Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
4.3
83
5
1
Paperback
USD
15.29
$15.29
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780544960091 |
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| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2017 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 550,919 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America
4.3 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
83 reviews.
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A decent portrayal of mental illness.
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prozac nation is by far one of the best books i've ever read. this book is not about whining or making you feel sorry for the author like i've read in other reviews. it's about someone who has struggled most of their life through depression and addiction and takes the time to take the reader in depth into of every aspect of her life. i read this book a few years ago and it is still one of my favorite books. once you start reading you can't stop. this book itself is a drug. you will be hooked instantly. you will find yourself ignoring phone calls food and sleep to get to the next page. This book should be read by everyone. but i think someone who has experienced depression or addiction at some point in their life will appreciate this book even more.
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I read this a decade ago. I learned a valuable lesson about what makes a gentlemen should I ever need it. A nice guy pays for your abortion but a gentlemen will take you to the clinic as well. I haven't need this wisdom but I've imparted it to others. The saddest thing I found about this book was Wurtzel's belief people only sympathise with drug addicts but can't understand depression. I'm not sure if this is true with everyone but she later became an addict. I wonder if people knew what to do with her then or if she still found that people often don't relate or sympathise with others pain even with a reason to put a name to.It seems to me that drug addictio. only makes peoples lives so much harder to deal with. Relatives I know who added drug addiction to their depression still had the depression to deal with.
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Great subject, great prose, important book of our time, etc., but MY GOD will you get sick of listening to this woman. I mean, it's a very accurate description of what it's like to be very very depressed, but there's a reason depressed people aren't exactly social butteflies and it's because they never stop talking about how bummed out they are. And this is 384 pages of Elizabeth Wurtzel crashing and burning and then crying about it for about seven hours.
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Prozac Nation came into my life at a time when I could identify a bit too closely with Elizabeth Wurtzel in terms of being a bright young student who just didn't seem to fit in anywhere. While it was depressing overall, I found comfort in the assurance that for every stupid thing I ever did because I felt rotten, most of the things she had done were a lot worse. Definitely worth reading if you're having one of those years.
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I'm not quite halfway through this book and it is KILLING ME!!! Maybe it's just because I've never really dealt with depression, but all of her whining about how hard her life is and how black the vacant place where her soul should be and how much more depressed she is than anyone else and how no one understands her... Blah blah blah. Ugh. This line, page fifty something, pretty much sums it up for me at this point in the "story.""Nothing about my life seemed worthy of art or literature or even of just plain life. It seemed too stupid, too girlish, too middle-class."Amen, sista. If you'd just kept that attitude I wouldn't be stuck finishing your horribly boring book. And yet I plod on...UPDATE:Finally, done. The last fifty pages almost made it worth reading. Once she finally gets help and starts to talk about how prozac has saturated our society (what I was expecting the book to be about in the first place), it actually got interesting. Incidentally, she admits (in the epilogue, I think) that her story is self-indulgent and even often annoying. She gets a little judgmental about the overuse of prozac (what, only she is allowed to REALLY be depressed?), but I found myself at least partially agreeing with her. Anyway, I don't know that I would recommend this one to just anyone, but if you're interested in depression and have a high tolerance for a "woe-is-me" teenagerish voice, it wasn't completely unreadable.
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Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel was way to depressing, I have depression so i figured i might be able to identify with her in this book but ohhhhhhhhhh no she is way to down for me. I had to pull myself to the end of the book. I would never read it again.
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Pretty good. Though I have to point out that the people i know who are young and depressed in america are the ones who are smart and poor to boot.
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I thought that this book dragged quite a lot in the middle...I got rather bored of reading about how terrible everything was for her, especially since I didn't have half the amazing opportunities that she had. However, the narrative redeemed itself by offering such an honest, inside view of how depression really feels. I believe I know better how to behave towards friends and clients who suffer from depression after having read this book.
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One of the best books about depression ever written. It is so beautifully, poetically written. It touches the soul of your being.
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I've read a plethora of books on depression, and on bipolar disfunction, and this book is the one that I see myself in the most. It also helped me come to terms with illness vs. crazy, and to also learn that once I accept the fact I have a chemical imbalance, it's easier to 'talk myself down'.
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Sad, depressing. good read though
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A good first novel. For anyone who has been despressed, you can see a little bit of yourself in the novels protaganist. The search a understanding oneself can actually get in the way of feeling better.
