This Depression Treatment Silences Sadness, But at What Cost?

Jun 18

Some days, you don’t want to be healed…you just want to stop hurting.

There’s a difference.

Healing is a long, raw thing. It requires confrontation, the kind where you sit across from the versions of yourself you’ve buried and try to make peace. But sometimes, peace feels like too big an ask. Sometimes you don’t want to grow or reflect or learn. You just want the darkness to go away.

That’s where these treatments step in: silent, glowing, clean. A quick fade to black. A chemical hush.

But when a drug can mute the sound of sadness, we have to ask…what else might it silence?

The Rise of Numbness-as-Medicine

The modern world is louder than it used to be. It’s not just the notifications or the traffic or the endless expectations, it’s the inside noise, too.
The looping worries.
The ache behind your ribs.
The grief that clings like smoke to everything you try to enjoy.

It’s no wonder so many are looking for the volume knob.

Ketamine. Psilocybin. PEMF headsets. All offering one promise in different flavors: You don’t have to feel like this anymore.

And for millions struggling with depression, that promise has the weight of a miracle.

Ketamine: The Dissociative Savior

Ketamine is not new.

It’s been used for decades in surgery as an anesthetic. But its entrance into the mental health space has been nothing short of dramatic. Clinics are opening across the country, offering infusions in spa-like rooms with calming lights and soft music. Some charge thousands per treatment.
Some promise transformation in just one visit.

It doesn’t work like a traditional antidepressant.
Instead of nudging serotonin or tweaking dopamine, ketamine blasts your consciousness apart. It dissociates you from your own story…your body, your thoughts, your pain.
And for many, that’s the first relief they’ve felt in years.

But here’s the paradox: it works because you aren’t really there.

The sadness isn’t gone. You’re just somewhere else while it plays.

And when the drug wears off, you come back to it…and yourself. Sometimes with clarity. Sometimes with confusion. Sometimes needing another hit to keep the distance.

What happens when the cure becomes an escape?

Psilocybin: A Guided Rebirth

Then there’s psilocybin, the molecule inside “magic mushrooms.” It’s not about numbing. It’s about confronting, but from above.

Psilocybin doesn’t quiet sadness so much as stretch it out. Under its spell, pain becomes something holy. Grief feels like an ancient river running through your bloodline. The self dissolves. People see colors. Faces. God.

Unlike ketamine, psilocybin often leaves users with emotional clarity. It’s not a dissociation, it’s a reconnection. A realignment.

But even here, there are risks. Some get lost in the trip. Others relive traumas too soon. The wrong setting, the wrong guide, and what was meant to heal can unravel you instead.

These aren’t recreational highs, they’re rewiring experiences. And they demand reverence.

Tech That Taps the Mind: My NeoRhythm Story

Let me tell you about the headset I wear almost every day. It’s called NeoRhythm, and it looks like a halo designed by a minimalist sci-fi architect. It emits pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMF), frequencies that are supposed to guide your brainwaves into more restful, alert, or balanced states.

Some say it’s science. Some say it’s pseudoscience. But I’ll tell you this: it works for me.

It stopped a PTSD meltdown mid-spiral. It helped me sleep when nothing else would. It quieted the buzz in my chest when my nervous system was frayed from years of survival.

But even as I use it, love it, recommend it…I wonder.

If I didn’t have this tool, would I be stronger? Would I have learned something I now skip past?

Is the technology helping me heal, or is it just pressing mute?

Memory: The Cost of Forgetting

Here’s the hardest truth of all:

Sadness has purpose.

It teaches. It warns. It remembers what happened, so we don’t walk back into the fire.

When we silence it…chemically, spiritually, technologically…we risk more than we know. We risk forgetting what made us human in the first place.

Because sadness isn’t just a malfunction. It’s a message. It’s love with nowhere to go. It’s memory shaped like ache.

And when we erase it, what else do we lose?

The Ethics of Numbing Emotion

There’s a quiet war happening beneath these treatments. Not between science and pseudoscience, but between two philosophies:

Should we fix emotion, or feel it?

Should the goal be joy at all costs, even if that joy is manufactured, temporary, synthetic? Or should the goal be truth, even if that truth hurts?

We live in a culture that worships happiness. But real life is a blend. A wine of sweetness and smoke. And sometimes the sadness is part of what gives the joy its richness.

If we anesthetize one, do we dilute the other?

The Hope and the Trap

This isn’t a condemnation of ketamine clinics or mushroom retreats or PEMF therapy. They’ve saved lives. They’ve eased suffering. They’ve helped people get out of bed, make a meal, hug their children.

