Oprah Daily: How to Save Your Life (While Fighting Health Insurance Conglomerates)

It was November of 2022 when I found myself sitting at an Upper East Side café, slowly sipping an oat milk cappuccino, willing myself back into the land of the living.

Little did these women, seated all around me, know that in the tower some ten floors above them, patients—their eyes covered in light-blocking masks, their ears covered in noise-canceling headphones that played ambient music—were tripping out of their minds on IV ketamine in an attempt to cure themselves of the black dog.

For 60 to 90 minutes, a nurse practitioner sat patiently in the darkness with each one, monitoring their pulse and keeping watch and bearing witness. I should know: I was one such patient.