It's been tough all these years, watching my green-and-white pal get slammed by the media, talk-show hosts and, of course, good doctors such as Glenmullen. Although each critic has a different theory on why Prozac is poison -- be it medical, social or emotional -- I'm certain that the drug stirs deeper fears. Psychopharmaceuticals threaten our moral belief in earned contentment. They challenge the deeply held assumption that exercise, prayer, long-term therapy and, best of all, suffering, are the righteous path to salvation. To the horror of Prozac's naysayers, happiness can indeed come in a pill.

Several books have embraced that pill. Peter Kramer's "Listening to Prozac," envisioned a nation of happy-go-lucky folks. Lauren Slater's "Prozac Diary," examined a life as crazy and miserable (before Prozac), and life as productive and content (after Prozac), taking almost 200 pages trying to decide which was better. But Slater and Kramer's optimistic voices have been drowned out by the critics.

There was Peter Breggin's "Talking Back to Prozac," a point-by-point dismissal of Kramer's book, and Ann Tracy's "Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?" (Answer: Pandora). "Prozac Backlash" takes up where Breggin left off, attributing even more deleterious side effects to antidepressants. Besides the well-known loss of libido, Glenmullen claims these drugs can also rot the liver and trigger something known as "tardive dyskinesia;" involuntary tics that include grimacing, sucking and darting one's tongue in and out. Not only does this make you look like a frog catching insects, it also appears to be a symptom of brain damage.

While Glenmullen is busy scaring the bejesus out of us Prozac-prone folks, the media has taken up the moral stakes. Television yap-fests trot out experts to bemoan the overmedication of America, the overdiagnosis of the Average Joe. The complaint is that we have pathologized everything from grief to shyness (now called "social phobia") and have an appropriate pill to take off the edge.

As a society, we are committing the most grievous of spiritual sins -- "We just don't feel like we used to." That is, we no longer feel the spectrum of our emotions. Could someone give me one good reason why we should?

Although the human-potential movement began in the '60s, it took about 20 years for guilt, anger, shame and grief to be elevated to sacred status. Before the age of Esalen, most civilized folks learned to keep the darker shades of the palette hidden. Or, at least, they had the decency to pretend they walked on the sunny side of the street.

But with the self-help explosion of the '80s, we not only put every unhappy nuance under the microscope; we also cherished, even revered, them. We fueled the flickering hope that unhappiness was the key to -- who knows -- fulfillment? Freedom? Whatever it was, it somehow followed the twisted logic that the worse one felt, the better one would eventually be.

Maybe a religious awakening can be achieved by living life like a bleeding wound, feeling as if someone turned your skin inside out, and desperately wishing a slow death for everyone who shares your planet. If there is, however, I missed the thunderbolt.