Is It Me or My Meds?

By the millennium Americans were spending more than 12 billion dollars yearly on antidepressant medications. Currently, millions of people in the U.S. routinely use these pills. Are these miracle drugs, quickly curing depression? Or is their popularity a sign that we now inappropriately redefine normal life problems as diseases? Are they prescribed too often or too seldom? How do they affect self-images?

David Karp approaches these questions from the inside, having suffered from clinical depression for most of his adult life. In this book he explores the relationship between pills and personhood by listening to a group of experts who rarely get the chance to speak on the matter--those who are taking the medications. Their voices, extracted from interviews Karp conducted, color the pages with their experiences and reactions--humor, gratitude, frustration, hope, and puzzlement. Here, the patients themselves articulate their impressions of what drugs do to them and for them. They reflect on difficult issues, such as the process of becoming committed to medication, quandaries about personal authenticity, and relations with family and friends.

The stories are honest and vivid, from a distraught teenager who shuns antidepressants while regularly using street drugs to a woman who still yearns for a spiritual solution to depression even after telling intimates I'm on Prozac and it's saving me. The book provides unflinching portraits of people attempting to make sense of a process far more complex and mysterious than doctors or pharmaceutical companies generally admit.

Karp explores the relationship between pills and personhood. Through the honest and vivid stories of patients, he provides unflinching portraits of people attempting to make sense of a process far more complex and mysterious than doctors or pharmaceutical companies generally admit.
David A. Karp is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and the author of Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness and The Burden of Sympathy: How Families Cope with Mental Illness.
In a 21st-century spin on Cartesian dualism, many of the millions of Americans taking psychotropic drugs wonder where their authentic self ends and the drugged one begins. Or, as Boston College sociology professor David A. Karp puts it, Is it me or my meds? Karp doesn't answer with statistics from drug trials or clinical and academic studies. Instead, he uses 50 in-depth interviews with the experts--adults and teens who take drugs for mental illness. The common and divergent strands of their stories are pieced together in a study informed by current sociological literature and Karp's longtime struggle with his own drug regimen (his partial victory easing off his antianxiety and antidepression meds opens the book). The question posed in the title remains unanswered, though, perhaps because it's not an either/or proposition. Rather, Karp argues persuasively that it might just be us, our meds, and the society we live in.--Hannah Lobel "Utne" (9/1/2006 12:00:00 AM)
In his sociological examination of the growing pill-popping population, Karp does not reveal himself to be for or against antidepressants. His bias is in favor of self authenticity, something frequently lost in medication.--Pam Lilley "Cleveland Plain Dealer" (4/19/2006 12:00:00 AM)
Karp sets out to weave the opinions he has collected from people who use psycho-tropic medication into a fascinating, incisive, and comprehensive essay. Indeed, the debate on psychiatric medications extends far beyond side-effects and drug effectiveness; incorporating questions of identity, social acceptance, the dominance of the biomedical model of disease, and the role of the drug industry in medicalising normal feelings for profit.--Lindsay Banham "Lancet"
Laying bare his own lifelong struggle with depression and often having to juggle a veritable cocktail of drugs, Karp says he has often wondered whether his personality is his own or just some kicked-up by-product of the meds. Even though the answer remains elusive, at least for him, he seems to be in good company, and his story combines with the alternately plaintive and upbeat psychiatric drug experiences of 50 interviewees, all diagnosed with various mental illnesses, to put a poignant face behind the title question.--Donna Chavez "Booklist" (4/15/2006 12:00:00 AM)
David Karp records voices of ordinary people with depression; in so doing he tells us what it's like to take one of the commonest types of drugs for one of the commonest disorders. And what it's like is as complex as people and depression are in America in our time. A revealing book!--Arthur Kleinman, author of What Really Matters