YES! EXACTLY!!!
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Several times as I was reading "Prozac Nation", I thought, "I want my parents, my friends, everybody to read this memoir!" It's on the spot! Completely!
Elizabeth Wurtzel manages an amazing feat. She describes her depression without dramatizing or romanticizing it. It's ugly, discouraging, and dark, but it's true and honest. "Prozac Nation" isn't a fun read or a memoir you plow through forgetting the details. "Prozac Nation" devours you.
"Prozac Nation" is Elizabeth's story of growing up with divorced parents, about being the kid in the middle of feuting parents, being the odd man out in school, and over time, suddenly, despressive. The majority of the story is when Elizabeth is at Harvard in the grounding mill of academia, treatment, the black wave, and life (and death).
One of the thing that I like about "Prozac Nation" is that it doesn't end. No "and she lived happily ever after. The end". The realization that you never truly recover depression is there. You can get better, you can turn your life around, but you never forget.
Louise.
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Excellent, excellent, excellent
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I was completly enveloped in this book, from start to finish.
It was beautifully written, emotional and thought provoking.
There were times, whilst reading this, that I felt a desperation for Elizabeth's situation, wanting to keep reading because i needed to know that she would be o.k, at least until the end of the chapter!
I enjoyed this book so much i quickly ordered the sequel 'More, Now Again'.
i just feel compelled to know where the story goes....
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powerful and relatable
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I really loved this book.But maybe that's because I am only 25 and have had depression ever since I can remember.The book made ME feel that I was not alone and I really related to Elizabeth's feelings, which I think is hard for others(those who are not depressed)to understand sometimes.Maybe the reviewers who didn't like it can't really understand because, yes, we may be selfish and self-absorbed but it's an illness and it over comes you and unless you've experienced it yourself, believe me this is what it is like.
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Prozac nation
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This book is a true blessing. Not a lot of people understand the complex image a person with depression draws upon in order to discover the person they are. Bringing to surface the thoughts and feeling in which one person has been subjected to contained within there own human shell and showing how the faces of the spectrum can become very blurred.Elizabeth Wurtzel takes the reader on a journey inside the mind ans soul of somebody who has lost control of who she us by using documented tales that are not only heart wrenching but also have a hint of comical.
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An insight into depression in children & adolescents
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Having suffered from depression since I was 13, I have found this book an insightful read that attempts to abolish the perception that children do not suffer from or cannot suffer from depression. I have read rview that say this memoir is self-pitying and egotistical. I cannot agree because in all honesy, this is how depression takes hold, especially when the audience has never suffered from it. People around one tend to pre-judge making implications that one is self-absorbant and just morbid & needs to 'snap out of it'. This is something that 99% of sufferers have had to deal with at least once during their illness.
Elizabeth captures the ambience perfectly & describes how the depression takes hold of her & how hysterical it makes both her mother & herself. She shows the lack of understanding of others without blame & that it is a difficult illness to understand when there seems to be no 'real reason' behind it. Elizabeth tries to emphasise that she struggles with the guilt that she feels for having this illness considering that other people have been through worse things than her during their lives. I do think that Elizabeth's ego and confidence as a woman with this illness has been perceived badly. I honestly don't think she wrote he book to appeal to her own ego. She wanted to share her struggle & get rid of the taboo that surrounds mental illness & to show that some people are genetically more prone to the illness & do not need a 'legitimate reason' (such as abuse) to suffer from it.
The only advice I give is to try to put yourself in the same position as Elizabeth & to try to understand how this illness affects people. We are not being deliberately selfish, but obviously, the self is the only thing you can think of when you're in the bubble of depression.
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