In recent years, psychiatrists in various clinical settings have become more adept at identifying a specific kind of patient. They have been receiving treatment for a number of years, sometimes more than ten. They’ve done as instructed. They attend their appointments. They consume the medications. However, at some point, the once-helpful medications have begun to feel more burdensome than the initial illness. Sleep doesn’t alleviate their fatigue. They alternate between days that seem doable and periods of time when just using the restroom drains them. Sometimes they are unable to pinpoint the exact issue. They can only express that they…
Author: Jack Ward
A certain kind of person never speaks up during meetings. When asked how they’re doing, who says “good, honestly, I’m fine” in a tone so practiced that it no longer sounds like anything at all? Who reacts to cancellations with “no worries at all.” Those around them typically characterize them as stable, mature, and pleasant. What they fail to mention is the cost of that performance, which they most likely cannot see. For women, professionals, and anyone who was raised in a home where having obvious needs had repercussions, the “low drama” identity has subtly been elevated into something aspirational.…
Bloodwork doesn’t reveal a certain type of fatigue. It isn’t fatigue brought on by physical strain or long hours. After a day of scrolling, skimming, reacting, and refreshing, it settles somewhere behind the eyes as a subtle cognitive grit. Even if they haven’t given it a name, the majority of people are aware of it. It’s the sensation of simultaneously being everywhere and nowhere. There’s a reason for that feeling. Social media platforms, algorithmic feeds, and notification-driven apps are just a few of the systems that have been subtly designed over the last fifteen years to divide human attention into…
A quiet shift has been taking place somewhere between the pharmacy counter and the wellness aisle. Individuals who cycled through SSRIs for years, adjusting dosages, putting up with weight gain, and overcoming the emotional flatness that many describe as feeling like life wrapped in cling film, have begun looking elsewhere. Some of them have discovered something that would have been limited to quiet conversations and festival grounds only a short time ago. They claim to be taking very small doses of LSD or psilocybin—not enough to cause hallucinations or ruin an afternoon, but enough to feel a change. For those…
One image of John Cusack, standing outside a window at two in the morning with a boombox raised above his head and Peter Gabriel pouring out into the suburban darkness, is etched in the minds of a generation. That was back in 1989. The child in that scene had an open, loose face, an unintentional good looks that didn’t seem to require much effort. People use that boombox moment as a benchmark when they view pictures of Cusack at the age of 59 and notice something seems strange. It’s also a challenging baseline. For years, rumors about John Cusack’s plastic…
When you see someone you grew up with look—different—a certain kind of unease takes hold. Not weathered, not older. Simply different. Many Goo Goo Dolls fans seem to be experiencing that right now, and it’s difficult to write it off as mere nostalgia. A brief Instagram video appeared on the Greatest Hits Radio account towards the end of December 2025. In it, 60-year-old John Rzeznik and bandmate Robby Takac celebrated “Iris” being named the Official Charts Company’s most-streamed song of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s of 2025. This is a truly amazing accomplishment for a song that was released in…
On the desk is the phone. Twenty minutes have passed since it last buzzed. Nevertheless, a low, peripheral awareness that exists just beneath everything else continues to be detected by a portion of the mind. Don’t worry. Not in a hurry. Just preparedness. Even when no one is passing through it, the door remains open. From the inside, constant reachability truly feels like this. It’s a low-grade, ongoing state of anticipation that never quite ends, not a dramatic crisis or a clear breakdown. It is referred to by researchers as cognitive vigilance. The nervous system learns to maintain a baseline…
When you spend enough time with a stranger in a waiting area, the moment will come when you both purposefully stare at something other than each other in a hovering, slightly tense silence. Eventually, someone will say something. It’s not because there’s anything worth saying, but rather because the awkwardness of forced conversation has been eclipsed by the silence inexplicably. That little, well-known scene reveals something important about our evolving selves. In practically every significant way, silence has become an escape. Before the train doors close, commuters fill their earbuds. In vacant rooms, people in apartments leave their televisions on…