Daniel was 34, a software engineer in Austin, Texas, and had been on sertraline for eighteen months for generalised anxiety. On a Tuesday afternoon his orthopaedic surgeon called in tramadol after a knee scope. By Wednesday morning Daniel’s wife found him pacing the kitchen, sweating through his t-shirt, telling her the floor was vibrating. His … Read more
Daniel was 34, a software engineer in Austin, Texas, and had been on sertraline for eighteen months for generalised anxiety. On a Tuesday afternoon his orthopaedic surgeon called in tramadol after a knee scope. By Wednesday morning Daniel’s wife found him pacing the kitchen, sweating through his t-shirt, telling her the floor was vibrating. His … Read more
Marcus was forty-two, an emergency physician in Atlanta, holding his three-year-old daughter on the floor of her bedroom while she screamed because he had cut her toast wrong. He had been awake since four for a hospital shift. His chest was tight. He could feel the old, familiar voice rising, the one that sounded exactly … Read more
Marcus was forty-two, an emergency physician in Atlanta, holding his three-year-old daughter on the floor of her bedroom while she screamed because he had cut her toast wrong. He had been awake since four for a hospital shift. His chest was tight. He could feel the old, familiar voice rising, the one that sounded exactly … Read more
When Marcella, a 34-year-old Diné mother of three living on the Navajo Nation outside Shiprock, New Mexico, started waking up at 3 a.m. with chest-crushing panic attacks, she did what her grandmother told her to do. She drove the 41 miles to the nearest IHS facility. The intake clerk was kind. The waiting room was … Read more
When Marcella, a 34-year-old Diné mother of three living on the Navajo Nation outside Shiprock, New Mexico, started waking up at 3 a.m. with chest-crushing panic attacks, she did what her grandmother told her to do. She drove the 41 miles to the nearest IHS facility. The intake clerk was kind. The waiting room was … Read more
Carla worked the late shift at a corner pharmacy in Camden, New Jersey, the kind of neighbourhood where the medical examiner’s van had become a familiar sight. On a Thursday in March, an older woman walked up to the counter holding a creased printout from a community group. She was 68, her name was Beverly, … Read more
Tomas from Houston had been on three different antidepressants over two years, with each one producing partial response and intolerable side effects in some combination. His psychiatrist, before adding a fourth agent, took an unusual side road. She prescribed pharmaceutical-grade ethyl-EPA fish oil at two grams daily, alongside the existing medication, and asked him to … Read more
Tomas from Houston had been on three different antidepressants over two years, with each one producing partial response and intolerable side effects in some combination. His psychiatrist, before adding a fourth agent, took an unusual side road. She prescribed pharmaceutical-grade ethyl-EPA fish oil at two grams daily, alongside the existing medication, and asked him to … Read more
Marisol was nineteen, a sophomore at the University of Denver, when her residence director found her unconscious on the bathroom floor. Her roommate had called twice that week, worried. Marisol had stopped going to the dining hall in November. By February, she weighed 78 pounds. The paramedics noted a heart rate of 32 beats per … Read more