I really didn’t want to go on the Goop cruise

Hard paywalled, so:
https://archive.is/Wb5dK

This is a very long, gonzo style article about the Goop cruise line, written by a rightfully cynical and skeptical journalist. It's also one of the most infuriating reads I've come across in recent times. So prepare to get angry... and sad, annoyed, frustrated... and then angry again. :(

And if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, since it's a somewhat rambling first person account, and over 10k words, it can basically be TL;DR summarized by this part:

During Ellen Vora’s anxiety workshop, a couple asked whether she had any idea what to do about their teenage son, who suffered from anxiety, depression, tinnitus, and self-harm. Ellen, latching onto the tinnitus, a “tricky pickle,” suggested it might be due to effects from the “hot lava, do-not-go-there topic”: the COVID vaccine. The couple responded immediately: “He really didn’t want to get it.” Ellen suggested they might try following the “detox protocols” known as “Kill Bind Sweat” that could be found on the Instagram account of someone called @dr.jess.md.

In our interview later, Ellen told me she regretted doing this “in front of journalists!” and said she wasn’t an anti-vaxxer. I pointed out that tinnitus is often thought to be caused by stress. Surely, I posed, treating their son’s anxiety and depression would be more likely to help alleviate the tinnitus than going through some elaborate “antimicrobial” program hawked by a woman who has a blog post on her website called "why i willingly surrendered my hard-earned medical license in california?" This blog post is illustrated with a photo of the former doctor wearing a clown nose and wig. Ellen did not give me a very good answer to this, I’m sorry to say. “I felt like I was going to do them a disservice to not at least bring that out as a line of inquiry,” she said.

In 2018, “we’re just asking questions” was the defense Goop made in the New York Times after their short-lived magazine with Condé Nast closed, in part because Goop wouldn’t agree to fact-checking. It’s possible that undergoing a medically unsubstantiated but physically traumatic experience will make the patient feel like it’s working, and that sense of agency, of having done something, will help the anxiety and depression, with no lasting side effects that create more anxiety and depression. But probably not.