‘Prozac Nation’ by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel was a mere eleven or twelve years old when she took her first ostensible drug overdose, swallowing a handful of prescription allergy tablets at summer camp while all around her the orienteering and out-of-bounds activities went ahead as planned. However, both the camp counsellors and her parents dismissed this antihistamine overdose as an accident, a childish error, not knowing that it was in fact the first in a series of similarly self-destructive acts that would last well into Elizabeth’s twenties. This decade or so’s worth of misery and deep despair forms the basis of her memoir Prozac Nation, which is also an in-depth examination of the ‘depression culture’ which developed in the early-to-mid nineties and a compelling portrait of mental illness in general. If that all sounds unspeakably grim to you, worry not, for what could have been a wrist-slittingly bad bit of non-fiction is redeemed by the author’s inherent perspicacity and wit. Allow me to elaborate…

First published in 1994, Prozac Nation quickly gained a kind of cult status in the US and Elizabeth Wurtzel garnered praise for her candid, no-holds-barred depiction of her mental health difficulties. In 2001 the book was made into an edgy independent film starring Christina Ricci as Wurtzel (I assume because the physical resemblance between the two is uncanny) and the Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody has citied it as one of the books that changed her life. In short it is, or was, kind of a big deal. The memoir is redolent with candour and gory, some might say egomaniacal, details, from tales of early self harm accompanied by Patti Smith’s Horses (yes, really) to stays at various mental health facilities in the Boston area. Prozac Nation is not all me, me, me misery business, however. It is, as the title suggests, a look at the increased incidence of depression in the national arena and particularly among the 'Generation X’ referred to by Douglas Coupland and so many others. Now for some context…

Born in New York City in July 1967 Elizabeth Wurtzel is, by default, a member of this generation. While their forebears had to deal with more collective ills such as world war and waterborne disease, this new generation had a new, more individualised set of problems to tackle: divorce, HIV/AIDS, economic instability. Such issues precipitated a more modern malaise, and this generation of young people who should have had the world on a string suddenly appeared, well, not to. In the less insular and more socially conscious epilogue to Prozac Nation, Wurtzel discusses the rise of 'depression culture’  and what she refers to as 'the mainstreaming of mental illness in general.' She talks at length about how Prozac (fluoxetine) became the second most commonly prescribed drug in America in the years after she was first prescribed it, and how 'it seemed that no one was more than three people removed from someone on Prozac.' Following this are some thoroughly disturbing revelations regarding the increased prevalence of Prozac and other pharmaceutical antidepressants such as Zoloft (sertraline) and Paxil (paroxetine).

So, enough context, what did I think of Prozac Nation? I really liked it, though I cannot say I enjoyed it, in the same way that I like but do not necessarily enjoy watching Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Elizabeth Wurtzel is a wonderful writer, sharp as a tack and endlessly insightful, and when she writes in a more perspicacious essay-type manner she is damn near impossible to ignore. However, as you might expect of a book subtitled Young and Depressed in America, Wurtzel’s memoir occasionally careens into single-minded melodrama and, were it not for the fact that depression is by nature a solitary and somewhat narcissistic illness, you would be forgiven for tossing the book across the room in an 'oh, get over yourself!’ protest. Yet in spite of its imperfections, Prozac Nation is an indispensable resource and a very well written one at that. I would recommend it to fans of Joan Didion and anyone who responded well to The Bell Jar.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in June 2012.