in a stationary housing, and the ball vape stays heated there. The hot ball vape is only removed when in use. As an added advantage, the stationary coil can be used to heat traditional quartz bucket bangers for a true dabbing experience, making wireless ball vapes the truest dual-use desktop vaporizer. 

    Most wireless ball vapes use a standard 30mm, 25mm, or 16mm coil. 

    Factors of Flavor & Performance 

    Ball vapes are made for flavor chasers and frequent usage consumers. The evolution has been driven by the demand for maximum potency without sacrificing flavor. These vapes cook the herb evenly, which means fewer wasted cannabinoids. 

    Ruby balls are the material of choice for most ball vapes. Ruby tastes as pure as glass, but with better thermal performance and durability. Smaller balls yield more power potential, but at the cost of airflow restriction. Most ball vapes are using 2mm-4mm balls.

    Reducing the amount of metal used in the heater and airpath, or eliminating it completely, maximizes the flavor purity. The Universal Baller by Terp Chasers Club features an all-glass bowl and a glass-lined ball chamber, providing a 100% all-glass air path. This vape has a protective metal exterior wrapped around an all-glass heater. 

    Temperature Control & Customizing the High 

    Ball vape temperatures don’t directly translate to vape temperatures. It’s one of the gotcha points of the category. PIDs are used to control the coil temperature, and the balls are usually several insulating layers beneath the coil. Coil temperatures range from 500F to 650F, but the vaporization temperatures are lower. 

    Higher temperatures and darker roasts often yield a more stoney and sedative high. Indicas will have even more of the expected indica effects at higher temperatures.

    Lower temperatures leave more behind, but yield a headier high. Sativas can get even more driven with an intense low-temperature hit. These vapes deliver the most complete presentation of a strain’s potential flavors. 

    Effects will ultimately depend on cannabinoid and terpene content rather than simply indica or sativa labeling.

    Some ball vapes are designed to leverage conduction and radiant heating for even deeper levels of flavor and extraction. Industry-leading ball vapes, like the Universal Baller, feature a modular design that allows them to be fully customized. It’s also the first ball vape to use a fully glass-lined air path. 

    Are Ball Vapes Safe? 

    These devices are intended for experienced adult users. They operate at high temperatures and can cause burns if mishandled. A dedicated space and attention to safety are strongly recommended. Many modern designs incorporate coil guards or protective housings to reduce accidental contact.

    Ideal Uses 

    Ball vapes are currently best suited for experienced or frequent consumers. Those who prefer at-home sessions and powerful extraction will likely appreciate their performance.

    Portable ball vapes exist, but the category remains primarily desktop-focused.

    All images provided by Terp Chasers Club.

    About the author: Troy / 420vapezone 

    Troy has been reviewing vaporizers since 2015. He’s been deleted from YouTube twice and remains an independent vape reviewer. He documents and reviews the evolution of ball vapes and other dry herb vaporizers on 420vapezone.com.

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  • Why You Can’t Remember Being a Toddler

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    Think back to the first thing you remember: Candles on your birthday cake, the wiry fur of a childhood dog, the smell of your mother’s perfume. Whatever the memory, chances are you were already at least a couple years old when those events took place. Children younger than three are intensely aware of the world around them—just look at any toddler, delightedly mouthing a toy or screaming at fireworks—and they seem to remember things from the recent past. Until, one day, they don’t.  

    Between us and our earliest experiences lies a mysterious barrier. And that’s not just true for  humans. Experiments have shown that mice show a similar pattern of forgetting. Mice that learn to escape a maze when they’re just a couple weeks old forget by the time they are adults. Young mice conditioned to fear a chamber where they’ve received a shock don’t recognize it after they grow up.

    In recent years, scientists who study this phenomenon—sometimes called childhood or infantile amnesia—have made some surprising findings that illuminate how this nearly universal form of forgetting works.

    Are the memories gone, or just out of reach?

    It might seem like the memories of early life simply get erased. But some research suggests that in mice, those memories still exist, and can be brought back. 

    At the lab of Paul Frankland, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, researchers tagged the cells in the brain that were activated as young mice learned to fear a chamber. Three months later, when the full-grown mice had forgotten their fear, the researchers activated those cells again—and suddenly, the mice remembered. 

    This suggests that—at least in mice—memories formed in early life are not wiped or destroyed; they’re just out of reach of normal recall. It may be that something about how the brain grows makes those memories inaccessible, locked rooms whose keys have been lost.

    Read More: How to, Like, Stop Saying Filler Words

    Indeed, animals whose brains tend to add smaller crops of neurons after birth—guinea pigs, for instance—do not show signs of this amnesia, Frankland and colleagues have found. 

    The lab of Tomás Ryan, a neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, has also revealed that some mice are less prone to forgetting. Male mice whose mothers’ immune systems were activated during pregnancy do not show the same pattern of amnesia as their female siblings or control mice.

    What’s more, Ryan’s group has highlighted the role of immune cells in the brain called microglia in infantile amnesia: Knock down microglia activity in a key developmental window, and mice don’t forget the solution to a maze as they mature. This suggests that the immune system may be involved in infantile amnesia.

    But what about humans? 

    It’s tricky to figure out what is going on inside the brains of babies and very young children. (To name one barrier: Sitting motionless for brain scans is not their strong suit.) However, Nick Turk-Browne at Yale University and his colleagues have managed to scan the brains of a growing number of little kids, and they’ve discovered that kids as young as a year old do appear to be forming memories, in the same way that adults create recollections of past events, called episodic memory. This suggests that humans, too, may be making memories that later just can’t be reached.

