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-

"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”-