Here are some excerpts from Elizabeth Wurtzel's great book, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America:
Excerpts:
- 'I looked at him in shock. Why the hell does everyone think the problem is drugs? 'David, what I wouldn't give to have a drug problem.' I say. 'What I wouldn't give for it to be that simple. If I could check in somewhere and come out the other end okay. I'd be thrilled.'"
- "Even then, I was pretty certain, in my 12 year old mind, that life was one long distraction from the inevitable."
- "Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter. That was my motto.""
- "...and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you're going to live."
- "But then I never had to worry about a crash landing because I never even took off."
- "Something inside me was not just depressed but dividing, cracking, splintering, pulling me back and forth between my two parents, and occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window, and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt."
- "They ask me if I've done any drugs in the last 24 hours, and I say no. Then I say I guess I smoked some pot and snorted some coke also, but that was just to make the Ecstasy last longer. I also admit to them I had some beer, maybe a couple of sea breezes in there too. Then the doctor asks if I have a substance abuse problem, and all I can do is laugh."
- "'I won't do that.' he said. 'I already told you it's your mother's responsibility.' 'Oh *** Daddy. I give up. I can't listen to this anymore.' 'What am I supposed to say?' 'Try, Have a good life. Because this is it for me.' Years later, thinking about this conversation, I will remember, as somebody very sagely said during the parricide trials of the Menendez brothers: Anytime your kids kill you, you are at least partly to blame."
- "Depression is all about If you loved me you would."
- "But instead of going to a mental institution, I decided to go to California."
- "...I wish that every psychiatrist I've ever dealt with could know what it's like to be a patient and to feel desperate. I wish they could know what it's like to wake up every morning afraid you're going to live.'
- "So the plan was simple: I would earn enough money to pay my mother back, and they I'd kill myself."
- "On April 8, 1994, as I was completing this book, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head...Grunge, the musical style that Nirvana did so much to invent and popularize, was described by Newsweek as 'what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars.'...Every person who has experienced a severe depression has his own sad, awful tale to tell, his own mess to live through. Sadly, Kurt Cobain will never get that far. Every day I thank God that I did."
