Rating: 
Summary: Truly one of my favorite books
Review: Prozac Diary is more than another book about antidepressants; it chronicles one woman's journey to accept herself, her past, her illness and its treatment. For those who haven't experienced this, the book will probably be boring. For those who have, it's like finding a friend.
Rating:
Summary: Truly one of my favorite books
Review: Prozac Diary is more than another book about antidepressants; it chronicles one woman's journey to accept herself, her past, her illness and its treatment. For those who haven't experienced this, the book will probably be boring. For those who have, it's like finding a friend.
Rating:
Summary: A gifted writer examines her experience with Prozac
Review: Ten years into her relationship with Eli Lilly's breakthrough antidepressant Prozac, Lauren Slater contemplates the cost her dependence holds. She notices tremors in her hands. Her memory, once a point of pride, fails her in subtle ways. Is she just getting older or is her cure exacting a physical toll? Then, there is the loss of her sex drive.There is a tradeoff here, however. For while these symptoms are troubling, and open profound questions about a drug that has no long term track history, there is the patient herself to consider. Hospitalized five times in her teens to early twenties, she was unable to hold steady employment. Ms. Slater becomes one of the early Prozac users in 1988 as the onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) begins to haunt her. She has carried the burden of unrelenting depression as well as a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Contrast this with the Dr. Lauren Slater who appeared on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation in early 1997. She has earned a master's degree in psychology from Harvard, and completed her doctorate in just two years. Her first book, Welcome to My Country, published in 1996 was critically acclaimed. Her essays have merited national recognition. Listening to her talk eloquently on the struggles of mental illness one can't help but be awed by her achievements. Clearly, the cream and green capsules Slater writes so effectively about in Prozac Diary have had a stunning impact on her own life. The 204-page book offers depth and color to arguments that have often been hardened in black and white. From press coverage earlier in this decade that once surrounded Prozac in negative controversy to recent literature that painted it as a miracle compound, rarely have we visited the subject from the middle. Slater's account is of the give and take, a wondrous return to normal life followed by the disappointment of the drug suddenly losing effectiveness. It never again has the same impact, yet she realizes she is bound to it for each time she tries to stop using it symptoms recur. At the same time one realizes in reading her moving account, that maybe the true turning point in her life is when she realizes that even without Prozac she can exert some control over her condition. The questions she digs at from so deep a personal level are fundamentally unsettling. As research into brain chemistry yields ever more effective pharmacological compounds, several issues creep into the picture. What is gained and what is lost from tampering with chemicals so closely linked to a person's sense of self? Do we lose in creativity what we gain in function? Ms. Slater finds herself concerned over an inability to write easily and by her own indifference to that fact early in her experience with Prozac. She is on the other hand amazed by her ability to perform at a level she has rarely touched beforehand. She wonders if when the drug is it yields unfair advantages. Where does a personality begin and chemistry end? Are the traits that make us who we are easily changed by advanced pharmaceutical design? Can we separate ourselves from the science? While there are no easy answers here, Prozac Diary offers a funny and touching memoir about life changed forever by chemical interaction. Its strength is in Lauren Slater's ability to write so poetically about a struggle to emerge from the darkness of a life lived on the edges of mental illness. That she has the insight to ponder the price and meaning of her experience make this a provocatively engaging read.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwritten
Review: The main fault I find with this book is the way it is written. The author uses too many metaphors, which I found annoyingly abstract. I had a sense that the author wanted to write in a catchy way so that it would sell. There is no way I can read her mind when she wrote the book but it just didn't seem frank. It was almost as if she was thinking "Nothing in here should sound too dull or boring or no one will want to read it". She seemed to go overboard with the colorful images - every paragraph was written (in a way that a student might try to spice up a creative writing paper in order to get an A), but paradoxically her effect *was* quite boring, in a way I can't describe. It would have been better if she was told from the outset to eliminate all poetry and flowery phrases and just share what her life was like. Or, perhaps her book is the unfortunate product of "what are we supposed to think when we want our illness to be understood by the public" -- as the catchier something sounds the more likely it will get noticed (as in a glossy ad). I do think it would take a gifted writer in order to get noticed in the first place, especially in a subject as obscure and little-understood (in most peoples' perceptions) as 'depression'. It would be very hard to sell ourselves in our success-oriented culture (USA), unless it is a giant act of heroism (in the conventional sense of the word) or an extreme anomaly or exaggeration of sorts (Perhaps if Laura Slater had two heads along with her taking Prozac she could be more optimistic about her chances :-). Depression is a very banal illness -- something that is more likely to go unnoticed or seem 'self-absorbed' if expressed in a completely candid way. I can only speculate why Slater overdid herself in this book "See? My experience with depression is not so dull or boring. I can ENTERTAIN you with my flowery prose". There were a number of times that I would have wanted her to get into the specifics of her day-to-day experience - I wanted to know what she was feeling, her thoughts, particularly the ones that we depressives wouldn't dare share with anyone else - the ones that most haunt and embarrass us. Instead I felt dissatisfied with all the stuff that was very catchy but didn't seem to quite fit. She seemed to be trying to make rainbows with her prose when the reality might have been a bit of grey.
