I’M NOT QUITE SURE how to tell this story. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, but it was still terrifying.

I had to have shock treatments for an intractable depression that had lasted for years. Drugs didn’t work, other therapy didn’t work, and my wife and I were desperate.

Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) was a last resort. I was afraid that I would lose my memory, a common effect, lose my ability to think clearly, consult or do public speaking. In short, I was afraid that it wouldn’t fix me and leave me in far worse condition than before the treatment.

I checked myself into Butler Hospital, Rhode Island’s largest mental hospital. I kissed Kate goodbye. The metal door slammed. The double throw lock went kerchunk, kerchunk. I was in. I would get out, escorted, twice a day, for exercise, for fresh air and to avoid losing my connection to the outside world, a dubious reality. Kate could come to see me once a day. Briefly. Kerchunk.

I had envisioned a vast, dark 1890s-vintage armory of red-brick converted to a World War I military hospital. I foresaw row after row of metal army cots occupied by maimed, drugged and restrained patients. There would be nurses scurrying around in gray uniforms, peaked white caps with Red Cross symbols on them, caring for the wounded. The facility was for nonviolent patients with diseases that could not be treated without hospitalization.

But Butler’s facility was anything but grim. It had a bright and cheery common room, and for the 16 patients it had eight double rooms with windows and open doors.

It was like a spartan Hampton Inn. There was a control center manned by two caring, chronically positive, effective nurses who administered meds, kept discipline and got you to treatment on time. There were plenty of snacks to keep up blood sugar, lest a low level trigger grumpiness, bad temper, or exacerbate mood swings. The regular meals were pretty good, too. Solid. No melting Jello, gray unidentified protein or wilted lettuce.

My roommate, whom I’ll call Sam, wore a Red Sox hat. That was a good sign for a New Englander. He was probably in his 40s and had a face wrinkled far beyond his age, sun-hardened, wind-burned and water-battered. I hadn’t a clue what he was really like or what his illness was. People in psych wards don’t talk about their illnesses, or talk much at all. They are usually drugged with some unnamed concoction, and maybe don’t know or don’t care about what ails them anyway. I had a brief conversation with Sam. He was a smart, articulate man, and turned out to be a commercial fisherman from Galilee. He loved his work.

The next day I found out what was wrong with Sam. I came back from dinner to find all of my laundry washed, folded and stacked in order of size, from socks to underwear to pajamas to shirts. My coins were stacked from dimes to quarters. Obviously, Sam was obsessive-compulsive. The next morning he appeared at breakfast wearing my obnoxious, flowered, silk pajamas. I almost fell off my chair laughing. No one else noticed.

Then there was “The Masai.” He was a slender, tall, elegant, straight-backed black man with dusky skin with mahogany highlights, and a glistening shaved head. He would glide, like a hovercraft, in endless circles. Hour after hour. Glazed, unfocused eyes, maybe seeing, maybe not. Only he knew.

“The Linebacker” was the most feared. A short, silent gray-haired woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a lavender track suit. and with malevolent-mischievous eyes. She took great pleasure in sneaking up behind us, pushing her knees in the back of ours, trying to take us down. We all developed eyes in the back of our heads.

The noise started at midnight. One person touched it off and it spread like a Santa Ana brush fire fueled by the delicate, dry timbers of the mind. It was a Harmatan, an ululating, undulating chorus of wolves, baying hounds and coyotes, with the eerie underlying dirge of pained moans. It felt like the House of Usher or the carnival “Fun House” but without the fun. Count Dracula’s torture chamber. The nurses quickly quieted it down. Until 2 a.m.

I was wheel-chaired into the battleship-gray ECT waiting room. There were a dozen patients, each in hospital gowns, with their personal dark rain clouds, demon drizzle and lightening hovering over their heads, waiting their turn for treatment. They looked like monks at prayer, bent, penitent, seeking any long shot that might be out there for relief.

I was wheeled down the “Green Mile” and strapped on a gurney. Electrodes were pasted on my temples, I was given an injection, and then zapped. Hundreds of milli-second-long, micro-amps radiated throughout my brain, like a shot gun, not a scalpel. I wondered if the lights would dim for so that the rest of the patients knew when I “got mine” — like convicts on Death Row when somebody goes to the electric chair.

I came to in the recovery room, groggy and sedated. A doctor accidentally left the door to the treatment room cracked open. Through the chink I saw a little, frail, old lady’s tiny feet, encased in red furry “feel good” slippers, rapidly whip up and down as the convulsions ripped through her. It reminded me of a small child throwing a temper tantrum. The “Lock Up” looked like the Ritz-Carlton after this.

Of course, you have to have some sense of humor about his. The eyes of an attractive, obviously bright young woman locked on mine, eyes that seemed to say, “this bull**** again.” She said, “Depressing, isn’t it?” I agreed.

It was a ghastly experience. I’ve blocked out the anxiety, stark resignation and fear. I don’t remember much about it. And that’s good. Anyway, the bottom line is that ECT did not work for me. Fortunately, a new drug did.

C. Davis Fogg, of Wakefield, is a management consultant.