Elizabeth Wurtzel: feminist champion, pharmaceutical watchdog, or pathetic self-absorbed child?

Foreword:

With great pride, I introduce my guest writer, my femme fatale, my righteous babe, and my significant other, Jennifer Knight.

You will find that she is a very talented writer, satirist, and has a unique voice to add to the Assassination Press.

Sincerely,

James Knight


Elizabeth Wurtzel: feminist champion and pharmaceutical watchdog or pathetic self-absorbed child?

By Jennifer Knight (Assassination Press)

I admit I devoured every page of Prozac Nation when it was first published over seven years ago. I was especially drawn to Wurtzel’s long soulful diatribes on the meaningless of life and read certain, particularly depressing sections over and over as she waxed poetic on the vortex of darkness which sucked her in and forced her to spend endless days lying in bed, listening to Bob Dylan and eschewing her schoolwork, hygiene and basic responsibilities. It was alluring, the idea of spending those days when there seemed to be no reason to kick off the covers, safely cocooned in my bed. I felt her piercing pain and unfulfilled longing, had known all her disappointments as my own and longed to spend my days commiserating at her side. Depression is, after all, a disease, and I was a vicarious member of her support group.

Wurtzel’s next book, More, Now and Again, was even more inspiring. Although I’d never actually snorted Ritalin, I knew that she had been duped once again by the evil pharmaceutical giants. First Prozac, to create a zombie Wurtzel, And when the Prozac let her down, in the same haphazard vein as everyone else in her lonely existence, I understood her disappointment. So now she is left with the little white pills that just can’t mask the pain in their original form. Once again her depression leads her into unchartered waters, and now she has become addicted to a drug prescribed by a physician she trusted, a doctor in charge of her mental health. Once the Ritalin prescription is yanked by said trusted medical physician Wurtzel is left no other choice but to seek less legitimate drugs. The 5th Avenue pushers are replaced with those of lesser credentials—cocaine and heroin become the substitute for her insurance subsidized pharmaceutical cocktail. The book goes on to describe each day of her trials and tribulations in minute detail. At the time her words were my oxygen as she continued to validate my depression, my desperate need to medicate and thus numb the overwhelming hopelessness she and I had become victims to.

Seven years later I thumb through the pages of these worn books--large blocks of text highlighted in yellow and orange, scribbled notes covering the narrow margins, exclamation points peppered throughout—and I wonder why I was so in awe of such blatant narcissism. Rereading the highlighted passages I cringe and wonder how I fell so completely into myself. And then I wonder how many other young women she has lulled into this sticky web of hopelessness, indecision, and self-immersion. I want to draw them a map out of this dark labyrinth, every path leading to endless hours inside their own heads. I want to tell them that the only way out of depression is to step out of your mind and into the world. I want to remind them that this poor Jewish writer went to Harvard and made millions writing her memoirs about these sketchy years of darkness. Her claim to fame is her depression---without her mental anguish she is just another self-absorbed upper-middleclass young woman who hid from the world when deadlines and responsibility called.

I am no stranger to depression, I hear it calling when dusk turns to darkness and long, endless evenings stretch before me. I felt its breath caress my skin in stagnant rooms under mounds of heavy blankets. I have walked hand-in-hand with the darkest spirits calling my name, inviting me to join them in the other-world---any world other than mine. But one day long after reading and rereading Wurtzel’s justification for her blatant and sometimes malicious abuse of substances and family members, I decided to do something for someone other than myself. And by stepping outside of my own mind I learned that happiness has nothing to do with anything that is swirling around in your head---depression is a by-product of long indulgent periods of inner reflection.

And so my advice to Elizabeth Wurtzel is to step outside of herself for five minutes. The most immediate thing she will likely discover is that there are other sentient beings living in her world. And then perhaps her first step should be as simple as thanking her mother for paying the mounds of psychiatric bills she racked up during her years at Harvard. And then maybe she could try actually doing something for somebody besides herself. She could keep it simple in the beginning: bring a sick friend some soup or ask the guy who prepares her daily soy milk lattes at the coffee shop on the corner how life is treating him. No need to vie for the Nobel Prize—just recognize that she is connected to every other living being on this planet---rather than living in the Wurtzel cocoon. I don’t expect miracles; I just want her to put the mirror down for five seconds.