Friday, May 9, 2008
Is Prozac a crutch? Plus: Tips for saving your sex life on antidepressants; Did homophobia drive apart the brothers Nabokov?
May 19, 2000 | At peace with
Prozac
BY KELLY LUKER
(05/17/00)
The most basic tenet of evolutionary theory is that a trait continues to exist throughout generations because it confers some adaptive benefit. Kelly Luker fails to address this aspect of unhappiness in her ode to drug-induced wellness.
I am a few months out of college, working a mindless office job and miserable. I wouldn't have it any other way. My current angst is acting as a motivating force for me to make change in my life, to figure out what is meaningful, to question my assumptions. If I were on Prozac -- as I was a couple of years back -- I would be happy. And complacent. And resigned.
-- Erik Kraft
Kelly Luker sounds like a wonderful candidate for Prozac, but she doesn't consider that many people who are prescribed the drug, may not need it. Also, her dismissive tone regarding tardive dyskinesia means she's never met anyone who has TD. TD is for real. Other, older and less-prescribed psychotropic drugs have been giving mentally ill people TD for decades. It's not a minor discovery that Prozac can cause this horrible side effect: It's huge. There isn't a dosage large enough of Prozac to cure the misery she'll suffer if she gets TD.
Also, many people who "face it down" as she says, and treat their anxiety disorders, drinking problems or bulimia without medication, actually win the war over their problems. Behavioral/cognitive therapy is JUST as effective as Prozac and friends in curing most neurotic illnesses.
-- Paula Bomer
Having experienced 20-plus years in the clinical chronic depression wars, I believe drugs such as Prozac are the equivalent of insulin for diabetes. And I wish insurance companies would pay for psychiatric/neurohormonal chemical imbalances as they do for, say, endocrinological disorders.
Prozac, per se, is not the only chemical answer and it disturbs me to see it misused so frequently as metaphor in the media and by society at large. Trust me: I don't have "Prozac moments"; I have to function in life, and for someone with my DSM-IV diagnosis, Prozac is one means to that end.
These days I have an entire pharmaceutical arsenal behind (or, to be more precise, inside of) me. I know more about possible drug interactions than several of my doctors, in part because there isn't enough medical research on how these drugs play out long-term in different systems of the body, much less communication among doctors in my mismanaged care "network." Then, too, sometimes my meds change, and I feel like a guinea pig, FDA approved or not.
There is so much that medical science simply doesn't know about psychoactive medication that even as a guinea pig, I am grateful for what they do know, for what has saved my life.
-- Nancy E. Frank
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