Book 21: Beyond Prozac

Beyond Prozac

Michael J. Norden  (I bet he got called Mike Nerden a lot when he was in middle school)

1996 Harper Paperbacks

I take this for my brain.

It's in the SSRI family of brainpills, which is the same family as Prozac.

I used to be kind of embarassed and worried about people knowing that I take brainpills because there's an absurd stigma around it. Like most things, stigmas arise out of ignorance.  The more you know, the less you assume.

I wanted to know more, so I could hopefully understand a little better what was going on with my brain.

This book cost me all of $.10, and I would say I definitely got my dime out of it. I would go so far as to say I got $14.00 USD out of it. That's the price above the SKU. Those are 1996 dollars, mind you, so that's saying a lot.

It really was an interesting and useful book, even for people who don't take brainpills.

Beyond Prozac is divided into 3 parts.

The first section discusses just exactly what is wrong with us that more and more people seem to be showing more and more signs of depression and, as a matter of consequence, are being medicated for it.

Dr. Norden explains that just about everything about our lifestyles is completely out of whack with our  biology in an evolutionary sense. The environment we live in now is so much different than any we have ever lived in. It only makes sense that our bodies will react differently to different environments and different stimuli.  Brain chemistry is a part of our biology, and it, like every other part of our biology except for the Id, doesn't particularly agree with the way we live our lives.

If we try to live in water, we die, because it doesn't agree with our biology. We're not set up for that kind of living.

If we try to live on the South Pole, we die, because that environment doesn't agree with our biology. We're not set up for that kind of living.

Similarly, we've spent the vast majority of our evolutionary lifetime not indoors, not in front of computer monitors, not eating whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, and not sitting on our asses all day.

It's hard for us to live like that. The environment we've created for ourselves doesn't agree with our biology because we're not set up for this kind of living.

I'll spare you the details of when and why hormones are produced in the manner in which they're produced, their functions and how brainpills work.  If you're really interested, I'll be happy to direct you to some germane articles or even give you the book (I doubt I'll be reading it again). 

This isn't what I take, but I wouldn't mind having some.

This book was meaningful for me. I had some conflict about whether or not I was comfortable with being medicated.

I knew in the back of my mind that what has been wrong with me is an actual medical condition (a serotonin deficiency), but I didn't really know what to do about it. I felt like I should just deal with it.

 It's easy for men in this stupid, weird culture we live in to be confused when we require medication for something which we feel like we ought to be able to just deal with.  I feel like I ought to just be able to suck it up and tell this problem to go fuck itself.  I can't. I tried that. It didn't work.

Know why it didn't work?

Because there's something wrong with me, that's why!

I don't have enough of the feely-good stuff in my brain. I need more good stuff in my brain to continue to live in the world I live in and not be miserable. My body isn't in synch with the world we've created.

If I want to survive in the world we've constructed for ourselves, I have two options-- use brainpills make myself tolerable, or go live in the woods and die by the time I'm 40.

I'll take brainpills, along with the rest of modern medicine. 

...... I guess.

At least for a while. 

Anyway, Beyond Prozac is something I would recommend to anyone looking for more information on how and why the brain functions the way it does with regard to serotonin and melatonin (not melanin). Norden himself specializes in Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that comes across in the pages of the book. It doesn't advertise itself as a guide to treating SAD, but, that's kind of what it is. Fortunately, a lot of the information applies to general serotonin disorder, which usually precipitates into major depression, like I had. 

The last third of the book is really kind of pointless and out of date, unless you just really, really want to know about SSRI anti-depressants that were coming out in the late 90s.

But, 50 or so pages of uselessness and $.10 is a small price to pay for coming to terms with the fact that your brain doesn't work like it's supposed to.