Word: prozac
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Finally, the development of Prozac led to a number of surprises--the discovery that it was good for obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example, as well as for panic disorder and social phobias. Clinicians also noticed that Prozac patients tended to lose weight, an intriguing finding, considering how many Americans are obese. But the weight loss was transitory, so Lilly scientists went back into the lab to see if they could reformulate Prozac as an effective obesity drug...
Their efforts failed, but Richard Wurtman, an M.I.T. neurologist and Lilly consultant, took a different approach. Instead of using Prozac as a starting point, he turned to fenfluramine, a European weight-loss drug. Because fenfluramine acts on both serotonin and dopamine, it has the unfortunate side effect of putting its users to sleep. That is why doctors came up with fen/phen; the "phen" (phentermine) is an amphetamine-like drug that wakes the patient up again and boosts the metabolism to burn calories faster. Wurtman separated fenfluramine into its two component chemicals, levofenfluramine and dexfenfluramine. The latter has revealed itself...
...would they? After all, other serotonin enhancers, such as Prozac, have never caused heart problems. There is a crucial difference, however, between Prozac and Redux-fenfluramine. The former, like the other SSRIS, keeps serotonin in circulation longer than it would otherwise be, thus helping the brain get the most out of its normal output. The latter do the same, but they also force nerve cells to boost the levels of serotonin that go into circulation. It is this unnatural bath of excess serotonin, some scientists theorize, that causes heart-valve defects and also triggers brain damage--in monkeys...
Though I was pretty sure I didn't need it, I went home with a prescription for amitriptiline, a tricyclic antidepressant of the pre-Prozac age. The crinkly pamphlet that came with the pills mentioned some side effects: weight gain, dry mouth, sluggishness. It also informed me that it might take weeks for the drug to relieve my symptoms. I filled a glass of water and downed my pills, and within an hour, my mouth was dry as sand. Because all this happened seven years ago, before depression and its chemical basis were staple topics on the morning shows...
...Then the inevitable slippage started. With plottable predictability, as if my brain were a slowly draining beaker, my sense of well-being sank and sank until I felt lower and darker than ever before. I went back to a doctor--a specialist this time--and asked flat out for Prozac, by then the subject of books and articles. One week later I felt fully restored and resigned myself to a humbling new self-image: neurochemical robot. I felt like one of those cutaway human heads used in TV commercials for decongestants...