Name your poison

[sawyl]

Various pieces in today's Guardian about Prozac and friends and whether they do or don't work. As always, Dr Ben's measured response was well worth the read, although some other articles, from the sceptical doctors to the how-dare-they attitude of the people who felt that, just because the latest research found that effects certain anti-depressants were not clinically significant when compared to a placebo, this somehow invalidated their suffering, were interesting too.

I was rather taken with this description, from the books blog, about how Prozac was named:

The name was developed for the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly by the Interbrand agency; "Prozac" suggested positive and professional and zappy, and conveyed the idea that taking antidepressants did not have to mean you were actually mentally ill. Instead, you could be young and troubled by the world, a bit arty, stressed out by your high-achieving lifestyle, in need of a quick pick-me-up, an aspirin for an existential hangover. Prozac was eagerly grasped as the embodiment of a dream, the idea that an antidote to the pain of modern living could really exist in one simple pill.

It's particularly interesting when contrasted with this quote from Brave New World from one of the other contributors:

There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is.

The only thing that Huxley got wrong about his distopia was the date: if only he'd set it one hundred instead than five hundred years in the future, he'd have been dead on...