Back in September, my life was normal. I worked and wrote and lived with my family, and then, out of the blue, things changed. I suspected that I was becoming depressed, perhaps because I have had episodes of severe depression before; unusually, I wrote a series of poems about how I felt. Then, in October, my mood dropped suddenly and catastrophically, and I could no longer work. There was no obvious precipitant, but there was a precedent for what to do next. I have suffered with bouts of depression over several decades, and have previously both been an in-patient and had electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The prospect of repeating either of these options seemed horrible, but so did the alternative—of doing nothing.