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Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, kids. This is RISC, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and every Thursday, we release these special episodes that we're calling Classic RISC Singles.
Each of these episodes features just one story from our earlier years. If you're new to RISC, you should know that the podcast can be very uncensored. This week, a story by Katie Peabody that she first shared on the podcast in 2012. It's called Side Effects.
My story takes place about 25 years ago. At the time, I had been carrying around feelings of sadness and hopelessness every day, all day, for as long as I could remember. And it affected pretty much everything in my life. It affected my job, where I just kind of droned away in my cubicle working on assignments without interacting with anyone there.
I was lucky enough, I was in a relationship with a guy named Larry, who was, I think, the funniest guy on earth. I lived in terror that he would wake up one day and realize that he had hooked up with the biggest wet blanket on the planet and leave me. And just in general, I didn't enjoy life. I didn't feel joy or pleasure from anything.
And I desperately, desperately wanted to fix myself. I felt like I was in a constant battle with the beast that was my mind. I was seeing one in a long line of therapists that I'd seen. And the one that I was seeing at the time, I was getting ready to quit therapy with him too.
And he might've known that because in what would be our last session together, he told me about a clinical trial that was happening at Columbia University for a drug, a new depression drug that everybody was very excited about. It was supposed to be like the next Zoloft or something. But he asked me if I would be interested in getting into the program. So I was very interested.
This was, you know, hope for me. And it seemed easy enough and free too. So I went up to Columbia. They did a couple of rounds of blood work on me and they interviewed me extensively and they let me into the program.
They assigned me to my therapist up there, who was named Dr. Edelman. Dr. Edelman was not like any therapist I'd ever worked with before.
He was more of a research guy with a background in chemistry. Nice enough man, but he talked a little bit like a robot. And during my first session with him, he explained to me, the program will run for six weeks. Once a week, every week, you will come up to Columbia and give blood and be interviewed by me.
I will also ask you to keep a journal. Some people in the program will be taking the actual drug. Some people will be taking a placebo. You may be taking the actual drug.
You may be taking a placebo. You will not know until the program is complete. Dr. Edelman picked up a vial of pills from his desk and explained, this is a week's supply.
You are to take one every day with breakfast. I reached for the pills. He pulls them back and says, there is one side effect that you need to be made aware of. When combined with chocolate, the drug has been known to cause blindness in some subjects.
While the effect has been shown to be temporary in most cases, to be on the safe side, you should avoid chocolate throughout the study and for two weeks after. That means no chocolate candy, no chocolate cake, no chocolate ice cream, no chocolate. Do you understand? I told him that I did and I left with the pills and a feeling of excitement.
I was a little bummed about the placebo thing, but I was pretty sure that I would be able to tell the difference between the real drug and a sugar pill right away. A week into the program, I was feeling great. I was feeling fantastic even. The sadness, the hopelessness that had been with me forever had just lifted.
The negativity that I brought to every situation in life was just gone. It was like I was feeling something that bordered on happiness. And it just got better and better as the days went on. I was walking into work instead of my usual dragging myself in with my head down, lost in thought.
I was greeting people. I was looking people in the eye and striking up conversations and making jokes. And I stopped hiding out in my cubicle anymore. I was going into other people's cubicles and talking to them about what I was working on and what they were working on.
I was going to the offices and finding out if there were any other assignments. And I started meeting people for drinks after work. And it totally changed the way I felt about my job. It went from being a grind to being something that I really looked forward to.
And I did start getting better assignments. My relationship with Larry got better. Instead of just shutting him down and saying no to some of his spontaneous suggestions, I started saying yes. And I remember one week he wanted to go to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone.
And I would always have said no. And I did have said no in the past. But I said yes. And I went and we had a great time.
And I started doing that more with him. And it was great for our relationship. We started to be more in sync. So my whole life had opened up.
And clearly I was taking the real drug. And that was kind of the icing on the cake. That was important to me. About four weeks into the trials, Larry and I were at home in our apartment.
We lived near the seaport in a little studio apartment with a sleeping loft. And Larry went out to get the papers. And when he came back, he had one of his favorite breakfasts, which is Entenmann's chocolate donuts. Now, I love Entenmann's chocolate donuts.
And I pretty much love everything about them. I love the little click sound that my teeth make when I pierce the chocolate shell on the donut. It's kind of like biting into the chocolate bonnet on a saucer of ice cream. But with the donut, it's really only what's outside that counts because the cakey part inside is so whipped with air that there's almost nothing there.
And I think the Entenmann's people just put it there so they could call that a donut when what it actually is, is just chocolate for breakfast. And of course, these donuts were very special because if I had the courage, they had the potential to tell me whether or not I was taking the real drug or not. There was a big part of me that didn't want to know. Unfortunately, there was a bigger part of me that had to know.
So I reached for one of those donuts and I took a bite and I took another bite and I took another bite. And then I finished the donut and then I just sat there. And I think I sat there like that waiting for about a half hour when things started to go dark and then darker. And then I was completely blind.
I told Larry as nonchalantly as I could. He knew about the side effect. I'd told him in the very beginning. And I asked him to please help me climb the ladder to our sleeping loft so that I could wait this thing out lying down.
I had to believe that it was temporary. And I lay there in my bed and I could feel his eyes on me and I could smell his doubt too. And he said to me, so you can't see anything? And I said, I can't see anything.
And he said, how many fingers am I holding up? And I said, Larry, it's not funny. I'm totally fucking blind. And he said, then let's totally fucking go to the hospital.
And I said, no, I said, I just want to wait it out. It's got to be temporary. Let's just wait a little. So he went back down the ladder to eat some more donuts and I lay there in the bed and I just started freaking out in my mind.
And the voice in my head was just yelling, I'm blind. I'm blind. I may never see anything ever again. I may never see Larry's goofy face again.
I may never people watch in Union Square again. I may never see another movie. How am I going to shop? What difference will it make?
I won't even know what I look like. What about my job? How's that going to work? And what about my relationship?
Is Larry going to want to be with someone he has to walk like a dog? Dog? I'm going to have to get a guide dog. And that's not good.
This is a no pets building. God damn it. Why did I eat that donut? If I thought I was depressed before, what's it going to be like now that I have something to be depressed about?
And I just started crying and I could feel the tears spilling out of my blind eyes. And then I fell asleep and I guess I was asleep for two hours or so. And when I woke up, I opened my eyes and I could see. I could see everything.
I was really angry with myself for eating the donut and taking that risk. But more than that, I was really happy that I was taking the real drug. Two weeks later, I went up to Columbia for the last time and I handed in my notebook to Dr. Edelman and he held out his hand to me.
And