Mental Multivitamins and Other Foolproof Fixes for a Fraying Mind
I have what might generously be described as a low-intensity schedule wrapped around a high-intensity job. I’m a physical therapist in a hospital, which is not unlike being a cheerleader for people who’ve just been hit by a bus. Or had their chest opened with something resembling a Black & Decker jigsaw. Or are detoxing, weeping, bleeding, swearing, and generally regretting every life choice they’ve ever made. My job is to coax these people—often at their very lowest—out of bed, into chairs, onto feet, and, ideally, out the door. And I’ve been doing this for 25 years.
By now, I’ve seen most things the human body can do when it’s determined to misbehave. It’s challenging. It’s rewarding. It’s also the kind of thing you can’t really take home with you. So, at 5:00 p.m., I put on my jacket, pat someone’s shoulder, and leave the building like I’m walking away from a small, sad fire.
What keeps me going, however, is not the promise of a pension or the satisfaction of another hip replacement success story. No, what keeps me buoyant through the week is anticipation—specifically, the kind that involves compressed gas, drysuits, and plunging oneself into water cold enough to make a polar bear wince.
About a year ago, I completed my initial training in closed-circuit rebreather diving, which is a highly technical, somewhat expensive, and deeply satisfying way of staying underwater without scaring fish or constantly worrying you’re going to run out of air. It’s silent, sleek, and very nearly magical—like scuba diving in stealth mode.
Since then, I’ve been hooked. Diving has become the thing I look forward to—on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and any weekend I can get away with. Not some once-a-year trip to a tropical reef with tourists slathered in SPF 80, but weekly, gritty, gear-hauling dives into the vast, cold heart of Lake Superior.
Yes, Lake Superior. That titan of freshwater, beloved by freighters and feared by anyone who’s ever jumped in on a dare and and felt their soul briefly leave their body. It’s bleak. It’s mostly lifeless. It’s like doing the polar plunge inside a malfunctioning chest freezer – only it’s July, you’re sunburned, and your teeth are still chattering. And I love it.
This past year, I dove all winter. Every week. In water so cold it seems less like a liquid and more like a misunderstanding between the atmosphere and physics. You’d think this would be horrible—and it is, a little—but the adventure of it somehow turns miserable into marvelous. You learn tricks. Dry gloves. Undergarments that make you look like a marshmallow. Thick neoprene hoods and lotsa hot tea.
Adventure isn’t supposed to be easy. If it were, you wouldn’t earn moments like this.
The gear, as always, is a puzzle. My rebreather needs to be assembled with care, like a bomb or a very expensive espresso machine. I sip a glass of wine the night before each dive as I put it together, which I’m aware sounds irresponsible but feels terribly sophisticated. I tweak valves. I reposition bailout bottles. I curse my way through o-ring inspections. And somehow, this becomes a ritual. Something I look forward to. Something that fills the mental space between patients in withdrawal and the next person learning to walk after a stroke.
The thing is, Lake Superior is not what you’d call photogenic—unless you’re very fond of rocks and fuzz. The “flora” is essentially carpet mold. The fauna consists of one fish per square mile, possibly less. And yet, I bring my camera every time. I photograph my dive buddy like she’s a supermodel in a rubber hat. Occasionally, the light hits the rocks just right and the whole place looks like the set of a low-budget film about the lost city of Atlantis.
Every once in a while, a fish swims by—probably lost—and it’s as thrilling as spotting a UFO. I surface ready to tell the tale like an old sea captain who’s just seen the Kraken.
The point of all this rambling, I suppose, is that diving isn’t just a hobby. It’s my super drug. My un-patented trillion-dollar tonic. My mental multivitamin. It gets me out of bed. It reminds me that the world is big and wild and wonderful, even if my favorite part is submerged in 39°F water and covered in algae.
Between patients and traffic lights, this is where my mind wanders—cold stone, clear water, and a silent world that powers the spring in my step.
So yes, I’ve gone on rather a bit about scuba diving—possibly more than is strictly necessary—but what I’m really getting at is this: adventure, in all its chilly, gear-laden, occasionally absurd glory, is what keeps me smiling, even as I spend my workdays coaxing people back from the brink of disaster. The hospital can be a rather bleak place, all flickering fluorescent lights and the faint smell of disinfectant and despair. Diving, by contrast, is pure oxygen for the soul—if you’ll forgive the deeply on-the-nose metaphor.
The joy I get from these weekly subzero escapades is richer and more sustaining than any six-figure luxury vacation could ever offer. No cocktails served in coconuts, no infinity pools, no poolside DJs named Chad. Just me, a few regulators, and a lake large enough to swallow England twice. It’s like a super drug, only legal, mostly safe, and vastly better for your cholesterol.
Honestly, I wish more people could stumble into this sort of thing. Not diving, necessarily—though I’d happily loan you a drysuit and a stern warning—but something. Anything real. Because increasingly, everything else feels rather hollow. Social media, the news, politics—it’s all engineered to leave you either furious or flatlined. I sometimes dream of inventing an app—call it AdventureBot—that doesn’t just nudge people, but quietly swaps the images in their Instagram feed. One moment they’re scrolling past brunch and beach selfies, and the next—there they are, mountain biking through Utah, rock climbing in Joshua Tree, or, God forbid, scuba diving in Lake Superior. Just enough of a jolt to make them put the phone down and go chase something real, something with dirt, cold water, and gravity.
Because in the end, that’s where the good stuff lives. Not on screens. Not in arguments. But out there—beneath the waves, above the tree line, on the trail, wherever your feet, wheels, or fins can take you. Preferably somewhere with more foxes than foot traffic, more birdsong than car horns, where the locals don’t care what you do for a living and the Wi-Fi is refreshingly nonexistent. That’s where the noise fades, and the world remembers how to speak.