They ask me if I’ve done any drugs in the last twenty-four 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 that I had some beer, maybe a couple of sea breezes somewhere in there, too. And the nthe doctor asks if I have a substance abuse problem, and all I can do is laugh. I laugh really hard and really loud, a howling hyena laught because what I’m thinking is how nice it would be if my problem were drugs, if my problem weren’t my whole damn life and how little relief from it the drugs provide. (120)

This is a slow-motion-trainwreck of a book, sometimes entertaining, often disturbing, always thought-provoking. It’s a memoir of sorts; the story of Elizabeth’s Wurtzel’s account of her battle with depression. It’s a tale of her pain, but also a love story because, by the end, Elizabeth seems to be in love with her own torment.

She first noticed her dramtic mood swings shortly after puberty and she was transformed from a smart, happy little girl into a dangerously moody, angry teenager. Her problems were aggravated by the ongoing war between her divorced parents. I guess no one expects a teenager to be bright and happy, because her parents really didn’t take note – they merely wrote off her moods to teen angst. Year and year, her mental state became worse until, by the time she was in university, she had sunk into a deep depression, accompanied by heavy drug use, disasterous relationships and even suicide attempts.

After years of therapy and muted cries for help, she finally find the right therapist and was placed on a therapy of Prozac and Lithium, among other drugs.

For me, this was the most interesting part of the book – seeing the difference between Elizabeth-depressed and Elizabeth-on-Prozac (the difference was stark). Also interesting was the author’s examination of her own depression, how it developed and morphed into something that became her identity. Much like an alchoholic who has no sense of self without the bottle, Elizabeth had no sense of self without pain.

This is a hard book to get through at times, and I found the author’s voice a bit too whiny and self-absorbed. ‘This is the nature of depression,’ we’re told, but it smacked of drama and I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I wanted to.