At first, it cured depression. Then it opened a door to something darker.
There’s a new pill making waves—and possibly rifts in reality.
ClearSight, a breakthrough antidepressant developed by biotech startup Novarisyn, hit the market six months ago with a clean sweep of glowing reviews, teary testimonials, and a cult-like following on TikTok and Reddit. It was hailed as the drug that didn’t just treat depression—it erased it. Users described a sudden lightness, clarity, and emotional rebirth unlike anything they’d experienced before. Even stubborn, treatment-resistant cases were showing results.
But then the figures started appearing.
First it was written off as side effects. A “known visual distortion phase” that occurred as the brain adjusted, some users claimed. But the reports grew too specific. Too eerily similar. A woman in Tallahassee wrote that she saw a tall, thin man standing motionless in her hallway every night around 2:03 AM. A bartender in Manchester noticed pale children peering through the bar’s back window—children no one else could see. Reddit, of course, did what Reddit does, and formed a dedicated thread: r/ClearSighted.
That’s where the story really took off.
Dozens of posts began pouring in with nearly identical descriptions: gaunt, gray-skinned figures lurking in corners, visible only to those taking ClearSight. Some stood motionless, others whispered unintelligibly from behind glass. But they all shared one thing: they stared. Always stared.
“It’s not hallucinations,” one Redditor wrote. “My boyfriend and I both started ClearSight. We both see them. They hate being seen. They move when we look away, like they’re trying to stay hidden—but they’re always closer when we turn back.”
A terrifying hypothesis emerged: ClearSight didn’t cure depression—it peeled away the veil that kept us from seeing what caused it.
Novarisyn’s original research papers have since been pulled offline, but archived PDFs suggest ClearSight was designed to enhance emotional contrast perception—essentially tuning the brain to better detect joy and pleasure by suppressing negative signal pathways. But what if those “negative signals” weren’t just neurotransmitters… but something external?
The leading Reddit theory is chilling in its simplicity:
Depression isn’t always just chemical. Sometimes, it’s parasitic.
These entities—dubbed “the Grays” by r/ClearSighted—are thought to feed on despair, dwelling just outside of human perception like psychic leeches. ClearSight, unintentionally or not, seems to tune users into their frequency. Which, if true, means we were never alone.
One post, now removed by moderators but screenshotted by others, described what happened when a user tried to stop taking ClearSight:
“I weaned off after 3 weeks. The first few days were fine. Then the dreams started—screaming, endless screaming. I saw the hallway figure again. Only now it was closer, inside the room. And it was smiling.”
Former Novarisyn insiders have gone dark, and there’s been no official recall yet, though pharmacies in several states have reportedly pulled the drug from shelves “as a precaution.” The company issued a vague statement citing “isolated psychological responses under investigation.”
In the meantime, ClearSight continues to trend. There’s even a micro-influencer who claims the Grays have “helped” her overcome fear. Another guy on YouTube is livestreaming his daily interactions with them—wearing a GoPro and daring them to touch him. (Spoiler: something does.)
It begs the question: were we ever meant to see what sadness hides?
Or more terrifying—did we invent antidepressants just to stay blissfully blind?
