Customer Reviews

Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Great book. I went to my primary care doctor recently, just for a check-up. I've also been having some trouble in my private life and I got a little sad when talking about it with him. First thing he said was that maybe he should write me a prescription for Zoloft. It was ridiculous. How was Zoloft going to fix my life? Take this and multiply it by thirty million people and you got Dr. Dworkin's book. I read the other reviews of his book on this site. I don't know why the bad ones defend their psychiatrists. Dr. Dworkin doesn't blame the psychiatrists. He blames the primary care doctors. Sounds like they didn't read the book.

I've been a nurse for fifteen years. I've noticed the things the author talks about in health care, but I never thought they were connected in any way. The way he connects them is really original and interesting. And he's right. I know a lot of people taking Prozac for unhappiness and not really for clinical depression. The author is really careful about separating real depression from unhappiness. He thinks depression, not unhappiness, should be treated with drugs. The book was easy reading. And a fun read too. But I really learned a lot about doctors and neuroscience and alternative medicine. I even sort of changed my views on some things.

I loved this book, "Artificial Happiness", because the author articulated in a well thought and researched fashion exactly what has not been discussed enough. Unhappiness is NOT a disease. Unhappiness, contrary to pharmaceutical advertisements and "doctors advice" is a natural and normal consequence of the "downs" in the "ups & downs" of life. It is the red light on the dashboards of our lives that prompts us to make constructive changes. Or it was.
For well over 2000 years the greatest thinkers in Western Civilization have puzzled over and written about "happiness" and what constitutes "the good life". Their words and thoughts are there and free for the taking. Few people are interested.
Enter...pharmaceutical marketing and the dis-ease merchants. Today tens of millions are sold, for huge profits, on the nonsensical idea that people's brains just don't work right any more. They have become "unbalanced" and get balanced again with drugs. [read: It's not your fault.]
At last someone in the medical field has had the courage to write what has always been obvious to many. Life is what we make it...garbage in, garbage out.....bad decision making leads to bad outcomes. BRAVO!

Dworkin's carefully focussed argument about doctors and how they approach medicine profession exposes some serious concerns about the profession. His concern is not about the treatment of real depression, but rather the more specious category in the literature of "minor depression" -- which can mean almost anything -- and doctors have used it to prescribe psychotropic drugs for almost anyone. (The overuse of Ritalin, while a somewhat different case, is another example of the same treat-'em-and-forget-em techniques. Until children start committing suicide.) Reading the whole book very frequently provides a much clearer picture of what an author is saying than reading five pages.

The book is a critique of the whole health industry in general with an emphasis on mental health. Dworkin warns against drugs and/or activities that might mask the cause of unhappiness and hamper treatment and rehabilitation.

AH is not a book that criticizes antidepressants as many of the critics here claim, it simply criticizes the careless use of them by patients and physicians alike. The critics are voting on the message of the book instead of the quality and content of the book.

After reading the entire book, I give it high marks. (My only hesitation is that it does read somewhat like an extended magazine article...it could have been shortened without jeopardizing its content and message). His basic point is that life is a worthwhile struggle and that people should engage the struggle, and not opt out by taking medications that are not necessary. His recommendations about the wisdom to be found in religion and philosophy are courageous given the current ignorance about those resources.

This book could have been worth reading if there was an research to support his ideas, the examples were not so extreme, and the tone not so obnoxious. Similar to what another reviewer wrote, it felt like being cornered by a jerk at a party. The rise of primary care doctors managing mental health with pharmaceuticals was an interesting story, but seemed to be just the author's opinion based on his limited experience. Antidepressants are over-prescribed and the suggestion that these medications can lead to complacency and/or stupefaction is a valid area for research. Instead of research, he presents anecdotes from his experience as an anesthesiologist. He spends a lot of time on religion, some time on alternative medicine and obsessive exercise. I read this book knowing that I might disagree with his perspective, but wanting to learn what that perspective was backed up with so it might challenge my point of view. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

The book is very interesting with a lot of valid points but I believe the author goes too far in purporting that people who take antidepressants become some sort of happy zombies uninterested in making changes to better their lives. Being on antidepressants does not mean that all the ups and downs of life are flatlined, you can still feel unhappiness and be compelled to make changes for the better, in fact he himself gives an example of an unhappy engineer who wanted to be a musician but did not have the guts to make the career change in the face of his family and friends' disapproval. He only made the life change once he started taking antidepressants. I believe it is the little things, like traffic and day-to-day annoyances that are minimized with the use of antidepressants that is of course for people who are not seriously depressed, for those who are, antidepressants can be life savers.

If you aren't depressed before you read Dworkin's book, you may be afterward. Meditation and jogging don't really work, Prozac causes stupefaction (he must be confusing it with Vicodin) and face it, most of us are going to spend our adult lives staring drearily out an office window. And somewhere along the way, he also mentions that premarital sex isn't such a great idea, either. Face it, folks: life sucks. Get used to being unhappy.

Okay, that is not exactly what Dworkin says. His thesis that unhappiness is not a disease that needs to be medicated is valid: to a point. Taking Prozac, or any other antidepressant, for that matter, will assuredly not solve all our problems. We have to take action. We have to work to solve those problems. All well and good. Yet for people who have been depressed or extremely unhappy (we're talking fine lines here) an antidepressant can give them the boost they need to take action and get their lives under control.

However, Dworkin does say he supports the use of antidepressants for clinical depression. But he doesn't elaborate on how it differs from plain old unhappiness in any detail, and this is one of the book's major flaws. Perhaps he thinks that the difference between the two is obvious, but I don't think so. Nor does he discuss methods of therapy (for example, Cognitive Behavorial Therapy, which has proved useful in the treatment of clinical depression) at any length. Helen Fisher is right: This is a bold book. And it is also very depressing.

What I like best about this book is that the author crosses ideological lines and is not afraid to challenge and even alienate his readers.

I'm convinced that the widespread use of SSRIs has warped our culture and distorted the meaning of our lives. Unhappiness is a signal that we ignore at our peril. By obliterating unhappiness through these drugs, we also deny ourselves joy. What is the point of living if you can't feel all of your emotions, desires and passions? SSRIs turn people into zombies - docile conformist slaves with lives devoid of meaning. SSRIs are the Soma (see Brave New World) of the 21st century. I cannot help but see a hidden agenda here. By blunting our passions, SSRIs make us infinitely malleable and easier to rule. This book is a welcome antidote that should be read by all.