Prozac, and People I Used to Know

My cartoon this week was actually a commentary of sorts.

Happily the woman copes, hanging her laundry on the line. Prozac gets her through her daily chores cheerfully, contentedly. That she's washed and hung up her cat disturbs her not at all.

I've known three people before Prozac was prescribed for them. After Prozac, I could not have picked them out of a crowd by their personalities. They became totally different and utterly unexceptional people once the drug took them.

One was a mischievous, impish soul, prone to laugh and play tricks, loving and creative. There was some heavy misfortune in her life, and some doctor prescribed Prozac for her to help her cope. It did, I guess. It shortcircuited her grief, and she could get to work and home without bursting into tears. Her mischief stopped. Her wicked humor disappeared. Instead of laughing, she became enamored of smarmy e-mail forwards, and stopped sketching her marvelous cartoons. She lost contact with me ... for the most part, and even the halting short letters she sends sound nothing like my most beloved friend. She's gone, that person I loved so much.

The second was another close friend. We used to hang out and drink wine together while our husbands and our kids interacted, giggling over silly girl-stuff or telling stories about our ancestors: we were both hispanic, but cut off from the really Mex families. We enjoyed each other's company and could hardly wait to get together the next weekend or so. She moved away from my area, and though we promised to visit, after she started taking Prozac, visiting was suddenly not an option. I don't know why she started taking it. After she fell into the Prozac haze, she did not talk about the reason she thought she needed it. She listened only to those people who patted her comfortingly and said she'd made a good decision by taking the drug to hide her pain and anxiety. The last time I talked to her, I didn't recognize anything about her except her voice. It tore me up.

Another friend I have stopped taking Prozac not too long ago. I knew him before his Prozac time, and lamented his Prozac personality castration. Someone who had his ear told him frankly that he was catastrophically changed by the drug, and he had the courage to get off it. It was hard for him. The withdrawal made him irritable, fearful, and restless. Gradually, he started interacting with his friends and family normally again. He still has the anxieties and periods of "blueness," but my God, it's "him" again, not some oatmeal-brained pod-person hoping someone will give them a cookie and say "Good Boy/Girl!" What a relief!

It's not that I don't know what depression is about, God knows. I take the amino acid Tyrosine twice daily to stave off my own "why live" urges. It just seems to me that if the cause of the depression is chemical, there must be another solution than a drug that destroys your personality and ability to interact with the real world. And if it's a problem with coping with your life, why cover up the solution with drugs when what you need is psychiatric care or psychotherapy?

I don't know. But I do know that I miss the two friends who became Prozac very, very much.