Elizabeth Wurtzel: Prozac Nation

This was the first book that I purchased in a long, long time. This book reignited and reconfirmed my love of literature. Prozac Nation is a book about a girl called Elizabeth’s journey through depression and back, emerging at the other end, alive, but only just to tell the tale. A tale of being bounced between innumerable doctors/psychiatrists and spending the better part of her life doped up on Prozac and lithium. It’s a book that tears at the very being of human emotions and being, it gets inside your head and it fucks you up. It makes you think what you would do if you were in that very same position. Could you come out at the other end?

The books starts somewhere near the end of Elizabeth’s battle, before jumping back to her early childhood, and following her through her life, the preconceived ideas and misconception about other peoples' thoughts on depression, how others didn't/don't know how to treat her just because she was/is depressed are both addressed. I used both past and present tense in that last sentence because: can you actually be cured of depression or do you just learn to cope with it?

Elizabeth refers to her depression as a disease, almost like it is something that you can catch. To try and distance her self from it? As her depression starts to take control of her life, in effect controlling her thoughts and actions, she is hitting rock bottom as a wave of blackness washes over her. It's almost as if her depression is acting as a barrier between her and the world around her, distancing her from it. She knows her depression. She has never been without her depression. Her depression is her most intimate relationship.

Having never been depressed myself, I truly feel that this book gives an insight of what it is like to be depressed without having actually been there. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the human psyche and just how messed up we all can become. But, more importantly, it shows that there is a little hope, just a little glimpse that one day you might wake up wanting to live.