At peace with Prozac
BY KELLY LUKER
(05/17/00)

The most basic tenet of evolutionary theory is that a trait continues to exist throughout generations because it confers some adaptive benefit. Kelly Luker fails to address this aspect of unhappiness in her ode to drug-induced wellness.

I am a few months out of college, working a mindless office job and miserable. I wouldn't have it any other way. My current angst is acting as a motivating force for me to make change in my life, to figure out what is meaningful, to question my assumptions. If I were on Prozac -- as I was a couple of years back -- I would be happy. And complacent. And resigned.

-- Erik Kraft

Kelly Luker sounds like a wonderful candidate for Prozac, but she doesn't consider that many people who are prescribed the drug, may not need it. Also, her dismissive tone regarding tardive dyskinesia means she's never met anyone who has TD. TD is for real. Other, older and less-prescribed psychotropic drugs have been giving mentally ill people TD for decades. It's not a minor discovery that Prozac can cause this horrible side effect: It's huge. There isn't a dosage large enough of Prozac to cure the misery she'll suffer if she gets TD.

Also, many people who "face it down" as she says, and treat their anxiety disorders, drinking problems or bulimia without medication, actually win the war over their problems. Behavioral/cognitive therapy is JUST as effective as Prozac and friends in curing most neurotic illnesses.

-- Paula Bomer

Having experienced 20-plus years in the clinical chronic depression wars, I believe drugs such as Prozac are the equivalent of insulin for diabetes. And I wish insurance companies would pay for psychiatric/neurohormonal chemical imbalances as they do for, say, endocrinological disorders.

Prozac, per se, is not the only chemical answer and it disturbs me to see it misused so frequently as metaphor in the media and by society at large. Trust me: I don't have "Prozac moments"; I have to function in life, and for someone with my DSM-IV diagnosis, Prozac is one means to that end.

These days I have an entire pharmaceutical arsenal behind (or, to be more precise, inside of) me. I know more about possible drug interactions than several of my doctors, in part because there isn't enough medical research on how these drugs play out long-term in different systems of the body, much less communication among doctors in my mismanaged care "network." Then, too, sometimes my meds change, and I feel like a guinea pig, FDA approved or not.

There is so much that medical science simply doesn't know about psychoactive medication that even as a guinea pig, I am grateful for what they do know, for what has saved my life.

-- Nancy E. Frank

Sex-free bliss?
BY STEPHEN G. BLOOM
(05/17/00)

How could Stephen Bloom fail to mention Viagra as one possible solution for some of the sexual problems that so frequently accompany these drugs?

I am a 50-year-old woman who has been using Viagra to help me achieve orgasm since I started using Zoloft three months ago. Like many of Bloom's examples, I was willing to exchange the anguish and pain of my depression and anxiety for my sex life, but my doctor, bless him, was not so willing. Although Viagra is not approved for women (and thus not covered for them by prescription drug plans), some doctors are prescribing it to women for this reason. I'm sure Viagra won't work for everyone and it can't give you the desire for sex. But if your problem is the frustration of achieving orgasm, it might just be the answer.

-- Ev McElroy

I've been taking St. John's wort for over a year and have seen a HUGE improvement in the way I feel and the reduction in stress, depressive mood swings and anxiety attacks. My friends have noticed the difference in me as well.

While studies on St. John's wort have not really defined why SJW works, many psychiatrists and non-medical therapists agree that for many of their depressed patients it is effective, with NONE of the loss-of-sexual-appetite side effects. Not for seriously depressed (i.e., suicidal) or for the manic-depressive, but great for those of us anxiety-ridden folks with debilitating black moods. Only downside that I can see is an oversensitivity to sunlight, which can be alleviated by wearing a high-octane sun block. It's also much cheaper, since you can buy SJW over the counter at health food stores, herbal outlets, even in the medical section at Wal-Mart!

-- Stacy Selmants

Your article on sexual dysfunction was well done, but one suggestion that was made was a bit alarming. I'm not sure about the other drugs you mentioned, but I've been taking Effexor for almost two years, and you can't just "take a holiday" from it for a few days. Unlike some of the other antidepressants, Effexor has some fairly unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and requires tapering off. If I miss even one scheduled dose, within a few hours I have dizziness and a very unpleasant buzzing sort of sensation in my head. You might want to check this out a bit more. I'd hate to see someone take your advice and end up in the emergency room instead of enjoying a weekend of sex-filled bliss.

-- Robin

I am genuinely sorry for anyone that has a dramatically decreased sex drive resulting from taking an SSRI. However, I am tired of hearing antidepressants described as "happiness pills." Some lucky souls may experience euphoria beyond reason, but most of us have been relieved just to get the hell out of the pit we were in.

God bless modern medicine -- whatever its failings. Only a fool would go back to the 19th century.

-- Phil Ford

I was on Zoloft, a sister drug of Prozac, for a year. I'm sure what I experienced could be called sexual dysfunction, however, I found this dysfunction much to my liking. It must be said that I was a 20-year-old male, so my standard arousal pattern was rapid and violent; Zoloft softened and slowed my libido, ultimately making arousal more pleasant and sustainable. This sexual dampening would be more alarming for one whose sexual impulses were already weak, however, for large portions of the population, this sexual dysfunction can be a welcome release. To call it a sexual dysfunction presumes that the hornier you are, the better. This is simply not true. As one who was way too horny a few short years ago, I must object to this presumption.

