Psychotropicana

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

  • La Fatigue d’être soi: Dépression et société by Alain Ehrenberg
    Odile Jacob, 414 pp, €8.35, August 2001, ISBN 2 7381 0859 8
  • Comment la Dépression est devenue une épidémie by Philippe Pignarre
    Découverte, 92 pp, €14.48, September 2001, ISBN 2 7071 3517 8

We all know how it happens. One day, without warning, you feel oddly removed from things and people, as if an invisible wall of glass were separating you from them. They go about their business but, for a reason that escapes you, none of it any longer concerns you. You could call out, but what would be the point? You aren’t worth it, and the friendly overtures of others come as a justified reproach. Day by day, the wall grows a little thicker. Soon, you are no longer able to leave the house, your bedroom, your bed. The only thing you are left with is the pain of existing. You no longer eat or bathe or sleep. You are agitated and exhausted all at once. You keep thinking of the barbiturates, of the razor that would allow you to cut short the terrible insomnia.

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[*] The Antidepressant Era (Harvard, 336 pp., £12.95, 1999, 0 674 03958 0). Healy’s most recent publication is The Creation of Psychopharmacology (Harvard, 480 pp., £27.50, 25 March, 0 674 00619 4).