Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock.

Back from the Abyss is about understanding the how and why of psychological and psychiatric suffering and healing.

Why do people try to hurt or kill themselves or fall into addiction?

How do people heal from trauma or bipolar disorder or OCD?

And in this episode, why do women get abortions

and how do they cope with the process and the aftermath?

We can't know someone's story until we hear it.

It's so very easy and even profoundly human and normal

for us to assume, project, interpret, and judge. But until we have actually listened to what

someone has gone through, we just don't know. The idea for today's episode came from my patient

Sarah, who tells the first story today. She was coming out of a ketamine treatment earlier this year,

she broke down crying and opened up about something

that she'd never shared with me,

an abortion she had had many years ago,

and the complicated mix of relief,

confusion, guilt, and shame

that had plagued her ever since.

She asked if she and I might do an episode on abortion, and I said, well, let's talk about it

when you aren't high on ketamine.

But that next week I called her and we began to brainstorm what this episode would look

like.

So today we present abortion in three acts, three women, three stories, that are in many

...