Book 37 - Prozac Nation

Originally posted 05-18-07!

Title: Prozac Nation
Author: Elizabeth Wurtzel
Pages: 362
Grade: -

Summary: (From Publisher's Weekly) Twenty-six-year-old Wurtzel, a former critic of popular music for New York and the New Yorker, recounts in this luridly intimate memoir the 10 years of chronic, debilitating depression that preceded her treatment with Prozac in 1990. After her parents' acrimonious divorce, Wurtzel was raised by her mother on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The onset of puberty, she recalls, also marked the onset of recurrent bouts of acute depression, sending her spiraling into episodes of catatonic despair, masochism and hysterical crying. Here she unsparingly details her therapists, hospitalizations, binges of sex and drug use and the paralyzing spells of depression which afflicted her in high school and as a Harvard undergraduate and culminated in a suicide attempt and ultimate diagnosis of atypical depression, a severe, episodic psychological disorder.

My thoughts: "..I don't want to die. I don't want to live either..." It's a quote from the book... that sums up depression in about the best way possible I think. I don't know....I'm left feeling a bit raw after reading. Like I just was forced to stare at myself....while at the same time reading about someone I'm very much not. But the 'full of promise' lines...they just strike something.... *shakes head* This was just an intense reading experience. I just don't know what to say.