Prozac Nation

In the novel Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel, the struggle of the main character, Elizabeth, with depression is described through portraying her feelings, thoughts, and her conflicts with herself and the people around her. Because of her psychiatric condition, Elizabeth is seen as a strange, unstable person by society, which leads to various conflicts with her mother, boyfriend and occasional hospitalization as well. The relationship between Elizabeth and her mother is only strained even more, and Elizabeth's love life with Rafe only gets worst as her depression develops and her true condition becomes clearer. Elizabeth's instability leads to a crash in her entire social life leaving her viewed as an outcast in society.

As Elizabeth walks down the road of depression, her mother is with her for every step of the way but Elizabeth makes it very difficult for her mother to help. Her mother struggles to understand Elizabeth's condition and she doesn't know how to help. "After a while, it was always like this: I'd be lying helpless in my room, she'd be lying helpless in hers, there was nothing we could do to make each other feel better, and the whole apartment seemed stuck in some miserable detente" (54).

The relationship between Elizabeth and her boyfriend Rafe is strained because of her mood swings and emotional instability brought on by her depression. Elizabeth constantly calls Rafe when they are separated and cries for hours when Rafe doesn't answer. "Once, when he was out, I kept trying late into the night until his mother finally took the phone off the hook. I got scared that the receiver would never be replaced, I'd never get through to Rafe again, and I was up all night frightening and shaking and listening to the busy signal over and over again. But mostly when I'd call, he was there but in the middle of something or cross or preoccupied, and when I asked if he still loved me, he'd scream, Yes! Now, will you just leave me alone!" (222). Their relationship struggled and eventually ended, leaving Elizabeth alone.

Throughout her illness Elizabeth was bombarded by a series of drugs to help her cope but none seemed to work fully. "I cried so much that they finally gave me Xanax to calm me down. When that didn't work, two hours later they gave me Valium. When I was still crying late that night, they gave me something like Thorazine and told me I would spend the next few days in the infirmary." (189). Even Prozac did not seem to help that much, because her one suicide attempt happened when she began taking Prozac. She says "The secret I sometimes think that only I know is that Prozac really isn't that great" (343). She occasionally also turned to recreational drugs to help her forget about all her problems. Lithium therapy was generally effective for her but not always. "At times, even on both lithium and Prozac, I have had severe depressive episodes, ones that kept my friends in a petrified all-night vigil while I refused to get up off the kitchen floor, refused to stop crying, refused to relinquish the grapefruit knife I gripped in my hand and pointed at my wrist" (345). Sometimes she got scared of the side-effects and came off the lithium which resulted in relapses in her condition. Throughout the book the reader can get a true picture about the seriousness of the narrator's mental illness and can also get a glimpse of the debilitating effect of depression.

In conclusion, Elizabeth's depression turned her life upside down. Her relationships turned sour, her self-esteem diminished, her career suffered, and she felt helpless as she experienced the loss of control over her life.