Synopsis

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Katie participates in an experimental antidepressant drug trial at Columbia University to see if it will help her lifelong depression, anhedonia and lack of engagement in life. She can’t know if she’s been assigned to the active medication group or the placebo group, but the doctor running the study warns her that the trial medication has been known to interact with the compounds in chocolate to cause blindness. Because of this, she should abstain from eating chocolate during the six week study and for two weeks afterwards. Within a week of beginning this study, Katie’s life begins to turn around; her mood lifts, she has increased energy, she becomes social and extroverted, she takes more interest in both her job and her relationship with her boyfriend Larry. She’s convinced she must be on the actual antidepressant - the real drug. Near the end of the study, Larry brings home a box of Entenmann’s chocolate donuts, and despite the warning Katie’s received, she finds herself drawn to eating a donut, partly because it’ll confirm which trial group she’s been put in. She eats one, and within half an hour, her eyesight dims, and she’s completely blind. She’s grateful and relieved when she wakes up the next day to find that her vision has returned. When she officially finishes the study a week later, she’s told that she was on the placebo...which means that it was Katie herself and the power of her own mind making all the changes in her mood, her outlook and her life.