Inspired by an article in The Wall Street Journal ("She Hoped Ketamine Would Rewire Her Brain. She Didn't Live To See It Work" - March 17, 2026). - Several truths underlie human behavior: 1. Anxiety and depression are painful; 2. Drugs can eliminate pain. But first two stories. During his psychiatry residency a doctor sought to investigate psychotropics by taking a small dosage of one. The effect was so profound that thereafter he was exceedingly cautious about prescribing them. 2. A physician-father refused to have his in-patient adolescent medicated stating the drugs were "a chemical lobotomy."
Though distressing, both anxiety and depression are intrinsically valuable to humans, indicating that the presence of a disturbing experience must be noted. Which could be a thought or a feeling or the presence of a potential danger like when hearing a sudden noise while walking a darkened street or during a military engagement. Once recognized, understood, and appropriately related to, the anxiety and depression disappear, having served their purpose. Just as a fever vanishes when the infection causing it is passed.
Many, not understanding this and abetted by clever physician and drug industry marketing, try to short-circuit nature with a pill to which nature reacts with its own defenses, including the murder on February 10, 2025 of four girls ages two through eight by their ketamine-dosed psychotic mother.
Long ago a psychologist, Fritz Haider, termed the phrase "naive psychology": the beliefs about behavior that people develop simply by being human with some being true and others false. Ignorance can be costly, and deadly too.