And yet, just as the UK’s official Covid inquiry gets under way, and less than 16 months after the last legal restrictions were lifted in this country, lockdowns not only seem to belong to a long gone past; they also appear to be fading, rapidly, from our consciousness. Many of us have only hazy memories of this period, and very little sense of when important events happened during it.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

I confess to having been somewhat perplexed at the time, but 10 years later, I get it. I wasn’t being encouraged to go around imagining that everyone was out to get me. Rather, I was being reminded of a journalist’s responsibility to publish accurate and fair information. It was a warning against complacency. A nudge, if you like, to hold on to a little bit of good old-fashioned anxiety.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, said over the weekend that the NHS was “not just on its knees, it’s on its face”, calling this “the worst crisis we’ve ever had”. This is more than just opposition party hyperbole: his words have been echoed widely by health officials and the media, including the foreign press, who use the same term.

Yet it does not seem at all clear that we are in crisis mode. The prime minister has spoken about “unacceptable delays” in ambulance and A&E waiting times, and convened a “recovery forum” last week with health leaders, but he has also refused to call it a crisis. And while the situation dominates many headlines, it is fighting a losing battle for coverage with Prince Harry. We are not banging saucepans every Thursday to tell our doctors and nurses that we do, still, love them. We aren’t publishing the faces of the estimated 300 to 500 people dying every week because of delays in emergency care response times.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

But this time around, the people involved are not just wittering on about free love and world peace. The new generation of enthusiasts will tell you that psychedelics offer two big opportunities: solving the western world’s “mental health crisis” and also making you — and them — some serious money.

For proof of how delicately the altruism and profit motives can be brought together, consider the co-founder and former chief executive of New York-based psychedelics start-up MindMed, JR Rahn, on the day the company — he called it “the Tesla of mental health” — listed on the Nasdaq last year. “Forty per cent of the country is suffering [mental ill health],” Rahn said. “That’s a big, big market.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

These are the people who seem to be able to survive — thrive, even — on precious little sleep; the people who don’t seem to find exhaustion an endlessly interesting and relatable conversation topic; people for whom mornings are apparently just as energising and joyful as any other part of the day (see also smug early risers). I resent these people. If they’re not making me feel bad for being so slothful, they’re tempting me into late-night escapades when I know I have to get up early the next day. Unlike them, I am guaranteed to wake up feeling hideous.

But alas, I know many such types. There’s the colleague who writes witty newsletters every night at 2am, dozes off within “a couple of minutes”, sets his alarm for 8am and arrives in the office positively brimming with beans. There’s the new-mother fashion CEO friend who’s never out of the pages of Vogue and has the most active social life I know, on four hours’ sleep a night, maximum. And then there’s the Cambridge academic father of another friend who, during a meditation, asked God to grant him the miracle of needing less than the seven-to-eight hours of sleep he had been getting up until then. He has leapt happily out of bed after six hours’ sleep ever since (true story).

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

If it’s the latter then it is possible that you, like me — and about 20 per cent of the population, according to the American Psychological Association — are a procrastinator.

Because of the fact that everyone procrastinates at least to some extent, you will find many people who claim this label: inglorious though it may be, it appears to have some kind of humble-braggy social capital. But it is only a select group of us for whom the condition is chronic, who are tormented sufficiently by the malady to have really earned the badge.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly

It wasn’t until I hosted the latest series of the FT’s Tech Tonic podcast that I realised quite how deep and disturbing the parallels are. “A Sceptic’s Guide to Crypto” took me on a wild ride, from monomaniacal tech billionaires in Virginia to no-nonsense cattle farmers in Wyoming. But it was in the Scottish Borders, about 20 miles south of Edinburgh, that I came across Castle Craig, an imposing 18th-century manor that has been used as a rehabilitation centre for more than three decades.

Castle Craig treats all kinds of addictions, from alcoholism to compulsive gambling, but, in 2016, it became the first rehab clinic to diagnose and treat crypto addiction. Since then, it has worked with almost 250 patients, and the numbers are growing every year.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Jemima Kelly