-- Carl Olson

The gay Nabokov
BY LEV GROSSMAN
(05/17/00)

Thank you so much for your vibrant rendition of the life of Sergei Nabokov. Very few pieces of journalism can make me forsake my morning caffeine. This incisive piece did.

As for Vladimir's homophobia, it would be interesting to get Edmund White's take on it because the novel Vladimir praised of White's is as overtly queer as you can get in a surreal manner.

-- Brandon Judell

Many years from now, we will doubtless recall one of the dirty little secrets of late 20th-century criticism: moral indignation.

I want to thank Lev Grossman for exposing yet another human foible of the past through the dim prism of identity politics. There is so much more to do, however. A special column dedicated to dead writers with secret flaws and bad characters would allow your readers to assess accurately whether or not we would have liked them as co-workers or dinner guests, which is, after all, the litmus test of all great art.

-- Tamara Griggs

If Vladimir Nabokov was indeed homophobic, so what? Why is this of consequence? He, like all of us, is a creature of his time and his environment. In that he was raised when and how he was raised and in the close company of a homosexual brother, it would have been unusual for him not to have developed ambiguous feelings about homosexuality. Art reflects the values of the society of its creation, at the time of its creation. Consider Twain's handling of American Indians in "Roughing It," Thomas Wolfe and the black man, or Hemingway and women. Is Grossman concerned that we will respond to Nabokov's quite rare use of gay men as symbols of artists that are not sufficiently serious about their work by concluding that all gay men are insufficiently serious artists?

Grossman's mention of the author's exclusion of reference to his homosexual brother in the body of his work is inaccurate. In "Speak, Memory" it is fairly clear that his brother was killed by the Nazis because he was gay. Also, in "The Gift," Nabokov's description of his emotional response to the Holocaust is strikingly touching. I remember having read "The Gift" before "Speak, Memory" and on reading "Speak, Memory" realizing the source of the emotion. Last, my impression of "Bend Sinister" is that it uses the totalitarian state as a way of getting at the ravages of aging; and suggests madness as the only available way of coping. To invoke any homophobic significance to this is a considerable stretch. Perhaps Nabokov is telling us that as we age, we will develop homosexual tendencies and this will lead us to a contented state of insanity?

-- Jim Owens

Not being a Nabokov scholar, I have no basis for doubting the various conclusions contained in Lev Grossman's excellent piece concerning Nabokov's homophobia. It hadn't struck me before, but the author doubtless does use the word "mincing" a lot; and perhaps he or -- what may be a somewhat different matter -- his narrator introduces homosexual characters with what Grossman calls "a nudge and a wink and a snigger."

And yet it seems a bit reductive to say that all Nabokov's gay characters are "two-dimensional at best," that they are all like the ballet dancers in "Mary" or Gaston Godin in "Lolita." In particular, the one Grossman refers to simply as "the egomaniacal narrator" of "Pale Fire," Charles Kinbote, emerges as considerably more than two-dimensional, though he may be at the same time "vain, silly ... shallow, intellectually trivial and ineffectual." Kinbote seems to me, among other things, a metaphorical double of Nabokov himself, the exile as homosexual, excluded or marginalized, an outsider looking in, and, as such, the object of the compassion of another Nabokov double, the poet John Shade, a man with his own considerable knowledge of exclusion. As Kinbote says toward the end of his last, mad, rambling footnote to Shade's poem "Pale Fire," "I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art."

-- Ron Macdonald

Will you tell me a story -- please?
BY WAGNER JAMES AU
(05/16/00)

Where did Au get his information on the plots of the games at E3? Did he sneak into the corporate headquarters of each game developer, steal a copy of their games and then read through the plot? The average plot preview at E3 was as long as the average blurb on the back of a novel -- and would show just as little of the plot of the real thing.

I think Au has also vastly overestimated how much gamers want plot. Some people have said, "I hated that game -- you had to click the mouse so many times to get [through the plot and] into the action." I personally want to hear a good story, but others honestly resent having their fragfest spoiled by narration.

-- Evan James

While it's true that we haven't seen much of what Halo's story is going to be, I think I can say with pretty much confidence that Halo will have a story, and that it will be more complex than just about any computer game in the last couple of years. The reason I say this is that Halo is set in the same universe, and in fact, the same time, as another game created by Bungie Software, Marathon. Marathon was an FPS in a science fiction setting, and pretty much the only way the story was developed was through textual computer terminals that you would interface with. But what a story it was! Pages and pages have been devoted to trying to puzzle out all the things that were going on. If one goes to Marathon story and just spends a couple of hours reading, they might begin to grasp how huge it was. And as I said before, Halo is set in this world, and already we are starting to see ties to the Marathon story.

-- Francis Arant

Knowing what's up down there
BY CARMEN WINANT
(05/17/00)

Carmen Winant need not feel she has failed her mother. As she grows and sheds the insecurities natural to her age, the intelligent, articulate teenager she is today will turn into a young adult free of ignorance and prejudice.

Yes, Carmen, indeed some day "vagina" will not be a dirty word, and some day people of both sexes will have a level of maturity higher than what you find in boys your age today. Believe it. It's just going to take a lot of people like you and your folks.

-- Walt Roberts