I'm a CEO who struggled with depression, then found ketamine | Patient Story: Paul

In October of 2025, longtime Ember Health and media executive Paul Greenberg volunteered to tell his story as a part of a storytelling project run by documentarian Chandler Kauffman. The objective of the project is to raise awareness about how IV ketamine works to treat depression, and who it may help. We are humbled to serve extraordinary people like Paul and others in our community so that they may experience the relief they deserve, realize their full potential, and make their marks in their communities.

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You can read Paul’s full transcript below. If you’re seeking relief from depression and curious to explore care at Ember, we invite you to schedule a consultation call with a clinician from our team to understand whether IV ketamine care may be a fit.

In 2018, I decided that it was time for me to go public with the story of my depression and my mental health struggles that I’ve had my whole life. People weren’t really talking about their mental health and particularly not business people. My name is Paul Greenberg. I’m the CEO of Butterworks, which is an AI and media consulting company. I’ve been in media and digital media my whole career. I was CEO of College Humor, EVP at TV Guide Digital, I ran digital at Time Inc, I was at MTV.

Depression for me has been this ever-present weight. When I was 13, I tried to take my own life. Uh, fortunately, I didn’t succeed, but it really indicated to me that I needed to do some work. So it started me on a series of many different modalities of psychotherapy, uh, psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, CBT, DBT, EMDR, and many other kinds of therapies, all of which sort of worked but didn’t really. The suicidal impulses that I had were all the time, 24/7, this voice in my head saying, “You have to kill yourself”. And for me to sort of push back against that on a regular basis was exhausting.

In 2018, Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade both took their lives within a week of each other. And I thought, wow, if these incredibly successful people who appear to have nothing wrong, could be suffering so badly. I want to do everything I can to try to destigmatize mental health issues. So, I contacted The Hollywood Reporter and I wrote a long article detailing my entire experience with ECT, with all of my doctors, with all of my therapies, with all the medication. And a lot of people DM’d me and said, “I’ve had mental health struggles my whole life, and I’ve never told anybody, but you’ve made it so that now I can start to talk to people, and you have destigmatized it for me”.

I did ECT around 2012, 2013, and it lasted for about 5 years and then the effect started to wear off. I talked to my psychiatrist and he said, “Hey, there’s this new field of IV ketamine for depression and I think you really ought to look into it. There’s this small company called Ember Health that just started and, uh, you should talk to them.” I’ve been a patient at Ember for 5 years. I get an infusion every 2 weeks, which is probably the most frequent cadence that they have with their patients, but it’s something that I need and that works for me.

Ember really makes sure that they temper how they work with you. They’re so safe and they’re so data driven and they’re respectful and they’re so cautious. If I’m going into a deep depression for some reason, the Ember doctor, my therapist, and my psychiatrist will all work in tandem and send emails to each other to see what the best course of treatment for me is. Everybody I’ve met, to a person, is caring, is supportive, uh really wants to help, really wants to see me succeed, really wants the depression to go away. They work extremely hard to make sure that that happens with check-ins on a regular basis to see how you’re feeling and how things are going. Really treating you like a person and treating you with the utmost care. You go into a very comfortable room in a very comfortable setting with extremely kind people. You sit in a comfortable chair and they ask you heartfelt questions about yourself and how you’re feeling and it really establishes a trust to be in that really warm, comforting, supportive environment is so critical.

Ketamine is 84% effective at helping with treatment resistant depression. My family absolutely noticed a difference. My kids in particular, as soon as the depression lifted, they both said to me, you know, “Wow, Dad, I can really see a difference in you. You’re a changed person. You’re more relaxed. You’re more comfortable. You’re happier.” Ultimately, Ember saved my life without question. Full stop. Without Ember Health’s support and their help, I would not be here today.