Recession Dispatch from…Baltimore

BALTIMORE—Richard Friedman wrote in the New York Times a few weeks ago that while it may take a few weeks for anti-depressants to start working, the “side effects, like sexual dysfunction, are often immediate.” Whether or not this is a metaphor for the stimulus package, it is a fact that many Baltimoreans, mostly suburban, mostly with their children in private schools, are suffering. They started swallowing Cymbalta, Effexor, and Celexa somewhere around Christmas and, two months into their visits to the Ruxton Pharmacy, the situation, both nationally and in Baltimore, couldn’t be worse.