Member-only story
For Me, Ketamine Just Might Be The Answer
Chasing off the Demon Dogs of Depression and Anxiety
As this year began, my mental health situation was becoming genuinely scary.
In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t recognize what I had as depression. Forget that little stay in a private mental hospital at 19. That was just a phase I’d passed through. (Mmmm, right.)
Besides, I had fine-tuned my own methods of coping with and/or masking those disturbing feelings: (A) denial, or (B) self-medicating with alcohol. Usually both.
Then, one day, an unabashed co-worker remarked, “You know, Rand, you’re the most depressed person I’ve ever met.”
Not only did I find this observation uncalled for, it made me angry. “I am not depressed,” I snapped back, resentfully, attempting to laugh off the woman’s audacity.
“Whatever,” she muttered, smirking and shaking her head at my obvious lack of self-awareness.
A decade later
I was in my mid-40s when my rheumatologist finally got my attention. “From what I’m seeing,” he observed, “I think you might be depressed.”
As this unprovoked diagnosis was coming from a professional with a medical degree and a license to practice (albeit outside of the mental-health…
