175. Prozac
There are two stories, and they may both be true.
The first story is about hope, about the astonishing possibility of intervention. People are crippled by despair, their lives spent in pain. And their pain is something that can now be relieved by a pill that affects their brain chemistry. Prozac was the drug that let the country stop treating depression as a character flaw, something to slog through in years of talk therapy. Seemingly overnight, depressed people felt like themselves again. This story says we can clutch people we love back from the cliff, clutch ourselves back. Save ourselves through miraculous medicines.
The second story is suspicious of the technological fix. It acknowledges despair; says we have always despaired as a species, the cliff has always been there, but suddenly we no longer understand sadness as a social or spiritual affliction, but a chemical one. A bodily one. And that Big Pharma has said, “Just take a pill, America!” since Valium in the 70s and Miltown in the 50s—but always with downsides. The second story says postwar America has been reaching for an easy fix, for happiness as a product that we can buy like anything else. But there’s no easy path to emotional resilience. The second story says we’ve lost our way in a sea of expensive drugs. We’ve pinned all our hopes on chemical salvation.
Maybe both of these stories are true. Maybe there is truth and even compassion and grace in both of them.
Special thanks to Everett Taasevigen for suggesting Prozac.
Links:
How Anecdotes Sell Drugs: On the 30th Anniversary Edition of Peter Kramer’s “Listening to Prozac” – Andrew Scull, Los Angeles Review of Books, May 16, 2024
History of Prozac - Science History Institute Museum and Library, n.d.
Fish on Prozac: chemical residues in wastewater mess with bodies, behaviour and sperm - Upama Aich, Bob Wong, and Giovanni Polverino, The Conversation, August 27, 2024
Prozac To Fight PMS Under New Name – Matthew Herper, Forbes, July 10, 2000
This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.
Too many emails? To receive a weekly recap instead, please subscribe on my Substack blog. Instructions for turning on the weekly summary can be found here.
