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A Drug to Stop Suicide
阻止自殺的藥物
Amid a national epidemic, there may be hope: A fast-acting new drug based on ketamine
一種含有氯胺酮的速效新藥，有望治療自殺這種在全美蔓延的健康問題
By Cynthia Koons and Robert Langreth
辛西婭·昆斯和羅伯特·蘭瑞思撰稿
Joe Wright has no doubt that ketamine saved his life.
喬·賴特毫不質疑是氯胺酮挽救了他的生命。
A 34-year-old high school teacher who writes poetry every day on a typewriter, Wright was plagued by suicidal impulses for years.
賴特是一名34歲的高中老師，每天都會敲著打字機寫詩，他多年來一直飽受自殺沖動的困擾。
The thoughts started coming on when he was a high schooler himself, on Staten Island, N.Y., and intensified during his first year of college.
他在紐約州的斯塔頓島上高中時，自殺沖動就開始浮現。上大一時，這種想法變得更加強烈。
"It was an internal monologue, emphatic on how pointless it is to exist," he says. "It's like being ambushed by your own brain."
他說：“那是一種內心獨白，突顯出存在的無意義感，像是被自己的大腦伏擊一樣。”
He first tried to kill himself by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills the summer after his sophomore year.
大二后的那個夏天，他第一次吞下了一瓶安眠藥企圖自殺。
Years of treatment with Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, and other antidepressants followed, but the desire for an end was never fully resolved.
多年來，他一直服用百憂解、唑洛夫、韋布汀和其他抗抑郁藥物進行治療，但那種想結束生命的執念從未被真正解開。
He started cutting himself on his arms and legs with a pencil-sharpener blade. Sometimes he'd burn himself with cigarettes.
他開始用削筆刀在胳膊和腿上割傷自己，有時還會用香煙燙自己。
He remembers few details about his second and third suicide attempts. They were halfhearted; he drank himself into a stupor and once added Xanax into the mix.
他幾乎記不清第二次和第三次自殺的細節，那兩次他都心不在焉，一次他喝得神志不清，另一次他往酒里加了抗焦慮藥贊安諾。
Wright decided to try again in 2016, this time using a cocktail of drugs he'd ground into a powder.
2016年，賴特決定再試一次，這次他把幾種藥物碾成粉末。
As he tells the story now, he was preparing to mix the powder into water and drink it when his dog jumped onto his lap.
而當他正準備把粉末混到水里喝下去時，他的狗跳到了他的腿上。
Suddenly he had a moment of clarity that shocked him into action. He started doing research and came upon a Columbia University study of a pharmaceutical treatment for severe depression and suicidality.
突然間，他一下清醒過來，震驚的同時也讓他行動起來。他開始探究，后來在哥倫比亞大學參與了一項醫治嚴重抑郁癥和自殺患者的藥物治療研究。
It involved an infusion of ketamine, a decades-old anesthetic that's also an infamous party drug. He immediately volunteered.
治療中要注射氯胺酮，這是一種很老的麻醉劑，也是派對上常使用的毒品。他當即自告奮勇做研究被試。
His first—and only—ketamine infusion made him feel dreamlike, goofy, and euphoric. He almost immediately started feeling more hopeful about life.
他第一次，也是唯一一次注射氯胺酮時，感覺像做夢一樣，昏昏欲睡但心情愉悅，他幾乎立刻感到對生活充滿希望。
He was more receptive to therapy. Less than a year later, he married. Today he says his dark moods are remote and manageable. Suicidal thoughts are largely gone.
此后，他更愿意接受治療。過了不到一年，他就結婚了。現在，他表示自己已經很少出現陰暗情緒，而且也能掌控那些情緒，基本上不再有自殺想法了。
"If they had told me how much it would affect me, I wouldn't have believed it," Wright says. "It is unconscionable that it is not already approved for suicidal patients."
賴特說：“如果他們告訴我這藥會對我產生這么大的影響，我根本不會相信。這種藥尚未被批準用于治療自殺的患者，真是不合情理。”