This is just a question we have to keep asking, especially when the fix feels divine.

Are we healing…or just escaping?

And are we okay with not knowing the difference?

The Memory Keepers: When Sadness Is a Story You Need to Remember

Not every tear is meant to be dried.
Some are meant to water the roots of who you’ve become.

When we silence sadness too quickly, we risk erasing the evidence of what we’ve endured.
The body remembers even when the mind does not.
A smell. A place. A season. And suddenly, the ache returns…not to haunt us, but to remind us: You lived through this once. You can live through more.

Ketamine may dissolve the timeline, psilocybin may rewrite the narrative, but underneath it all is the original manuscript, the one written in trembling hands and late-night whispers.
There’s power in remembering. There’s tenderness in returning to the wound, not to reopen it, but to thank it.
Some pain is a scar. Some is a compass.
And some is a monument to the fact that you’re still here.

Synthetic Peace: When Healing Feels Too Clean

There’s a sterility to some forms of healing.
Clinics with white walls. Headsets with blue lights.
It feels so…futuristic. So unlike the messy, human, earthbound suffering we know.

But real healing often smells like soil.
It’s muddy and loud and sacred in its disorder.
When you skip the storm and jump to the calm, do you really understand the peace you’ve found?
Or is it just silence with the volume turned low?

We love our modern miracles, but maybe not all miracles are meant to be sterile.
Maybe some are meant to break you open.
And maybe some of us don’t want to be clean, we want to be whole.

The Chemical Shortcut: Fast Isn’t Always Gentle

Speed is seductive.

In a world that demands instant everything, the idea of instant relief feels revolutionary.
A single session. A single dose. The darkness lifts like mist in morning sun.

But fast healing is not always gentle healing.

It can rip up roots that needed time to settle.
Some wounds close too quickly and trap infection beneath.
The faster we flee our sadness, the less we learn its language.

And healing, real healing, speaks in the slow rhythm of breath and body and choice.
Sometimes the long road is not the punishment, it’s the cure.

The Soul in Silence: What We Miss When We Numb

There is a silence that is peaceful.
And there is a silence that feels like being erased.
When treatments make you feel nothing, they don’t just take the pain.
They take the color. The nuance. The bitter alongside the sweet.
You begin to forget what laughter felt like when it came after crying.
You begin to forget that joy, to be whole, must rise out of shadow.
We are not built for permanent neutrality.
The soul longs for contrast. For crescendos and hushes.
Don’t give up the symphony for the silence of a single note.

A Conversation With the Sadness You Tried to Avoid

If you could sit across from your sadness at a café, it might not scream.
It might just sip its tea and say, “I’ve been waiting for you to listen.”

Because beneath the discomfort is often a message…one you’ve been avoiding because it hurts too much to hear.

Chemical treatments can turn down the volume, but they don’t erase the letter waiting on your emotional doorstep.

Sometimes sadness is saying, “You’re not in the right place.”
Sometimes it’s saying, “You’ve been carrying too much for too long.”
And sometimes it’s simply saying, “I miss who you used to be.”
You don’t have to answer it every time.
But maybe, just once, sit down and ask, “What are you trying to tell me?”

Hope, the Old-Fashioned Way

Not every cure comes in a capsule.

Some come in soft hands, in music you forgot you loved, in finally saying the thing you were afraid to speak.
Hope isn’t always a grand arrival, it’s a flicker. A breath. A new sentence where an old one once ended.

These new treatments have given people back their lives. That’s a miracle.
But never forget that miracles also happen slowly…like watching a tree come back from winter.

There is grace in effort.
There is holiness in trying again, even when it hurts.
So take the medicine, wear the headset, trust the therapy.

But don’t forget the kind of healing that’s older than science: the kind that lives in eye contact, in sun on your skin, in being brave enough to stay.

How to Use These Tools Without Losing Yourself

If you’re considering one of these treatments, or already using one, here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

Stay connected to your story. Journal before and after. Speak your truth while you still remember it. These treatments can make the past feel distant. Keep your roots close.
Pair the tech with the truth. NeoRhythm works best when I use it alongside therapy, sleep, and connection. It’s not a replacement for healing. It’s scaffolding.
Don’t chase the high. Relief is beautiful, but chasing it endlessly can become a second kind of trap. Remember: the goal isn’t to feel nothing. It’s to feel safe enough to feel everything.
Give yourself permission to need help. You are not weak for wanting relief. You’re human. You deserve every lifeline you can grab.