It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. We've had 30 years of Prozac. So why are we still depressed?

I was in my early 20s, I think it was 1988, and I was having a complete breakdown. My psychiatrist was about to hospital

because I was so suicidal.

I didn't want to be hospitalized because I had already been hospitalized like four or five times prior to this.

I didn't want another hospitalization. I would have rather killed myself.

My psychiatrist said, well, there's a new drug that's just come on board, and it's called Prozac, and maybe we could try that.

And she did.

This is Lauren Slater.

She wrote the famous memoir, Prozac Diary, and now she's back with a new one, Blue Dreams,

the story of 30 years on SSRIs,

which for her has been a really mixed bag.

I can relate, and maybe you can too.

Like a lot of people, I started taking Prozac

around the same time Lauren did. It was 1988

or so, and the drug was brand new. I have this almost physical memory of the first time I opened

the bottle and shook this tiny green and cream-colored capsule out into my hand. I remember being scared because at the time

I thought it was going to make me somebody else. And what did you think? I vividly remember,

you know, the first time I took it, but I remember better the third and fourth time I took it because I was stunned.

I was absolutely stunned.

At first, I thought this couldn't be.

I'm just having a good moment.

But that moment turned into a day, and that day turned into a week, and that week turned

...