Hipster cold remedies

Dear Hipster:

Winter is coming, and that means it’s time to get sick, right? Every year, I succumb to some sort of nasty ailment between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No amount of Ricola and handwashing seems able to protect me. How come we have yet to cure the damn common cold? What does the hipster cold remedy look like?

— Desi

Fighting off a common cold is actually supercomplicated for hipsters. Even though we are pretty sure they don’t do any good, we have to take Emergen-C and echinacea pills, because that one aisle at Whole Foods makes a pretty compelling sales pitch for the healing powers of pomegranate extract, and we’ve all made a tacit Pascalian Wager that it probably doesn’t hurt us, so, better safe than sorry. It’s never easy to be trapped between the reality of the material world and the wishful optimism of feel-good New Age woo-woo. In the long run, my ultimate hipster cold remedy turns out to be staying at home, rewatching Westworld, and drinking hot water with honey, lemon, and just enough single-batch bourbon to quell my sorrows without suppressing my immune system.