Miracle Drug

I'm happy to report that I'm on a new pill, and now modulating three of my brain chemicals keeping me away from despondency. The new medicine is Wellbutrin, a.k.a. buproprion, and side effects include dry mouth, nausea, insomnia, tremor, excessive sweating, tinnitus, and seizures. Still way, way better than alli. I was doing some Wikipedia research on buproprion and it turns out that over twenty million prescriptions for Wellbutrin were written last year. Not only that, but Wellbutrin was the fourth most prescribed anti-depressant in America, which means that over sixty-million prescriptions were written for the top three drugs — Prozac, Zoloft, and something called Lexapro — so eighty million plus, total. A Department of Health & Human Services report from 2002 says that 8.5% of the population was on anti-depressants, that's twenty-four million people who are depressed.

Here's my question: Where the hell are all of you?!

I mean, that twenty-million Wellbutrin scripts a year thing made me feel pretty good. Just in case you're one of the 91.5% of the population who's perpetually thrilled to be alive, let me explain. Being sad sucks, and, for obvious reasons, it's stigmatized. So you don't just feel bad because your serotonin is low and your monoamine oxidase is high; you feel bad because you're alone in your misery. No longer, though! Like, last week's happy hour had eighty people; statistically, there should've been five or six fellow despondents, all mixing alcohol and potent psychoactive drugs to make ourselves feel better. We should've started a club!