    Is it worth taking your two-year-old on vacation, if it’s all going to disappear? “I get asked this all the time: ‘What can we do to prevent this from happening?’” says Turk-Browne. “You can talk about it a lot, or show pictures. But the true, pure thing—where he had this memory that he hasn’t thought about in a long time, that you haven’t talked about with him—that will soon be gone, for better or worse.” 

    Read More: Stressed Out? Try Putting Together a Kids’ Puzzle

    To get a better sense of precisely when memories are formed and forgotten, Sarah Power at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and her colleagues built a media room where children have experiences they will never encounter in the outside world. “One of the really important things about the task is that everything only exists inside the lab space. We wanted to make sure it was completely unique in the sense that…the contextual environments don’t exist anywhere outside in the real world, so that we could know that if they did remember these associations, it could only be from the fact that they had been in the lab,” she says. They have so far observed 400 toddlers between the ages of 18 and 24 months, having them form memories of the lab space, and they intend to follow them over time. The project is still in its early stages, but “from the preliminary data, we’ve been very surprised at their ability to encode and retain these episodic-like memories,” she says.

    For a smaller experiment Turk-Browne is running, parents filmed footage of events from the children’s perspective. Then, he and his colleagues showed the children their videos and videos from strangers while scanning their brains, at several sessions spread out over two years. The idea is to assess whether videos of a child’s own view of the world elicit remembering that’s detectable on brain scans, and, if so, exactly when that effect disappears. 

    Why do we forget?

    It’s a mystery why our brains, and those of other mammals, forget our early lives. “I do wonder what it tells us about human memory in general, education, early life, learning…Is this a biological switch, or is this just a product of exuberant learning?” says Ryan. “In other words, is our brain actually intentionally saying we’re going to shut down these memories? Or is it just a byproduct of heavy learning in that period?”

    Does retaining our earliest memories pose a threat, somehow, to our survival? Or does the value of those memories lie in something that does not require their conscious retrieval—so if we forget them, it does not matter?

    Perhaps the point of our earliest memories is that they allow us to build a mental database of the way things work, Turk-Browne speculates. The specifics—the things we hang onto in episodic memory—might not be what’s valuable about them. 

    “Most memory researchers think of the adaptive value of memory as being able to behave appropriately in new situations based on past experience,” he says. “There’s tons of behavioral evidence that even newborn infants are really good at aggregating statistics”—building a picture of the world that stands up over time, that helps us make decisions and control our environments. Whatever the reasons behind the disappearance of our memories, they might still be with us in ways we don’t recognize.

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    Veronique Greenwood

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  • Más personas toman medicamentos para tratar la ansiedad, aunque el gobierno critica su uso – KFF Health News

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    Después de un año agotador de quimioterapia, cirugía y radiación para tratar un cáncer de mama, Sadia Zapp se sentía ansiosa. No era la inquietud manejable que había sido parte de su vida durante años, sino algo más profundo y difícil de ignorar.

    Dijo que “cada pequeña molestia, como un dolor de rodilla,  le hacía pensar: este es el final del camino para mí”.

    Así que Zapp, de 40 años, directora de comunicaciones en Nueva York, se convirtió en una de los millones de estadounidenses que comenzaron a tomar medicamentos para la ansiedad (ansiolíticos) en los últimos años. En su caso, fue Lexapro, un fármaco que aumenta la producción de serotonina.

    “Me encanta. Ha sido excelente”, dijo. “Realmente me ha ayudado a manejarla”.

    La proporción de adultos en el país que tomaron medicamentos para la ansiedad aumentó de 11,7% en 2019 a 14,3% en 2024, y la mayor parte del incremento se registró durante la pandemia de covid, según datos de encuestas de los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC).

    Eso representa 8 millones de personas más, un total aproximado de 38 millones, con aumentos marcados entre adultos jóvenes, personas con título universitario y adultos que se identifican como LGBTQ+.

    Aunque los medicamentos psiquiátricos han ganado aceptación pública y son más fáciles de conseguir mediante citas de telemedicina, el aumento en el uso de una clase de antidepresivos llamados inhibidores selectivos de la recaptación de serotonina, conocidos como ISRS, ha generado críticas de partidarios del movimiento “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA), quienes sostienen que son perjudiciales.

    Médicos e investigadores dicen que medicamentos como Prozac, Zoloft y Lexapro son tratamientos de primera línea para muchos trastornos de ansiedad, incluidos el trastorno por ansiedad generalizada y el trastorno de pánico, y que han sido presentados de forma incorrecta como adictivos y dañinos en general, a pesar de que se ha demostrado que son seguros para uso prolongado.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretario del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos (HHS, por sus siglas en inglés), ha criticado el uso creciente de los ISRS. Durante su audiencia de confirmación el 29 de enero, dijo que conoce personas, incluidos familiares, a quienes les resultó más difícil dejar los ISRS que dejar la heroína. Más recientemente, afirmó que su agencia estudia un posible vínculo entre el uso de ISRS y otros medicamentos psiquiátricos y comportamientos violentos como tiroteos escolares.

    Marty Makary, comisionado de la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos (FDA, por sus siglas en inglés), también ha sugerido que el uso de los ISRS en mujeres embarazadas podría provocar malos resultados en el nacimiento.

    Los efectos secundarios comunes de los ISRS incluyen malestar estomacal, dificultad para concentrarse y fatiga. Algunos también pueden reducir la libido y causar otros efectos sexuales secundarios.

