Daniel Reyes 
Diego, a 22-year-old engineering student from Phoenix, Arizona, took half a tablet of what his friend swore was MDMA at an outdoor electronic music festival in late June. The desert temperature was 102 degrees at sunset and the dance floor was packed against a stage with no breeze. Two hours in he started to feel … Read more
Pavel arrived at a Detroit medical detox unit on a Wednesday in February with a blood alcohol level of .31, mild seizure-precursor tremors, and the phone number of an outpatient counselor he had been dodging for eight months. Six days later he was discharged to a 60-day residential program in Brighton, Michigan, the next step … Read more
Helena Vasquez, a 29-year-old paralegal in Sacramento, walked into a public library on a Saturday in February because her therapist, after fourteen sessions, had said something that surprised her. “Read Mind Over Mood, slowly, do the worksheets.” Helena had expected another referral or a new medication conversation. She got a book recommendation and a soft … Read more
Marisol arrived at a Phoenix emergency department on a Sunday night with her sister driving and her hands trembling so violently she could not sign her own intake form. For three weeks she had not slept more than two hours at a stretch, had stopped eating because swallowing felt like choking, and had begun whispering … Read more
Priya, a 29-year-old elementary school teacher in Minneapolis, started seeing an out-of-network EMDR therapist last September after a near-miss car accident left her with intrusive flashbacks and panic attacks at red lights. The therapist charged $190 a session, did not bill insurance directly, and handed Priya a single sheet of paper at the end of … Read more
By the time Devon and Priya walked into a Boston counseling office with their partner Jules, they had already burned through two therapists. The first one, well-meaning, kept asking when one of them was going to “pick” the other. The second framed their five-year relationship as a phase Devon would outgrow once he “did the … Read more
Marcus was sitting in his Phoenix apartment at 2 a.m. with a bottle of his mother’s old hydrocodone in one hand and his phone in the other. The 31-year-old warehouse supervisor had not slept in four days. His sister had moved out the previous weekend, his lease renewal letter had arrived Tuesday, and the panic … Read more
Marcus Reyes, a 41-year-old emergency-room nurse in Tucson, picked up knitting after his second pandemic burnout. He chose it almost at random. A coworker brought a half-finished baby blanket to a debrief and Marcus, who had spent the previous month doomscrolling between shifts, asked her where she had bought the yarn. Six months later he … Read more
The volunteer firefighters in a small Kentucky town arrived at the abandoned barn around eleven on a school night and found Bryce, fourteen, cyanotic and pulseless on the dirt floor. A can of computer duster was clutched in his right hand. His best friend, sobbing nearby, said Bryce had been spraying it into a paper … Read more
Eight months after the stroke that took the right side of his face and most of his short-term memory, Marcus sat in his Cleveland kitchen and tried to explain to his wife why he had cried during a paint commercial. He used to be the kind of man who fixed things. Now he could not … Read more