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This is one woman's memoir of severe depression, dating from her teenage years though young adulthood in the days before prozac. Elizabeth Wurtzel was a young, talented, and deeply depressed student and writer in the 1980s. This is a memoir with little happiness and hope, much like depression itself. In order to cope with the pain Wurtzel drowns her sorrow in drugs, alcohol, and sex. She acts out in inappropriate ways. There's no nice ending, at least until the epilogue. Wurtzel's memoir shows how hard and despeate depression can be. Elizabeth Wurtzel is clearly a very smart woman and a talented writer. That said, the most difficult part of this book to stomach is not the gut-wrenching descriptions of major depression, but rather, Wurtzel's refusal to recognize the significant socio-economic advantages she has had. Most significant of these are her Harvard education and her plum writing internships. The issue is not that she "should have been happy because she had so much," rather, its the fact that Wurtzel paints herself as a disadvantaged young woman, which she simply does not appear to be. Presenting herself as something of a child of deprivation simply doesn't work, and the book would have been stronger had it not made such suggestions. Much more interesting is how the culture of high expectations shaped her depression.
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This well-written memoir chronicles the teenage and college years of Wurtzel¿s life, which she spends primarily in a funk of deep, unshakeable depression. If you have not felt this kind of depression (and I haven¿t), it is easy to become impatient with the author midway through the book. She seems to have everything that a lot of us want: a burgeoning career as a feature writer for newspapers and major magazines like Rolling Stone (and this is while she is still in college); a scholarship-funded education at Harvard; an endless supply of endlessly patient friends. Even her tragedies are minor: a distant father, a failed short-term relationship. So why is she constantly whining and self-obsessed and so full of pain? Wurtzel herself even comes out of her funk from time to time to wonder, ¿Why am I so depressed? What do I have to feel bad about?¿It is this impatience with the narrator that is the real brilliance of this book, and as we find out in the last chapter, Wurtzel has deliberately portrayed herself exactly as she felt, both to depict how it feels to be severely depressed and to let us readers know how it feels to know the severely depressed. And we do, believe me.By the end of the book, we have been through the wringer with Wurtzel, and we are glad to see her find salvation in drugs (although she is careful to explain that while anti-depressants have saved lives, they are in danger of becoming over-prescribed for the most minor cases of the blues). So yes, this book is uncomfortable to read, and we may occasionally want to yell at Wurtzel to snap out of it already, but when it is done, we know just what hell she went through ¿ because we went through it with her.
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i thought it was going to be more of a social commentary than it was and i think wurtzel wanted it to be more broad but really it's a very bleak picture of her own personal struggle with depression. i think it could have been structured better. like all other wurtzel i've read, the intent is good but the follow through is sloppy and a little too whiney.
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Reading Prozac Nation is like watching a car crash that you just can't stop staring at. At times Wurtzel becomes quite tiresome and annoying in trying to tell you just how smart, well-read, socially conscious, and knowledgeable about music she is. Despite this, Prozac Nation is a great memoir and an addictive read.
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Yes Prozac is an antidepressant, an overperscribed addictive, and dangerous one. Question: Are you still on it and have you had any ill effects??? I was NOT depressed when I was given a low dose a while back by a well meaning but ageist OBGYN who had 0 understanding about menopause. I trusted her judgement but wondered why if she thought I was depressed, she never referred me to a psychiatrist or therapist. When I was on Prozac, at first I was tired and then numb. I didn't realize until after I put my foot down and weaned myself off that this numbness and my lack of enthusiasm, which I didn't have before Prozac, was not the effect of the drug but because of what I suspect is permanent brain damage. For the first year to two years post SSRI, I had absolutely no emotional connection positive or negative to anything. Today, I am able to feel and express emotion to a degree, but that and my enthusiasm is way less than it was before. I used to get angry feeling as if I had been used and had my sense of self robbed from me. However, I accept this as my new normal and am coping. Sadly, too many like me, who were given Prozac as a cure all end up off and on SSRI's for life because of withdrawl symptoms, brain zaps, and indifference that does not go away. This is both sad and unethical on the part of regular MD doctors. The FDA really needs to crack down on off label use, which yours was because Prozac is not approved for ADHD, and PCPs should be banned from prescribing it without a referral fo professionals who are trained to do depression screenings and provide followup therapy. MDs often use these drugs to shut patients up or to cut corners. In my case it was because my ignorant OBGYN didn't want to treat my hormonal concerns and all but said to me that menopause symptoms are a myth. I beat myself up that I trusted this woman, but I will never go back on Prozac and have learned not to trust people at face value to trust my own instincts when it comes to my health and well being. Lesson learned!
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Mental illness in 21st century American is a topic that is still not discussed and still holds onto many stigmas. If you suffer from depressions or any form of mental illness this book will be a comfort to you. If you know someone that suffers this book will be enlightening. Ms. Wurtzel has done an excellant job of education through her story written in lay terms. This should be required reading; too many people suffer in silence.
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