    Para muchas personas, sin embargo, los efectos secundarios son leves y tolerables, y los beneficios de tratar la ansiedad crónica lo compensan, señaló Patrick Kelly, presidente de la Sociedad Psiquiátrica del Sur de California. “Las declaraciones sobre los ISRS simplemente no estaban basadas en ningún tipo de evidencia o hecho”, dijo Kelly sobre los comentarios de Kennedy.

    Un estudio reciente mostró que más de la mitad de las personas con trastorno por ansiedad generalizada que tomaban un ISRS vieron reducidos sus síntomas de ansiedad al menos en un 50%. Los efectos secundarios llevaron a aproximadamente 1 de cada 12 personas a dejar de usar el medicamento.

    “Cuando se hace de manera adecuada y también se utilizan técnicas de terapia apropiadas, los ISRS pueden ser realmente muy útiles”, dijo Emily Wood, psiquiatra que ejerce en Los Ángeles.

    MAHA atribuye la ansiedad a una mala alimentación y a la falta de ejercicio

    Los partidarios de MAHA han atribuido en parte el aumento de varios problemas de salud, incluidos la ansiedad, la depresión y otros trastornos de salud mental, a malas decisiones alimentarias y a un estilo de vida sedentario. Como solución, han propuesto medidas como reducir el consumo de alimentos ultraprocesados, que estudios recientes han vinculado con la depresión y la ansiedad, y disminuir el tiempo frente a pantallas a favor del ejercicio.

    Los psiquiatras suelen recomendar una alimentación saludable y ejercicio como terapia complementaria para la ansiedad y la depresión. Wood dijo que los que pueden manejar la ansiedad sin medicamentos también deberían considerar la terapia de conversación. La proporción de adultos en Estados Unidos que utilizan consejería en salud mental aumentó entre 2019 y 2024 a medida que la teleterapia ganó popularidad, según datos federales. “Los trastornos de ansiedad están entre los trastornos psiquiátricos que mejor responden a la terapia cognitivo-conductual”, dijo.

    Pero los medicamentos pueden ayudar.

    Estudios muestran que los riesgos de tomar ISRS durante el embarazo son bajos para la madre y el bebé. En contraste, “la depresión aumenta el riesgo de casi todas las complicaciones para la madre y el bebé”, expresó Wood, y agregó que declaraciones recientes de funcionarios del gobierno sobre el uso de ISRS durante el embarazo “podrían estar causando un daño real a estas mujeres”.

    Algunas personas que dejan de tomar antidepresivos experimentan náuseas, insomnio u otros síntomas, especialmente si los suspenden de forma repentina. Pero “el concepto de adicción simplemente no se aplica a estos medicamentos”, dijo Kelly, una afirmación respaldada por estudios.

    La adicción sí es posible con benzodiacepinas como Xanax, que a menudo son un tratamiento de segunda línea para la ansiedad. Estas sustancias controladas también pueden aumentar el riesgo de sobredosis de opioides en pacientes que toman ambos tipos de medicamentos. Durante audiencias en el Congreso el año pasado, Kennedy también criticó el uso excesivo de benzodiacepinas como un problema.

    Aunque las benzodiacepinas son efectivas a corto plazo, requieren supervisión y cuidado, dijo Wood.

    “Son medicamentos muy útiles para la ansiedad aguda y no son adecuados como tratamiento a largo plazo, porque pueden generar dependencia con el tiempo”, explicó Wood. “Si se toman a diario, se necesita cada vez más para lograr el mismo efecto y luego hay que reducir la dosis de manera gradual”.

    Un número creciente de personas también toma ocasionalmente betabloqueantes como el propranolol para la ansiedad. Algunas las usan para prevenir el ritmo cardíaco acelerado antes de un discurso público u otros momentos importantes, aunque no están aprobadas por la FDA para tratar la ansiedad y se usan por fuera de lo que indica la receta.

    Los betabloqueantes pueden causar mareos y fatiga, pero “no generan adicción, son útiles para reducir la activación del sistema nervioso autónomo, pasar de la respuesta de lucha o huida a un estado más neutral y son seguros”, dijo Wood.

    Cambios sociales impulsan el aumento en el uso de estos medicamentos

    Un número de teorías podrían explicar por qué muchas más personas están tomando medicamentos para la ansiedad, entre ellas un mayor uso de redes sociales, más aislamiento y mayor incertidumbre económica, según médicos e investigadores.

    Además, los medicamentos son relativamente fáciles de obtener. Muchas personas reciben recetas de ISRS y benzodiacepinas de su médico de atención primaria. Otras, después de una breve cita de teleterapia.

    Muchos influencers en redes sociales hablan sobre sus problemas de salud mental, lo que ha reducido el estigma entre los jóvenes y los anima a buscar ayuda. Aproximadamente un tercio de los adolescentes en un estudio reciente dijo que busca información sobre salud mental a través de redes sociales.

    Aun así, el mayor acceso a medicamentos para la ansiedad puede ser problemático cuando se combina con una tendencia a autodiagnosticarse basada en información en redes sociales. Una búsqueda en Google de “buy Xanax online” muestra promesas patrocinadas de tratamiento el mismo día, aunque la letra pequeña aclara que no se garantiza una receta.

    “Creo que un mayor acceso es algo positivo, pero no es lo mismo que, por ejemplo, pedir Xanax por internet”, dijo Kelly.

    Los adultos jóvenes impulsan en gran medida el aumento en el uso de medicamentos para la ansiedad. La proporción de estadounidenses de 18 a 34 años que los toman aumentó de 8,8% en 2019 —el primer año en que estos datos estuvieron disponibles— a 14,6% en 2024. En contraste, la tasa cambió poco entre los adultos de 65 años o más, según datos de los CDC.

