Happy pills in America
Subtitle: from Miltown to Prozac
By: by David Herzberg.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
ISBN-13: 9780801890307
Subjects: Psychotropic drugs -- United States -- History; Psychotropic drugs -- Social aspects -- United States; Psychotropic Drugs -- history -- United States; Psychotropic Drugs -- therapeutic use -- United States; Consumer Satisfaction -- United States; Culture -- United States; Drug Industry -- trends -- United States; History, 20th Century -- United States
Description: "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 the Prozac phenomenon, too, owed as much to commerce and culture as to scientific wizardry."--BOOK JACKET.
Table of contents: title: Blockbuster drugs in the age of anxiety; title: Listening to Miltown; title: Drug wars and wonder drugs; title: The Valium panic; title: Prozac and the incorporation of the brain.