-
Prozac
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
39 Prozac It’s transforming the world the way Leary said dropping acid, Maharishi said meditation, Christ said Christianity would. Polly next door, bedridden since her husband’s stroke, laughs from her car, “It makes me tipsy, like champagne.“ Clients in psychotherapy, after sweating years like miners in the bowels of the unconscious, gulp their tabs and say they’re cured. Cartoons appear: Poe tells a raven, “Nice birdie.“ Hitler, dancing the hora, shouts, “Master race, schmaster race.“ Patrick Henry proclaims, “Give me liberty, or twenty milligrams.“ Friends slide into the fold. My ex-wife calls to say, “I can’t believe it— I see things your way!“ This is more radical than microchips, cloning, genetic engineering, virtual reality. Aggressor nations may fall to Prozac bombs. Many will die, but few will care. To mourn will seem as strange as wishing people still shrieked through surgeries, made pumpernickel loaves from scratch, dragged covered wagons over prairies full of Indians, just to own a home. Teenagers, to rebel, will refuse drugs. They’ll return from dates at nine o’clock—still virgins—and scream at their parents, who sprawl, munching nachos and giggling at car crashes, in front of the boob tube. They’ll run to their rooms in despair, finish their homework, then write of their discovery of pain. It gives such depth to life, they’ll say, such swirls of nuance: crimson, purple, emerald, pink. If everyone could feel this way, they think, it would transform the world. ...