    La pandemia y los confinamientos por covid aumentaron de forma importante el estrés entre muchos adultos, en especial los jóvenes.

    Los datos también muestran que más mujeres que hombres toman medicamentos para la ansiedad.

    Jason Schnittker, jefe de departamento y profesor de Sociología en la Universidad de Pennsylvania, dijo que esto se debe a que es más probable que los necesiten. También es más probable que las mujeres digan cuando se sienten ansiosas, y los médicos “tienden a identificar la ansiedad con mayor facilidad en sus pacientes mujeres que en sus pacientes hombres”, añadió Schnittker.

    También podrían influir tendencias más amplias. Schnittker señaló que estudios han mostrado que la ansiedad se ha vuelto más común entre generaciones sucesivas durante gran parte del siglo XX y el siglo XXI. Autor de Unnerved: Anxiety, Social Change, and the Transformation of Modern Mental Health, dijo que el aumento de la desigualdad de ingresos podría ser un factor, ya que las personas sienten presión por mejorar su situación económica. Las actividades sociales y religiosas han sido reemplazadas por un mayor aislamiento. Y las personas se han vuelto más desconfiadas de los demás, lo que crea una sensación de inquietud frente a extraños.

    Para Zapp, sobreviviente de cáncer, pasaron algunos meses tomando Lexapro antes de notar resultados claros. Cuando ocurrió, dijo, sintió que su mente estaba menos saturada, lo que le facilitó concentrarse. También recibió terapia, pero ahora su ansiedad crónica está estabilizada solo con el medicamento.

    “Definitivamente me ayudó a volver a mi rutina diaria de una manera productiva y no simplemente llena de ansiedad durante todo el día”, dijo.

    Holly Hacker, Maia Rosenfeld y Lydia Zuraw, de KFF Health News, contribuyeron con este artículo.

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  • When Beer Beats Weed: Germany’s Cannabis Reform Backlash

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    More than a decade ago, my fitness coach and friend, Jenny, called me in distress. She had just been attacked and severely beaten by her ex-boyfriend, a member of a German police arrest unit. He had called her to return his apartment keys a few days after their breakup. She waited in the hallway outside his apartment, and he showed up drunk, fresh from Stuttgart’s massive October beer fest. He started to scream at her, then he began to beat her up. She was fit, in shape, tall, and in training to become a police officer, but she said the only thing she could do was to curl up in a ball, hoping to survive. 

    Neighbors called the police. Officers arrested him and searched his apartment, where they found a bag with one gram of cannabis in his safe when they took his service weapon. He immediately claimed the cannabis bag was hers.

    Guess who faced the more severe consequences? The attacker received a mild disciplinary penalty. Jenny endured hair testing with a result in a “grey zone”; she nearly lost her career as a police officer in training before it even began. A drunk cop beats his girlfriend? Manageable. But the possession of a gram of cannabis? Almost career-ending.

    Photo courtesy of Tim Foster via Unsplash.

    Germany’s Partial Legalization is Working, But Conservatives Want it Gone

    When Germany introduced the “Cannabis-Gesetz” (CanG) to partially legalize cannabis in April 2024, it faced criticism not only from conservatives but also from proponents of legalization, who argued it could not achieve its goals without a fully regulated adult-use market. The reform came in two phases: Pillar 1 legalized home cultivation and non-profit cannabis cultivation associations similar to cannabis social clubs in Spain, but without permission for a space for common consumption. Pillar 2 promised regional pilot programs for licensed retail sales. 

    However, after the progressive, social-liberal, and environmentalist “Traffic Light” government coalition collapsed, the new government, led by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with the Social Democrats (SPD) as a partner, announced a legislative revision of the CanG. Conservatives seem determined to roll back what one of their leading figures dismissively calls a “shit law” and have proposed a restrictive amendment to outlaw telemedicine services for cannabis flowers. The final readings of this amendment are anticipated for spring 2026, with a final vote in the Bundestag expected in early 2026.

    But here’s what the CDU doesn’t want you to know: the reform is working. The federal government’s first official assessment, the EKOCAN interim report published in October 2025, paints a picture that contradicts every doomsday prediction. The problem is, the system is only half-built. Home growing requires space and know-how many Germans lack, and cannabis associations are rolling out slowly due to licensing delays in conservative-led federal states. So far, these associations serve less than 0.1% of the country’s demand, forcing the medical cannabis system to carry a weight it was never designed for, a pressure conservatives are now exploiting to torpedo the project.

    Patient Access Has Exploded – For Now

    One of the biggest achievements of Germany’s reform has been the explosion in patient access. With the reclassification of cannabis, doctors can now prescribe it on a standard prescription rather than a special narcotic one. This change alone has been a game-changer for tens of thousands of patients. Telemedicine platforms have stepped in to fill the void left by Germany’s shortage of cannabis-literate doctors, connecting hundreds of thousands of patients with physicians who understand their needs. They have also contributed significantly to patient education regarding safer and more productive use.

    As a result, cannabis imports reached record levels in 2025, with official BfArM data showing over 43 tonnes imported in the second quarter alone. For the first time, a significant portion of German consumers has a safe, legal, and reliable way to access regulated cannabis products.

    The Black Market is Shrinking, and Public Health is Improving

    Despite the incomplete rollout, evidence shows that even this partial legalization is achieving its core goals. Police-recorded cannabis offenses have plummeted, reflecting the new legal thresholds and freeing up resources for serious crime. Meanwhile, the public health crises predicted by conservatives have not materialized, just as they didn’t in the U.S., the Netherlands, Portugal, or Uruguay after their significant legal steps towards legalizing cannabis. 

