Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac

by David Herzberg

Valium. Paxil. Prozac. Prescribed by the millions each year, these medications have been hailed as wonder drugs and vilified as numbing and addictive crutches. Where did this "blockbuster drug" phenomenon come from? What factors led to the mass acceptance of tranquilizers and antidepressants? And how has their widespread use affected American culture? David Herzberg addresses these questions by tracing the rise of psychiatric medicines, from Miltown in the 1950s to Valium in the 1970s to Prozac in the 1990s. The result is more than a story of doctors and patients. From bare-knuckled marketing campaigns to political activism by feminists and antidrug warriors, the fate of psychopharmacology has been intimately wrapped up in the broader currents of modern American history. Beginning with the emergence of a medical marketplace for psychoactive drugs in the postwar consumer culture, Herzberg traces how "happy pills" became embroiled in Cold War gender battles and the explosive politics of the "war against drugs"—and how feminists brought the two issues together in a dramatic campaign against Valium addiction in the 1970s. A final look at antidepressants shows that even the Prozac phenomenon owed as much to commerce and culture as to scientific wizardry. With a barrage of "ask your doctor about" advertisements competing for attention with shocking news of drug company malfeasance, Happy Pills is an invaluable look at how the commercialization of medicine has transformed American culture since the end of World War II.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Drugs, Psychology

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jude Faas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The information about and history of psychopharmacology in this book is really fascinating. The correlations between drugs and social movements is particularly interesting.

The final chapter on Prozac seems out of place given the earlier portions of the book focus more on anti-anxiety drugs and their comparison to street drugs rather than antidepressants. Still the information is interesting and insightful.

Unfortunately, the book isn't that well written and often reads too much like a mediocre undergrad paper. But if you can get past that, it's an informative and well-researched book.

[d]

Tracing the history of blockbuster medications Miltown, Valium and Prozac in postwar America, Herzberg examines how conceptions of mental illness and brain drugs were shaped by drug marketing, physicians, and patients; by those looking to reinforce gender norms under threat as well as the emerging second wave feminists. Pharmaceuticals emerged as part of a consumer culture, a technology of the self, promoted to the public as miraculous solutions to the stresses of modern living. Tranquilizer addiction challenged the good drug/bad drug binary that separated pharmaceuticals from street drugs, but the distinction survived for a renewed war on drugs in the 1980s. This is an academic text and as such its scope is a little narrow and the prose a little dry, but it's a valuable examination of how the meaning of drugs is shaped as much by societal forces as by pharmacological action.

[Dorothy Greco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressing. Truly. Happy Pills describes how big pharma began marketing narcotics and sedatives direct to customers, most of whom were women.

[Ava MacKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for school but very interesting

[Mrs. Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read that satisfies my current obscure interest.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent contextualization of the dialogue used by drug companies. Their dialogue is expressed through marketing campaigns that generalize mental illnesses and present their product as a solution for unhealthy power dynamics that are expressed in anxiety and sadness. According to this book the drug advertisers sell their drugs as the resolution to happiness and unfairly criticize the people who don't have access to their expensive prescription drugs. The people who don't have access to prescription drugs use cheaper and more dangerous street alternatives and are blamed for their choice to self-medicate. People who choose to use the cheaper drugs have been branded as drug abusers while in comparison people who can afford prescription drugs and who are dependent on them are glorified as higher functioning humans with the help of drugs. The drug abusers are blamed for choosing cheaper drugs that won't lead to the arbitrary happiness that the expensive drugs have been accredited for providing. This book does a good job at looking at the political and economical context that allowed the human condition to be manipulated into a biological state and at the way drug companies claim that that state can be remedied by drugs. At the end of the book the authour bluntly names the actual root of the issues that both prescription users and illegal drug users experience and suggest that there is a more reliable cause of depression which is not biologically based.

[Kim Fay · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, I love where my research takes me. In this case, through the history of tranquilizers in 20th century America. It was fascinating to read about the politics of controlled substances during a time when professionals and the public were investing a great deal of time in defining addiction and the addict in America. Tranquilizers such as Miltown and then Valium had to be defined in very specific ways so that they would not reside on the same level as street drugs. And because of this during the 1950s and 1960s, addiction had to be defined by the user (bad people are prone to addiction; nice middle class people aren't), so that the prolific use of tranquilizers in particular by "nice middle class people" wouldn't be seen as an epidemic of addiction. The author spends time on advertising, pharmaceutical lobbying and other influences the rise of tranquilizer use. For me (and my research needs), I would have liked to learn more about the drugs themselves and their effects, as well as read more case studies.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't get into it yet... Need some Ritalin or something.