Allegra Nation

The depression memoir “Prozac Nation” by Elizabeth Wurtzel was so much of a smash hit that Hollywood made a movie out of it. I suppose that should prompt me to write a memoir called “Risperdal Nation” since I’m legitimately schizophrenic. My life isn’t nearly as interesting as Elizabeth Wurtzel’s, so maybe I’ll have to hold off for a while. You know what else would make a weird memoir? “Allegra Nation”. Ever since having nasal surgery in 2006, I’ve been gagging on my own snot and blowing my nose like an elephant whenever I’m out in public. Allegra seems to be the only over-the-counter medication that works so far. If you managed to get this far in the blog post without falling asleep, kudos to you. The point I’m trying to make is Elizabeth Wurtzel is a one of a kind author with one of a kind skills. To try and duplicate her work would be next to impossible. You can’t just remove the word “Prozac” from the title of your memoir and replace it with another medication. Suppose you have chronic constipation and you tried to write a memoir called “Phillip’s Colon Health Nation”. Would that sell very many copies? “The diarrhea splatter looked like guts after the Vietnam war.” I’m sorry, but there’s simply no way to make diarrhea or constipation interesting. Same thing with “Yaz Nation”. I suppose a memoir about having lots of sex would prove to be spicy and hot, but we don’t need to hear that you constantly used Yaz as a birth control pill, especially now that women are having strokes because of it. Hehe! I said “strokes” in a sentence about sex. You know what else would make a weird memoir? “Pamprin Nation”. There’s simply no way to make periods sound readable. “After I bled all over the floor like a Saw character, I yelled at my boyfriend so loudly that he began bleeding out of his ears.” There’s simply no way a blogger with testicles can make that sound interesting without coming off as a sexist pig. I assure you I’m not a sexist. I’m merely trying to prove a point that if you try to write a memoir based on a random medication, you won’t get the results you want. Elizabeth Wurtzel is a Generation X icon with a lot to say, even after 1994, when Prozac Nation was published. Her memoir is more than just constant complaining about being sad. It’s social commentary. It’s psychology. It’s something you can’t write if you’re constantly ingesting Phillip’s Colon Health pills.

　

***CONCERT QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Keep your eyeballs wet! The tax collector is coming!”

-Marco Hietala from Nightwish-

"Heaven" by Otherwise

As I’ve said in a previous blog entry about Skillet, I’m not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t believe in God and I wouldn’t follow his demanding rules even if he existed. Even so, the concept of heaven has always been special to me. To my way of thinking, heaven isn’t a place we go when we die. It’s an idea. It’s the perfect utopia. My idea of heaven doesn’t necessarily have to do with clouds and harp lessons. It has more to do with a place where I feel like I’m not only welcome, but also wanted. I’ve tried to find heaven in lots of public places. I’ve looked in college classes, bus stations, bars, grocery stores, concert halls, bookstores, and not one of those places could ever be called heaven because nobody even knew I existed. I even tried to look for heaven on the beach. The cool blue water, the gorgeous pink skies, the lovely ladies in bikinis, the fluffy puppies running around, it seems like the perfect place to look for heaven. Even the beach thought I was just an invisible ghost. Could it be that my awkward behavior is keeping devil horns on my head instead of a halo? Or maybe it’s true that heaven doesn’t exist in such shallow place. The only real place I’ve been able to call heaven is my home. At home, I’m free to be myself without any limitations. I can tell as many offensive jokes as I want, I can toss around my liberal beliefs without backlash, I can speak in a monotone voice whenever I’m not feeling energetic, and I can write my stories as frequently as I want to. What does this have to do with literature, you ask? It’s simple. Every character I write about should have their own version of heaven (even if they don’t find it until the end of the story, which is usually all the time). For example, I recently wrote a short story for Good Reads called “Prozac Nation 2”. Dustin Spears is an insensitive boyfriend in a time where sensitivity and love are both needed to cool down his sorrowful girlfriend Morgan Penn. By being a jerk as a last resort, Dustin has taken away Morgan’s version of heaven and she is forced to bear her soul to him in order to get it back. Maybe I was secretly saying negative reinforcement works. I hope not. I hope it doesn’t contradict my reasons for boycotting a TV show called “Friday Night Tykes”. In any event, the story was met with a warm reception, so I’m happy about that. You know what else should be met with a warm reception? The song “Heaven” by Otherwise. Band members Adrian and Ryan Patrick’s idea of heaven was their mutual brother Ivan, who passed away a few years before the song’s release. What can they do to bring Ivan back? Keep his memory alive through their gorgeous song. With Ivan Patrick’s memory alive, the imaginations of Otherwise’s fans will be alive as well. Those are two things that will save us as a society: imagination and love. Rest in peace, Ivan Patrick.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I never believed that your soul could be stolen from me. Who can save me from the monster that I used to be? So if you hear me now, won’t you just send me a sign? Do I make you proud? Tell me that I’m doing fine. If I could, I’d fly away. I’d talk to the angels and beg them to please let me stay. ‘Cause heaven, no heaven, I’ll never see. What can I do to bring you back to me?”

-Otherwise singing “Heaven”-

"Prozac Nation" by Elizabeth Wurtzel

As someone who openly admits to being mentally ill whenever the topic comes up, this is going to sound hypocritical of me when I say it. I get very uncomfortable around people who are chronically sad. Whether it’s somebody crying a lot, threatening self-harm, or unnecessarily insulting themselves, I have to get up and leave the room whenever it happens. I never know what I can say or do that will make the person feel better, so I just walk away from the situation frustrated and angry. For Elizabeth Wurtzel, it took an entire decade for her to understand the gravity of her depression, starting in her pre-teenaged years. She would slice her legs in the bathroom while listening to punk rock, burst into tears and screaming fits at seemingly random times, stay in bed for long periods of time, etc. Throughout Prozac Nation, she tries to figure out what exactly is causing her to feel so miserable all the time. She describes how her parents never got along, how every boyfriend she’s had dumped her in her time of need, how her therapists weren’t connecting with her in the way she wanted, basically, it’s a whole myriad of fucked up experiences. She tries to rationalize her sadness with these things, but it doesn’t alleviate the pressure being put on her fragile mind by her depression. When she attempts suicide and fails, that’s when she finally starts taking Prozac and coming to her senses. She wasn’t just sad all the time; she actually had legitimate atypical depression, which is just as physical as it is psychological. Here’s where the debate begins. Ever since Prozac was on the market, there have been more diagnoses for depression among Generation X members (the book was published in 1994). The problem with this is that the doctors making these diagnoses are confusing moderate sadness with actual crippling depression. The ones who are just sad get the Prozac while the ones who are mentally broken down and on the brink of insanity go unnoticed. If you want to know just how screwed up this conclusion is, Jeffrey Dahmer was at one point on Prozac. He wasn’t depressed, he was just a serial killer. The point of this memoir is that if you’re in need of help of any kind, make sure you’re actually getting the right treatment for whatever ails you. Elizabeth Wurtzel needed a decade to understand this point and she’s better for it. The book drives that point home for a lot of people, including myself. I took my medicine (because I’m legitimately schizophrenic) and I’m a much more focused person than I was in 2002 when I was first mentally ill.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“And now I finally know what it feels like to risk everything and still survive. When you’re standing on the battlefield and all the pain is real, that’s when you realize that you must have done something right, ‘cause you never felt so alive.”

-Papa Roach singing “Leader of the Broken Hearts”-