I Was Paralyzed By Severe Depression. Then Came Ketamine.

The summer I was 26 years old, I moved into my parents’ home in the Chicago suburbs because I could no longer care for myself.

I had been severely depressed for most of my life, but that summer five years ago, even the most mundane tasks became insurmountable. I spent days on the couch where I rarely spoke, my mind so dull I struggled to form words. I lay awake at night thinking, I can’t go on like this.

Some people experience episodic depression, but since the onset of my illness in early childhood, I sank far and fast and never truly surfaced. By age 10, I found myself overcome with inexplicable dread, so ill at ease I could hardly sit through a television show. By the time I was a teenager, I awoke every morning to an immutable sadness and sobbed on my bedroom floor. Though I was once an excellent student, I struggled to make it through class. Finally, at age 16, I dropped out of high school.

Over the years I tried every available treatment. I stayed in psychiatric hospitals, underwent years of therapy and tried a pharmacy’s worth of antidepressants, but my condition never improved.

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