Overview

In 1988, at age 26, Lauren Slater lived alone in a basement apartment in Cambridge, depressed, suicidal, unemployed. Ten years later, she is a psychologist running her own clinic, an award-winning writer, and happily married. The transformation in her life was brought about by Prozac. Prozac Diary is Lauren Slater's incisive account of a life restored to productivity, creativity, and love. When she wakes up one morning and finds that her demons no longer have a hold on her, Slater struggles with the strange state of being well after a lifetime of craziness. Yet this is no hymn to a miracle pharmaceutical. It is a frankly ambivalent quest for the truth of self behind an ongoing reliance on a drug. Slater also addresses Prozac's notorious ""poop-out"" effect and its devastating attack on her libido. This is the first memoir to reflect on long-term Prozac use, and reviewers agree that no one has written about Prozac with such beauty, honesty, and insight.

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9780140263947

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Reviews

A perceptive and articulate young psychologist's revealing memoir of ten years on Prozac, with all its blessings and curses. If Slater's first book, empathetic stories about her patients, Welcome to My Country (1996), was remarkable for its self-revelations, this one is even more so. When Slater began taking Prozac in 1988, she was an intelligent but unemployed 26-year-old with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a long history of hospitalizations for depression, self-mutilation, and anorexia. Prozac changed her life. Despite the drug's slow-acting nature, within nine days she felt well, and the difficult job of learning to live a normal life began for her. While she felt it suppressed her energies, curiosity, and creativity, she discovered that her life became quiet but rich, a fine piece of music by Mozart. She established a real home for herself, completed a doctoral program in record time, became a psychologist, director of a clinic, and a writer, and she fell in love. Long-term use eventually led to what she terms a poop-out, and Prozac became a well-meaning buddy whose presence can considerably ease pain but cannot erase it. Perhaps Slater's deepest regret about her dependence on Prozac for a normal life is the effect it has had on her sexuality, a subject she explores with great frankness and considerable grace. She also ponders the question of what Prozac in fact does: is it a sort of psychic steroid providing a competitive edge in life? Or is it, rather, a conduit to what Jung called the essential self? For Slater it has undoubtedly allowed her to become the person she is - a psychologist with a keen sense of what it feels like to suffer the agonies of mental illness. Fortunately, despite her fears, it doesn't appear to have seriously dampened her creativity. Heartfelt but never mawkish; eloquent but never slick; a lyrical account of a drug that has caused mounds of controversy. (Kirkus Reviews)

The renowned autobiographical account of over a decade in Slater's life, which was spent with last millennium's hippest drug. She begins at what should be the end of her depression, with a brutally frank account of adapting to life on the pill. Her honesty cannot be highlighted enough; at times, she is so open that if reading this on public transport, you're liable to curl the covers inwards and poke your nose further in to hide your blushes. Despite her claims that the drug sapped her creative flow, there is no real evidence of that happening. Instead, the emotional subject matter is given the right treatment as Slater squeezes out every last ounce of lyrical prose that she can muster. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

A 1999 National Magazine Award nominee, Lauren Slater has a masters degree in psychology from Harvard University and a doctorate from Boston University. Her work was chosen for the Best American Essays/Most Notable Essays volumes of 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. Her previous book, Lying, was chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2000. Slater lives with her family in Massachusetts.

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