Prozac

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For more information on Prozac, visit Britannica.com.

Prozac (fluoxetine) has been hailed as a new miracle cure. It was first marketed in 1988 and is now widely used in the USA as an antidepressant. It has been prescribed for eating disorders and chronic fatigue. Some sports doctors also believe that it may reduce feelings of run down and mental fatigue associated with overtraining. Its use by athletes gained publicity in October 1994 when Alberto Salazar said that it helped him to win the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. This event is generally accepted as one of the most gruelling ultradistance events in the world, and Salazar's form for several years prior to the event had not been good.

In medical parlance, prozac is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Although we are not sure exactly how it works, it seems to increase the level of serotonin and acts as a relaxant. Therefore, its apparent positive effects on Salazar's endurance were a surprise to some sports scientists. Another SSRI actually reduces endurance capacity. However, it is possible that prozac improves the performance of athletes who have been mentally depressed.

Prozac does not benefit everyone. One psychiatrist said that it is ‘…helpful to some, but wretchedly unhelpful to others’. Side-effects are not experienced by everyone, but they can include nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, and akathisia (a disorder characterized by extreme restlessness and an inability to sit still).

Prozac (or fluoxetine) was the first of a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) to be introduced for the treatment of depression and other psychological disorders. These drugs work by increasing the amount of serotonin, a neurotransmitter thought to be involved in the biochemical mechanism of depression, available in the brain. Researchers hoped that because these drugs specifically targeted serotonin without affecting other neurotransmitters, they would have fewer undesirable side effects than earlier generations of psychiatric drugs.

First introduced in Belgium by the Eli Lilly Company in 1986, Prozac was made available in the United States the following year. It enjoyed remarkable early success—within five years, 4.5 million Americans had taken Prozac. Although the Food and Drug Administration had only approved the drug to be prescribed for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, it soon became common for physicians and psychiatrists to prescribe Prozac for eating, anxiety, and panic disorders and posttraumatic stress as well.

With this rapid acceptance, Prozac became a cultural phenomenon. Patients using Prozac reported feeling beyond well, suggesting that the drug had not only eased their depression but had also led them to new levels of awareness of their personalities. Prozac users reported the loss of social inhibitions: the shy became bolder, the lazy more diligent, the cautious more confident. For the first time, a drug seemed as if it might be able to improve personalities and suggested a future where pharmaceuticals could allow patients to reshape themselves to meet social expectations.

Although usage of Prozac and related drugs remained high in the late 1990s (an estimated 40 million patients worldwide were treated with Prozac during its first fifteen years on the market), a cultural backlash did arise against its early success. Some patients claimed that the drug made them feel suicidal. Others made even darker claims, suggesting that Prozac led them to commit murder and other crimes. Popular belief that Prozac could perfect otherwise normal personalities waned, but the use of the drug did not.

Bibliography

Kramer, Peter D. Listening to Prozac. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young & Depressed in America. New York: Riverhead Books. 1995.

This widely used antidepressant drug works by modifying the behavior of neurotransmitters in the brain. It is the first of a series of psychoactive drugs that work in this way.