    Youth consumption in Germany continues a downward trend that began in 2002, and wastewater monitoring shows adult consumption remains stable. Most importantly, the black market is shrinking. The EKOCAN report explicitly states that the legal market share is growing as the illicit market contracts. While Canada took four years to reach a 78% legal market share, Germany is finally heading in the right direction.

    Photo courtesy of Patrick von der Wehd via Unsplash.

    A Story of Beer, Power, and Hypocrisy

    So why does the CDU want to reverse this progress? One reason lies in a well-documented network of political and economic interests. The party’s actions reveal a deep-seated allegiance to Germany’s powerful alcohol industry. In 2009, when a federal drug commissioner proposed an alcohol prevention plan, the head of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association coordinated with CSU leaders (the CDU’s Bavarian sister party) to kill it. The CSU’s Peter Ramsauer later boasted, “I think with this approach we have succeeded in preventing the drug commissioner’s plans for new and completely inappropriate restrictions on alcohol consumption”.

    The ties are structural. The German Brewers’ Association is an official member of the CDU’s Economic Council and regularly bestows the title “Ambassador of Beer” upon the very politicians responsible for regulating their industry. This explains the blatant double standard: at a brewery anniversary in 2022, Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder (CSU) declared that people should stick with Bavarian beer as it is “much healthier” than cannabis. This is a political choice, not a scientific one, aimed at protecting an established industry from a market competitor—a playbook the U.S. alcohol industry has used for years.

    The Cultural Fear of Looking Inward

    This political hypocrisy is built on a deeper cultural fear. In his landmark 1966 book, On Intoxication in the Orient and Occident, the Swiss scholar Rudolf Gelpke argued that Western culture embraces alcohol because it promotes extroverted, social behaviors that serve a productivity-obsessed society. Gelpke observed that societies favor drugs that reinforce their core values. For the West, alcohol is the ideal intoxicant: it lowers inhibitions and fuels the kind of boisterous, outward-facing energy that can be channeled into work.

    Cannabis, he argued, encourages introspection and contemplation, states of mind less useful to a system built on external achievement. It fosters a reflective, often critical, perspective. This inward turn potentially calls into question the relentless drive for productivity and external validation. My friend and mentor, the late cannabis expert and Harvard Associate Professor of Psychiatry Lester Grinspoon, came to a similar conclusion independently of Gelpke in his landmark book Marihuana Reconsidered in 1971.

    Thus, the resistance to cannabis isn’t about protecting people from a dangerous drug; it’s about protecting a cultural worldview that privileges one kind of intoxication over another. Gelpke also predicted that Western culture would eventually dominate the Eastern hemisphere, a prediction that has largely come true, bringing shifted cultural attitudes toward cannabis with it.

    A New Era of German Militancy and the Shifting Narratives of Prohibition

    This cultural bias is gaining relevance as Germany enters a new historical phase. Facing a resurgent Russia, Germany is undergoing its most significant military rearmament since World War II. The nation’s leaders have declared a Zeitenwende(historic turning point), expanding the Bundeswehr to become the backbone of European defense. This shift brings a cultural emphasis on aggression, readiness, and collective defense. A substance with a reputation for making people more peaceful and introspective may be seen not just as counter-cultural, but as a national security threat.

    History provides a chilling parallel in the United States. In the 1930s, Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, portrayed cannabis as a drug that turned users into violent killers to back up his prohibition. Two decades later, in the anti-communist climate of the McCarthy era, his propaganda did a complete 180. Anslinger and other “Cold Warriors” claimed cannabis was a weapon used by Communist China to “pacify” the American population and undermine its will to fight. The narrative was never about the drug’s actual effects; it was about leveraging public fear to serve a political agenda.

    What Happens Next

    Germany stands at a crossroads. Cities like Berlin and Frankfurt are ready to launch Pillar 2 pilot projects for licensed sales. The infrastructure is ready; what’s missing is political will. If the CDU succeeds in rolling back reform, hundreds of thousands of patients will be forced back to the black market, and the country will trade a regulated, tax-paying industry for a return to failed prohibitionist policies. The world is watching. The data from Germany provides further evidence for reformers everywhere: legalization, even when partial, can work and make a profound difference for society.

    The question is whether Germany’s politicians will listen to evidence or ideology, to scientifically informed public health experts or the alcohol lobby. Our attitude toward cannabis is not only rooted in cultural history but also responds to its perceived impact on society in specific historical situations. 

    As the case of US propaganda shows, these perceptions are usually disconnected from science and shaped by cultural biases, political opportunism, and irrational beliefs. History teaches us that prohibitions built on fear and protectionism create havoc. The haunting question is whether anyone still seeks a rational perspective in this dawning post-truth era.

    This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

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    Dr. Sebastian Marincolo

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  • How to read a paper (Part 3) – How to approach a paper – Diet and Health Today

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    Introduction

    We’re on the third part of four notes documenting “How to read a paper.” The first note reviewed levels of evidence. That’s the starting point to understand what we are reading and how robust it might be. Part 2 looked at the component parts of a paper and some terms that we need to know to be able to dissect papers. This note uses the other two as building blocks and it covers how to approach a paper.

    I’ll let you into a secret up front. I hardly ever read a paper. I can’t remember the last time I read a paper from start to finish. The narrative of a paper will tell me what the researchers want me to know. That will bias me if I read this first. The numbers tell me the truth (if they have included enough numbers and most papers do). Definitions are also a source of truth. Discovering that the red meat definition includes sandwiches and lasagne destroys any findings immediately (Ref 1). You could stop there. Definitions will often require you to review previous papers and numbers will often require you to scrutinise any supplementary material. If researchers know that something should be shared but that it would undermine findings, they can stick it in the supplementary material.

