Prozac isn’t exactly insta-monk, but it’s close. The best way I can describe it is that it makes saying things like “That’s okay” when things maybe aren’t going your way much easier. It’s basically like being on a low dose of ecstasy all the time. It gives you the sort of contentment and acceptance of life that used to be seen only in grandfathers sitting in their chairs eating ham sandwiches and watching the Yankees on TV. But with Prozac, you don’t have to have lived through the Depression. You don’t even have to shave your head or wear pajamas all day to get it. No chanting. No incense. And if people in the park with shaved heads wearing pajamas, chanting, and burning incense really irritates you, that’s okay: Prozac can help.  

I was convinced to try Prozac by the NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt explains that there’s not any really good reason for some people to have a positive disposition toward the world while others don’t. For most people this is pure chance. And he calls being born with a positive outlook “winning the cortical lottery.” But, he says, those of us who didn’t win aren’t doomed to cortical poverty forever. There are three ways to literally change your mind: cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), meditation, and Prozac. The problem with CBT and meditation is that they’re really difficult and they take a long time to work. Prozac tends to give the same or better results, and it’s fast and easy—Prozac takes five weeks to really get going. It’s also cheap. My prescription for Prozac costs about $15 for three months without insurance. The only problem many people have with making their lives better with Prozac rather than CBT or meditation is that it seems too easy. It can feel a little like cheating. 

This reasoning is total bullshit. 

But did I really need Prozac? Looking around at my family and many of my childhood friends who at best simply did not win the cortical lottery and at worst are clearly suffering from pretty significant depression, manic depression, and drug and alcohol addiction, I always thought I was doing pretty well managing things. I’d achieved much of what I set out to do in life, and I was usually able to keep my own depressive tendencies and anxiety at bay. My situation isn’t that bad, I reasoned, so I must not need Prozac. 

This reasoning is also total bullshit. 

Haidt describes the experience of going on Prozac for people who are already managing pretty well like this: It’s like driving a car with the emergency brake on. You can drive it that way, but it’ll go a lot smoother and faster if you release the emergency brake. This makes a lot of sense to me. Although I was able to manage my own depression, anxiety, and alcoholism, and achieve a lot of what I wanted in life, this always seemed harder than it needed to be. Prozac can help with that. In other words, Prozac makes it way easier to get rid of nearly all your worldly possessions and move to, say, Vietnam.

In other, other words, they should put this stuff in the water.