Rating: 
Summary: A chemically-induced coming of age story.
Review: The transition from obsessive-compulsive disorder to a peacful life of shopping, falling in love and finding a job is told with poetry. I wanted much more, however. Slater skampers past very weighty issues with barely a nod. Perhaps the new life "lite" she enjoys with Prozac makes her unwilling as of yet to probe in much depth the problems and potentialities to which her remarkable experience speaks.
Rating:
Summary: A poetic Prozac success story
Review: This book is a very well written and interesting memoir about the author's experiences with Prozac. Slater's writing has a pleasing, poetic quality that makes her book stand out among the best in the genre of mental illness memoirs. I'd say her writing is nearly as outstanding as that in Kay Jamison's "An Unquiet Mind" and Susanna Kaysen's "Girl, Interrupted". The effects of the drug on Slater's OCD and borderline personality characteristics is also remarkable- she becomes "better than well" and experiences the world as if being born anew. This is an excellent book that should be read by anyone interested in mental illness or anyone who enjoys reading well written memoirs. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".
Rating:
Summary: The Best of Slater
Review: This book is my favorite Lauren Slater book if you like this one and you like other books like prozac nation or such you'll LOVE Lauren Slater. Slater is so poetic the way she talks I always underline great phrases or quotes in my Slater books. This book tells of her journey with Prozac and it tells it from a person who knows! Not only did she take Prozac she is also a doctor of psychology she talks about things that other doctors will not touch such as prozac poop-outs and having a child born under the influence of prozac. I can't wait for her new books I'm always on here looking she's really the best in this sort of book subject.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting read!
Review: This book shows in detail how awful it is to suffer from depression. The author tells about her consistent battle with the attacks and cycles of depression that creep in at every opportunity. In her case she apparently considers Prozac to be the cure, but it's quite obvious from reading this memoir that Prozac may only stabilize her chemical imbalances, and still, because of the devastating side effects, doesn't allow the patient to live a normal life. But it's an intersting and shocking read. Another book that I highly recommend and that has helped me tremendously, and after twenty years of manic depression, I'm finally healed just by applying the principles found in this strategic guide to combat depression, which is Dietmar Scherf's "I Love Me: Avoiding & Overcoming Depression"--also available at Amazon.
Rating: 
Summary: Pain obscured by philosophical meandering
Review: This book was of interest to me, because I, like Slater, will probably be using SSRI-type psychopharmacology for the rest of my life to deal with the painfully rearranged brain chemistry of my childhood. However, I was a little disppointed and confused by what I found in Prozac Diary. In essence, I was hoping for a book that was more straightforward, less obscure, less self-conscious, and less concerned with "postmodern" philosophical meandering than the one Slater has written. While it's true that Slater provides some diary-like passages linking her altered brain chemistry to a painfully lonely childhood, she often does so in a confusingly indirect or distractingly metaphorical kind of way. Many of the passages about her mother, her various hospital stays, and her adolescence are written in this manner. Likewise, while Slater often discusses how Prozac is affecting her life/body/perceptions of reality, she just as often goes off philosophical tangents about the drug (a/la Peter Kramer) that, to me, obscure and trivialize the difficulties of using SSRIs to deal with pain and grief caused by childhood wounds. I guess if I had to put my finger on what bugs me most about Prozac Diary it's that Slater seems to be (unconsciously?) writing both fiction and nonfiction at the same time. I mean, just when I'm really starting to empathize with you, Lauren, you go off on a tangent that fictionalizes an important part of your life. Why? I'm not sure I see the purpose. Are you still protecting your parents? Do you feel guilty about being well? Or maybe you just enjoy playing with language. Well, I guess for me, if that's the case, Prozac Diary would be better off as a different book, a novel, perhaps, but not a diary. However, there is an important point that Slater herself makes near the end of the book that somewhat explains her non-linear narrative approach: One's perceptions of one's childhood can change when one is taking a drug like Prozac; hence, the past is never really set in stone. Slater acknowledges this identity issue briefly (which, I gather, is the subject of her next book?), but that acknowledgement doesn't fully account for the overall narrative inconsistency and incompleteness I feel when reading Prozac Diary.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't get past page 96!
Review: This book was one of the worst books I've ever encountered. I think the author is in love with her own voice and her lacy way of putting words together...I'm sure this was a very cathartic experience to write out her inner world but I found it miserable and now feel like I need some prozac just to get over thinking this might be an insightful book. :(
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