    I am struggling to think of a ‘trick’ that I found in a paper that wasn’t in the numbers, definitions and/or supplementary material. Researchers are not going to tell you any stunts in the narrative.

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    Zoe

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  • New Orleans Brings Back the House Call, Sending Nurses To Visit Newborns and Moms – KFF Health News

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    When Lisa Bonfield gave birth to daughter Adele in late November, she was thrust into the new world of parenting, and faced an onslaught of challenges and skills to learn: breastfeeding, diapering, sleep routines, colic, crying, and all the little warning signs that something could be wrong with the baby.

    But unlike parents in most of the U.S., she had extra help that was once much more common: house calls.

    Adele was only a few weeks old when a registered nurse showed up at Bonfield’s door on Dec. 10 to check on them and offer hands-on help and advice.

    As a city resident who had recently given birth, she was eligible for up to three home visits from Family Connects New Orleans, a program of the city health department.

    She didn’t need to feed and change the baby before packing everything up for a car trip to the pediatrician or a clinic. It was a relief; Bonfield was exhausted and was still trying to figure out how to use the infant car seat.

    “Everything is so abstract before you have a baby,” Bonfield said. “You are going to have questions you never even thought about.”

    Louisiana is among the worst-performing states in maternal and infant health outcomes. So New Orleans is trying to catch health issues early — and get families off to an easier start — by adding health visits during the crucial first months of life.

    The hope is that health outcomes can be improved by returning to the old-fashioned medical practice of house calls.

    The Family Connects model has been tried in communities across 20 states. It began in Durham, North Carolina, in 2008, as a partnership with Duke University. In 2023, New Orleans’ health director, Jennifer Avegno, helped launch a local version of the program.

    Avegno was concerned by Louisiana’s particularly grim statistics for maternal and infant health.

    The state has some of the highest rates of preterm births, unnecessary cesarean sections, and maternal and infant deaths, according to the March of Dimes. A recent analysis from the United Health Foundation found that Louisiana was the “least healthy” state for women and children.

    “We got to do some real things real differently, unless you like being No. 50 all the time,” Avegno said.

    The home visits are free and available to anyone who has just given birth in a New Orleans hospital, no matter their insurance status or income level.

    Avegno describes the home visits as going “back to the future,” replicating a practice that was far more common a hundred years ago.

    “There is no more critical time and vulnerable time than right at birth and in the few weeks to months following birth,” Avegno said.

    The nurses arrive with diaper bags filled with newborn essentials, from diapers to nipple cream. They weigh, measure, and examine the babies, and check in with the mothers about their health and well-being. They offer referrals to other programs across the city.

    They ask if the family has enough food, and whether there are guns in the house and how they’re stored, Avegno said.

    In Bonfield’s case, the nurse stayed for over two hours. Bonfield especially liked their conversation about how to safely store breastmilk.

    “I’ve never felt so well taken care of and listened to,” she said.

    Broad Support

    Louisiana has struggled a long time with poor maternal and infant health outcomes, but the problem has been complicated by the state’s strict abortion ban.

    The 2022 law led to risky medical delays and unnecessary surgeries in obstetrical care, and confusion among doctors about what’s allowed in ending dangerous pregnancies or treating miscarriages.

    Avegno opposes the state’s abortion policies, believing they are harmful to women’s health. But she says that Family Connects offers other ways to preserve and expand care for women. For example, the visiting nurse can check in with the mother about whether she needs help with birth control.

    “We can’t give them abortion access,” she said. “That’s not the goal of this program, and that wouldn’t be possible anyway. But we can make sure they’re healthy and understand what their options are for reproductive health care.”

    Abortion politics aside, the postpartum home visits seem to have bipartisan support in Louisiana, and state lawmakers want to expand their availability.

    Last year, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a law requiring private insurance plans to cover the visits.

    The new law is another way that Louisiana officials can be “pro-life,” said state Rep. Mike Bayham, who, as a Republican and an abortion opponent, sponsored the legislation.

    “One of the slings used against advocates against abortion is that we’re pro-birth, and not truly pro-life,” Bayham said. “And this bill is proof that we care about the overall well-being of our mothers and our newborns.”

    Improving Health and Help for Postpartum Depression

    Two years in, there are already promising signs that the program is improving health.

    Early data analyzed by researchers at Tulane University showed that families who got the visits were more likely to stick to the recommended schedule of pediatric and postpartum checkups. Moms and babies were also less likely to need hospitalization, and overall health care spending was down among families insured by Medicaid.

    Research on Family Connects programs elsewhere has found similar results. In North Carolina, one study showed that three to seven home visits reduced trips to the emergency room by 50% in the year before a baby turned 1.

    But the statistic that most excited Avegno related to the program’s role in screening mothers for postpartum depression.

    The visiting nurses are helping spot more cases of postpartum depression — earlier — so that new moms can get treatment. About 10% of moms participating in the New Orleans program were eventually diagnosed with postpartum depression, compared with 6% of moms who did not get the visits.

    Timely diagnosis is important to prevent depression symptoms from worsening, or leading to more severe outcomes, such as suicidal thoughts, thoughts of harming the baby, or problems bonding with their newborn.

    Lizzie Frederick was one of the New Orleans mothers whose postpartum symptoms were caught early by a visiting nurse.

    When she was pregnant, she and her husband took all the childbirth and newborn classes they could. They hired a doula to help with the birth. But Frederick still wasn’t prepared for the stresses of the postpartum period, she said.

