It’s Time to End Depression, Not Just Manage Its Symptoms
Ketamine therapy ended mine in six weeks. Here’s what I wish every patient, provider, and policymaker knew.
I Was a Sex Expert on TV. Then Depression Took the Mic.
I’m a writer. Nonfiction, how-tos. Books, columns, articles–about all kinds of subjects, but especially about sex and relationships.
I also spent a fair amount of time in front of TV cameras. My path to semi-fame on television started with a wisecrack. At an audition for a British sex makeover show, a producer asked what I thought about women faking orgasms, and I shot back, “That’s nothing—men fake whole relationships.”
It got me the co-hosting gig on The Sex Inspectors, a sex advice show that became an international hit. Even HBO picked it up.
One moment, I was touring the world, appearing on The Today Show, writing books, and living the kind of life that would make a former version of myself proud.
After my TV career ended, I struggled with increasing isolation. I had always cycled through depressive episodes but two things seemed to have made it permanent. First, were years of chronic financial anxiety that ended in me filing for bankruptcy.
But it was a profound family crisis that pushed me over the edge—a crisis that ended in a betrayal so devastating I just couldn’t come back from it.
I cycled through three different medications, each with devastating side effects. The first killed my sex drive, the second caused significant weight gain, and the third amped up my anxiety to unbearable levels. With all three I experienced an emotional deadness that made everything feel flat and distant.
The drugs didn’t work. I was barely functioning, using Adderall to work, Clonopin to sleep, and alcohol to fill the gaps.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Matthew Perry Died.
Beneath the tabloid frenzy over his ketamine overdose, one detail stopped me cold— Perry had been undergoing therapy with ketamine in a medically supervised clinic to treat depression.
Wait. What?
I’d taken ketamine in my party days, watched friends vanish into K-holes, seen the way it warped time and reality. How the hell was this the same drug now being used as an antidepressant?
While the world fixated on the scandal of Perry’s death—I started digging. And what I found floored me.
Ketamine wasn’t some fringe experiment. It had an impressive track record of successfully treating depression–certainly more than SSRIs had. A strange feeling bubbled up inside me–hope.
Matthew Perry’s Death Opened The Door To My Remission
I remember my first ketamine session: I was in the clinic treatment room with a video camera pointed at me and a panic button at my side, wondering whether I was in therapy or a hostage situation! Turns out they’re just standard safety precautions.
I thought I was prepared.
I’d done my homework—read the medical websites, pored over clinical studies, studied the manufacturer’s official information. They told me what to expect, laid out the side effects, the mechanisms, the science.
But they left out one thing.
It was almost as if they didn’t want me to know.
And then, I experienced them.
Profound. Vivid. Intense.
Psychedelic visions.
With the help of a psychotherapist I could see these weren’t random images. They were metaphors, sent from the depths of my mind, forcing me to confront what I had spent a lifetime trying to bury.
I will be talking at length in this substack about the psychedelic visions I had and that they aren’t a pesky side effect as so many doctors and researchers proclaim, but a critical instrument to process and integrate to make remission possible.
It Worked
Ketamine help me reached remission in six weeks.
I am not a unicorn.
There are hundreds of thousands of people like me. Many reach remission in one or two weeks.
I’m not here to sell ketamine as a miracle cure. It isn’t. Plenty of people try it and walk away disappointed. But it’s hard to argue against the stats. I compiled what may be the largest publicly available summary of ketamine research online—20 systematic reviews and meta-analyses from just the past five years.
And the takeaway is hard to ignore: If you complete the full treatment protocol and pair it with psychotherapy, your chances of reaching full remission aren’t just good—they’re as high as 70%.
That’s not hype. That’s data. And for millions of people stuck in the cycle of symptom management, it could be the first real exit sign they’ve seen in years.
What I Hope To Do For Those Struggling With Or Affected By Depression
I want to offer something radical: A liberation mindset.
Not managing depression. Ending it. Freeing yourself from it.
Freedom from the fog. Freedom from daily pills. Freedom from side effects that steal as much as they give.
This isn’t false hope. It’s a shift in thinking.
What the Fine Print Doesn’t Tell You
My goal is to provide a clear-eyed look at what ketamine therapy is and isn’t. I’ve lived through it. I know what’s promising, what’s overhyped, and what’s still hidden behind fine print and insurance loopholes. If you or someone you care about is struggling, you need more than blind encouragement. You need facts, delivered without spin, from someone who’s been through the fire.
The Truth About Ketamine “Coverage”
And for everyone who’s confused about access—I’m here to expose the barriers no one talks about. IV ketamine, the form with the highest efficacy rate, isn’t covered by insurance. Spravato, the nasal spray everyone brags about being “covered,” still leaves most patients with $8,000 in out-of-pocket costs. That’s not coverage. That’s a velvet rope around the most effective treatments.
Helping You Find the Exit
Drawing from my own journey, I’m dedicated to raising awareness of this life-saving treatment, inspiring others to consider trying it, guiding them through our soul-crushing healthcare system to get the care they need, and optimizing their experience to maximize the chances for complete remission.
What I Hope To Do For Scientists, Researchers, And Providers
I hope to be a bridge—between data and experience, between molecular pathways and human lives.
