Prozac
Nation: Young and Depressed in America
A
Memoir
by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Reviews
Amazon.com
Elizabeth Wertzel writes with her finger
in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain,
Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes
with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp
account of the psychopharmacology of an era.
Daphne Merkin
The saddest, funniest, and ultimately, most
triumphant book about youthful depression I've come across. It reads like
a mixture of J.D. Salinger and Sylvia Plath, with some Bob Dylan and Bruce
Springsteen thrown in for good measure... Elizabeth Wurtzel is one canny
and entertaining observer of her generation: If you've been wondering why
Kurt Cobain meant what he did - what it feels like to be young, gifted,
and black of spirit - this book is the CD, tape, video, and literary answer
all in one.
Booknews, Inc., April 1, 1995
"Full of promise" is how anyone would have
described Elizabeth Wurtzel at age ten, a bright-eyed little girl who painted,
wrote stories, and excelled in school. By age 12, she was cutting her legs
with razor blades, and college turned into a series of breakdowns, crises,
and a suicide attempt. Not until being prescribed Prozac, in combination
with other psychoactive drugs and therapy, was some stability possible
for her. Written with spunk and wit, this is an excellent picture of a
young woman's struggle with depression and her view of the dire effects
our social and cultural milieu has on the young.
From Booklist, September 1, 1994
From toddlerhood on, Wurtzel was recognized
as bright and gifted. What people didn't know was that by the time she
was 11, she was depressed, first overdosing while a kid at summer camp.
Her description of life as a depressive is so precise, so filled with the
horror, the tedium, and, yes, even the funny moments she experienced on
her spiral downward that readers will feel like they're being taken down
with her. The title, Prozac Nation, is Wurtzel's term for her generation's
collective bad mood. It's a resonant concept, but the notion that Generation
X'ers are uniquely susceptible to depressive illnesses does not really
take into account the Valium generation and the Miltown generation before
that. On the other hand, what does make today's young depressives different
from their predecessors is the availability of Prozac and other drugs of
its ilk, which work on the brain in new ways and are considered almost
miraculous by many who take them. (Wurtzel herself, though skeptical about
the drug's long-term effects, is convinced it saved her life.) While the
agonizing descriptions of life in shades of black and blue are intensely
moving, it's Wurtzel's last chapter, in which she muses on the effects
of Prozac both in medical and philosophical terms, that will really get
readers thinking. Like Peter Kramer in Listening
to Prozac (1993), Wurtzel questions why six million people have
felt the need to take the drug. Why, she asks, has depression, once considered
a tragic state of mind, now become an utterly commonplace condition? Are
doctors overmedicating their unhappy patients, or should Prozac be handed
out even more readily? Is the world, in fact, "too difficult to negotiate
without some kind of a chemical buffer zone"? Expect lots of talk about
this one as the currently depressed, the formerly depressed, and the soon-to-be
depressed debate the nagging question of how to feel better. Ilene Cooper
- Copyright© 1994, American Library Association. All rights reserved
Customer Comments
vhyst@pitt.edu from Pittsburgh
and New York, October 25, 1999
An atypical book dealing with depression
My favorite classic would have to be The
Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath. For some reason, morbid books
interest me. It's so sad but i love knowing that my life looks good compared
to the book. I came across prozac nation by accident, i was perusing the
shelves at a book store. Little did I know how incredible it would be.
Elizabeth Wurtzel takes you through her life and makes it seem like you
are there with her. One warning though - if you have depressive tendencies
do not read this. I am not depressed at all, but there would be so many
things that she said that i have thought myself or that were so true. After
finishing the book, I sort of got a little depressed. Regardless though,
this book is a must read. Especially if you are between the ages of 18-25
A reader, October 19, 1999
If you are depressed, don't read this
book!
When I first read this book, I was in high
school struggling with depression and I thought that reading about someone
else's struggle would help me. In this case I was wrong. I found the book
extremely pessimistic and hopeless. This is not the kind of thing you want
to be reading when you are in the midst of a full blown attack of the hell
that is depression. It will only make your world darker and more frightening.
It is however, an interesting book if you can detach yourself from it.
I wasn't able to do that.
A reader from Texas, September
24, 1990
Tripe.
Self-indulgent, self-pitying and overwritten.
The cringe factor is extremely high in this book; I alternated between
feeling embarrassment and utter contempt for the author.
A reader from Shrewsbury,
September 23, 1999
Prozac Nation
I picked this book off a summer reading
list and I thought it was going to be some type of a documentary on prozac,
so I was a little surprised when I started to read this book. I only got
through the first chapter "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die." If you have
dealt with depression, then this is a great book to read. Prozac Nation
shows the reader the emptiness and lonesomeness someone with depression
goes through.
* * *
People DO have various problems with life.
Instead of naming and redefining these problems as various "mental diseases",
and labeling people with them, as is currently done within the psychiatric
community, these problems with life and living are best understood and
addressed outside of the traditional psychiatric paradigm. Why?
Because psychiatric "treatments" such as ECT, lobotomy, and powerful psychotropic
drugs are barbaric, based upon severe faulty scientific methodology, and
quite simply, harmful.
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