    “I don’t think there are enough classes out there to prepare you for all the different scenarios,” Frederick said.

    When her son, James, was born in May, he had trouble breastfeeding. He was sleeping for only 90-minute stretches at night.

    When the nurse arrived for the first visit a few weeks later, Frederick was busy trying to feed James. But the nurse reassured her that there was no rush. She could wait.

    “I am here to support you and take care of you,” Frederick recalled the nurse saying.

    The nurse weighed James, and Frederick was relieved to learn he was gaining weight. But for most of the visit, the nurse focused on Frederick’s needs. She was exhausted, anxious, and had started hearing what she called phantom cries.

    The nurse walked her through a mental health questionnaire. Then she recommended that Frederick see a counselor and consider attending group therapy sessions for perinatal women.

    Frederick followed up on these suggestions and was eventually diagnosed with postpartum depression.

    “I think that I would have felt a lot more alone if I hadn’t had this visit, and struggled in other ways without the resources that the nurse provided,” Frederick said.

    Home Visits Save Money

    Melissa Goldin Evans, an assistant professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health, helped interview over 90 families participating in the Family Connects New Orleans program.

    “It was overwhelmingly positive experiences,” she said. “This is like a gold-standard public health project, in my opinion.”

    To operate, Family Connects costs the city about $1.5 million a year, or $700 per birth, according to Avegno. But the program also has the potential to save money: Research on North Carolina’s program found that every $1 invested in the program saved $3.17 in health care billing before the child turned 2.

    That’s another reason to require the visits statewide, according to state Rep. Bayham.

    “The nurses and medical practitioners will be able to monitor potential problems on the front end, so that they could be handled without a trip to the emergency room or something even more drastic,” he said.

    Avegno is advocating that the program be included in Louisiana’s Medicaid program, since more than 60% of births in the state are covered by Medicaid. A recent legislative report made the same recommendation.

    This article is from a partnership that includes WWNO, NPR, and KFF Health News.

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  • As More Americans Embrace Anxiety Treatment, MAHA Derides Medications – KFF Health News

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    After a grueling year of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to treat breast cancer, Sadia Zapp was anxious — not the manageable hum that had long been part of her life, but something deeper, more distracting.

    “Every little ache, like my knee hurts,” she said, made her worry that “this is the end of the road for me.”

    So Zapp, a 40-year-old communications director in New York, became one of millions of Americans to start taking an anxiety medication in recent years. For her, it was the serotonin-boosting drug Lexapro.

    “I love it. It’s been great,” she said. “It’s really helped me manage.”

    The proportion of American adults who took anxiety medications jumped from 11.7% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2024, with most of the increase occurring during the covid pandemic, according to survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 8 million more people, bringing the total to roughly 38 million, with sharp increases among young adults, people with a college degree, and adults who identify as LGBTQ+.

    Even as psychiatric medications gain public acceptance and become easier to access through telehealth appointments, the rise of a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, known as SSRIs, has triggered a backlash from supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement who argue they are harmful. Doctors and researchers say medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Lexapro are front-line treatments for many anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and are being misrepresented as addictive and broadly harmful even though they’ve been proved safe for extended use.

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried broadening SSRI use. During his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing, he said he knows people, including family members, who had a tougher time quitting SSRIs than people have quitting heroin. More recently, he said his agency is studying a possible link between the use of SSRIs and other psychiatric medications and violent behavior like school shootings.

    Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has also suggested that SSRI use among pregnant women could lead to poor birth outcomes.

    SSRIs’ common side effects include upset stomach, brain fog, and fatigue. Some SSRIs also can reduce libido and cause other sexual side effects.

    For many people, however, the side effects are mild and tolerable and the benefits of treating chronic anxiety are worth it, said Patrick Kelly, president of the Southern California Psychiatric Society. “The statements about SSRIs were just not grounded in any sort of evidence or fact,” Kelly said of Kennedy’s comments.

    A recent comprehensive study showed that over half of people with generalized anxiety disorder taking an SSRI saw their anxiety symptoms reduced by at least 50%. Side effects prompted about 1 in 12 to stop taking an SSRI.

    Most With Generalized Anxiety Disorder Respond to SSRIs

    “When it’s being done right and when you’re also using appropriate therapy techniques, SSRIs can be really, really helpful,” said Emily Wood, a psychiatrist who practices in Los Angeles.

    MAHA Blames Anxiety on Poor Diet, Lack of Exercise

    Supporters of MAHA have partly blamed poor dietary choices and the increase of a sedentary lifestyle for the rise of a number of health problems, including anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. As a remedy, they have called for measures such as reducing consumption of ultraprocessed foods, which studies in recent years have connected to depression and anxiety, and cutting back on screen time in favor of exercise.

    Psychiatrists often encourage a healthy diet and exercise as an adjunctive therapy for anxiety and depression. Wood said those who can manage anxiety without medication should also consider talk therapy. The proportion of American adults using mental health counseling boomed from 2019 to 2024 as teletherapy grew in popularity, federal data shows. “Anxiety disorders are amongst our psychiatric disorders that really respond well to cognitive behavioral therapy,” she said.

    But medication can help.

    Studies show the risks of taking SSRIs during pregnancy are low for mother and child. By contrast, “depression increases your risk for every complication for a mother and a baby,” Wood said, adding that recent statements by government officials about SSRI use during pregnancy are “potentially leading to real harm for these women.”

    Some people who stop taking antidepressant medication will experience nausea, insomnia, or other symptoms, especially if they quit suddenly. But “the concept of addiction simply does not apply to these chemicals,” Kelly said, a statement backed up by studies.