I know you’re doing the hard, essential work: mapping NMDA receptor sites, tracking BDNF levels, scanning the brain for patterns and signatures. You’re chasing the “how,” and I’m grateful for it. Without you, none of this would be possible. But here’s what I’ve learned as a patient:
Ketamine isn’t just a drug. It’s an experience. And that experience is where the healing lives.
Biology Starts the Journey. Psychology Finishes It.
You can measure synaptic plasticity and chart neurogenesis all day long, but until you’ve sat in that chair, had the spray or infusion hit, and watched your sense of self dissolve—until you’ve felt your trauma reshaped in real time—you’re missing half the story.
What ketamine does biologically is only part of what it does. The rest is psychological. Emotional. Symbolic. It takes buried pain and gives it a visual language. It lets you witness your trauma without reliving it. It lets you feel grief without being crushed by it. The healing doesn’t come just from the compound. It comes from what the compound makes possible: radical self-confrontation, dissociation that reveals buried patterns, the ability to reprocess pain from a safer vantage point.
Not Instead of the Science—In Service of It
So when I speak, write, or advocate, it’s not to challenge your science—it’s to complete it. To remind everyone in this field that your molecule is opening doors to places talk therapy couldn’t reach, and your mechanisms are paving the way for transformations too complex to measure on a scale.
I’m here to be your patient voice. Your lived-experience counterpart. The person who can say: “Here’s what this actually feels like. Here’s what no chart can show you.” Not instead of the science. In service of it.
Because if this treatment is going to reach its full potential we need more than data. We need stories. Emotions. Truths you can’t peer-review, but you can’t afford to ignore.
What I Hope To Do For Reporters, Journalists, Authors, And Podcasters
For reporters, journalists, authors, and podcasters, I offer something the ketamine conversation is almost always missing: the patient’s voice.
A voice that bridges the gap between science and suffering.
A voice that can make a story stick.
Data may inform. Experts may validate. But stories move people. And when you're writing about something as emotionally loaded—and medically complex—as depression or ketamine therapy, your readers aren’t just scanning for facts. They’re searching for meaning.
Science Informs. Stories Land.
When you include an experienced, articulate former patient, you're not just adding color—you’re grounding your piece in humanity. You’re giving your audience someone to connect with. Someone who’s not speaking from a podium, but from the chair in the treatment room.
And if the story involves controversy—like celebrity deaths, off-label use, or the looming threat of regulation—anchoring it in a credible patient experience helps inoculate your piece against sensationalism. It makes your reporting feel fair. Grounded. Complete.
I’ve been there. I know the science, but I speak human. You won’t have to translate. I show up with context, clarity, and quotes that don’t sound like a pharma brochure—or a Reddit thread.
If you're writing about ketamine, don’t just quote the molecule. Quote the person it changed.
What I Hope to Offer Regulators, Insurers, and Policy Makers
Ketamine therapy ended my depression in just six weeks. That shouldn’t be rare. It should be reachable.
But it’s not.
Because access isn’t just a clinical issue—it’s a systems issue. And behind every barrier is someone in a meeting room, trying to make the right decision with incomplete information.
That’s who I want to reach.
I’m the Outcome You Say You Want
I’m not a scientist. I don’t hold patents or push products. But I am the outcome you say you want: a real patient, in complete remission, who got there because the system—barely—worked. And who sees, up close, how often it doesn’t.
Most of the people you hear from are institutions: pharmaceutical companies, provider networks, clinical researchers. But the patient voice is what makes those abstractions real. It’s the missing layer of insight—the human impact data doesn’t always capture.
That’s what I offer you.
I’ve navigated the labyrinth of insurance rejections. I’ve fought to access care that was technically “covered,” but practically impossible to afford. I’ve gone through the FDA-approved protocol, down to the panic button and the price tag.
And I’ve emerged not just healed, but committed—to helping you do your jobs better.
Connecting Outcomes To Impact
Because if you’re writing policy, setting prices, approving trials, or defining what “medically necessary” means, you need more than clinical endpoints. You need lived consequences. You need someone who can tell you what it feels like to be shut out of treatment by a billing code. Someone who can tell you how hope rises—or dies—based on how a form is worded or a drug is scheduled.
I can help you connect outcomes to impact. Show you where the well-intentioned plans fall apart in practice. And offer a clear-eyed, experienced voice that doesn’t come with an agenda—except to make sure this treatment doesn’t get buried by bureaucracy, stigma, or silence.
So if you’re in a position to shape access to ketamine therapy—whether through regulation, reimbursement, or research policy—I’m here to be your translator. Not between science and spin, but between systems and the people those systems are meant to serve.
Let’s Stop Managing Depression And Work On Ending It.
If you’re suffering, I want you to know: you are not broken. You are not out of options. You are not alone.
Ketamine therapy ended my depression in six weeks. I’m not here to sell you a miracle. I’m here to show you a map—and maybe even light the way.
This Substack is my dispatch from the other side. Sometimes it’ll be raw. Sometimes scientific. Sometimes a little angry. But always real.
If you're a patient, a provider, a loved one, a policymaker—or just someone trying to understand what the hell is happening in this moment of mental health history—this space is for you.
Subscribe if you want the truth. Stay if you’re ready for a reframe. Share if someone you love needs to hear this.
Let’s stop managing depression.
Let’s end it.