Passages that I identify with from Prozac Nation
A page in the diary "Accept, Adapt and Appreciate: How?"
Written by nw4m Jan 7 2008 07:41 PM
From Prozac Nation Pg 326
In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.
Taking a hypersensitive approach to life had come to seem so much more pure and honest than joining the ranks of the numb masses who could let it all slide by.
What I’d stopped realizing was that if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all.
From Pg 344
The secret I sometimes think that only I know is that Prozac really isn’t that great. Of course, I can say this and still believe that Prozac was the miracle that saved from life and jumped started me out of a full-time state of depression - which would probably seem to most people reason enough to think of the drug as manna from heaven.
But after six years on Prozac, I know that it is not the end but the beginning. Mental health is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.
A drug, whether it’s Prozac, Thorazine, an old fashioned remedy like laudanum, or a street narcotic like heroin, can work only as well as the brain allows it to. And after a while, a strong, hardy, deep-seated depression will outsmart any chemical.