    Sadia Zapp stands in her living room. Various potted plants and a china cabinet are behind her.
    Zapp takes Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized such anxiety medications, claiming they are addictive and harmful. Health care clinicians say they have been proved safe, and they point to broader social changes to explain their increased use.(Jackie Molloy for KFF Health News)

    Addiction, though, is a possibility with benzodiazepines such as Xanax that are often a second line of treatment for anxiety. These controlled substances can also increase the risk of opioid overdose in patients taking both types of drugs. During congressional hearings last year, Kennedy also decried benzodiazepine overuse as a problem.

    While benzodiazepines are effective for short-term use, they require monitoring and care, Wood said.

    “Those are really great meds for acute anxiety and not great as long-term anxiety medications, because they are habit-forming over time,” Wood said. “If you’re taking them on a daily basis, you’ll need more and more to get the same effect, and then you have to come down from them in a tapered way.”

    And an increasing number of people are also occasionally taking beta-blockers such as propranolol for anxiety. Some people use beta-blockers to prevent a racing heart before a public speech or other big moments, even though they are not FDA-approved for treating anxiety and are prescribed “off-label.”

    Beta-blockers can cause dizziness and fatigue, but they are “nonaddictive, really helpful for bringing down the autonomic nervous system, going from fight or flight to something more neutral, and really safe,” Wood said.

    Social Shifts Drive Increased Use of Anxiety Meds

    A number of leading theories could explain why so many more people are taking anxiety medication, including increased social media use, more isolation, and heightened economic uncertainty, physicians and researchers say.

    Plus, the medicines are relatively easy to get. Many people obtain SSRI and benzodiazepine prescriptions from their primary care physician. Others obtain the medications after a brief teletherapy appointment.

    Many social media influencers talk about their mental health struggles, easing some stigma among young people and encouraging them to get help. About a third of teens in a recent study said they get mental health information via social media.

    Still, increased access to anxiety medication can be a problem when combined with a trend of self-diagnosis based on social media trends. A Google search for “buy Xanax online” leads to sponsored promises of same-day treatment, though fine-print disclaimers clarify that a prescription is not guaranteed.

    “I think increased access is good, but that’s not the same thing as, you know, ordering Xanax online,” Kelly said.

    College Graduates See Large Rise in Anxiety Medication Use

    Young adults are largely driving an increase in anxiety medication use. The proportion of Americans ages 18 to 34 taking anxiety medication rose from 8.8% in 2019 — the first year such survey data became available — to 14.6% in 2024. By contrast, the rate didn’t change much among adults 65 and older, CDC data shows.

    The pandemic and covid lockdowns greatly increased stress among many American adults, particularly young adults.

    And data shows more women than men take anxiety medication. Jason Schnittker, a department chair and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, said that’s because they’re more likely to need them. They are also likelier than men to report when they feel anxious, and doctors are “inclined or see anxiety more readily in their female patients than their male patients,” Schnittker added.

    Women Take Medication for Anxiety More Often Than Men

    Broader trends could also be at work. Schnittker said studies have shown anxiety growing more prevalent among ensuing generations for much of the 20th and 21st centuries. Schnittker, author of Unnerved: Anxiety, Social Change, and the Transformation of Modern Mental Health, said growing income inequality could be partly to blame, with people feeling stress over improving their economic status. Social and religious activities have been replaced by more isolation. And people have become more suspicious of others, creating a sense of unease around strangers.

    For Zapp, the cancer survivor, it took a few months on Lexapro before she started seeing clear results. When she did, she said, it felt like her mind was less noisy, making it easier to focus. She also underwent talk therapy, but now her chronic anxiety is stabilized on medication alone.

    “It definitely helped me get back to my day-to-day in a way that was productive and not just riddled with my anxieties throughout the day,” she said.

    Sadia Zapp sits on a couch and looks out a window.
    Zapp, a communications director in New York, is one of millions of Americans to start taking an anxiety medication in recent years. “It’s really helped me manage,” she says.

    KFF Health News’ Holly Hacker, Maia Rosenfeld, and Lydia Zuraw contributed to this report.

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  • Karma Koala Podcast 293: Griffin Basden, Alpha Root. The Legislative & Regulatory Capture of the Cannabis “Sector” In Favor of Existing Corporate Interests | Cannabis Law Report

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    DOWNLOAD FOR FREE ON PODOMATIC

    https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/karmakoalapodcast/episodes/2026-02-23T01_55_25-08_00

    A very enjoyable conversation with Griffen.

    We were going to talk about that EO prior to Christmas but both decided that was somewhat boring so just dived into the state of the cannabis industry in the US today and how state and federal politics play a much larger role in the industry than many commentators and industry “leaders” would like to openly admit.

    Very refreshing to speak to someone working with the cannabis industry but not beholden to it.

    The koalas thank Griffen for her openess and lack of fence sitting especially when it comes to discussing how much policy and legislation thinking in 2025 and 2026 in the US suggests an increasing bias towards the top end of town rather than the middle and those developing new business in the space from the ground up.

    It’s a pattern being seen throughout the the US economy and won’t serve the country well over the longer term. As former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is arguing these days, it looks more like a 21st century version of feudalism than capitalism as we understand it from a 20th century prism.

    Griffen Basden

    Griffin Basden is a senior client manager at AlphaRoot, where she specializes in risk management for businesses operating in complex, regulated industries. Working closely with clients, she helps develop coverage strategies that support long-term growth while providing clarity and confidence around risk. Previously, she served in similar roles at Founder Shield, Aon, and ECM Solutions.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/graebasden/

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    Sean Hocking

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