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Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class Hardcover – April 25, 2006

3.3 out of 5 stars 18 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Carroll & Graf; annotated edition edition (April 25, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0786717149
  • ISBN-13: 978-0786717149
  • Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,008,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsright on
By hiking guy on July 9, 2006
Format: Hardcover
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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsYou will love it or you will hate it.
By GP Weyble on August 9, 2006
Format: Hardcover
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!
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5.0 out of 5 starshaven't really thought about it before
By angela on July 8, 2006
Format: Hardcover
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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsprovocative and timely
By A reader in Lindenhurst on June 7, 2006
Format: Hardcover
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.
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1.0 out of 5 starsAll opinions
By C. Banahoski on January 21, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsNOT FOR THE WEAK AND DOCILE
By Michael Tsarion on September 6, 2015
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
There is no point resenting this book and what it advocates if you're a depressive who took the easy way out with drugs. So what you write or think on this subject is supremely irrelevant. The point of this book, and of this perspective, is to not take the easy way out and listen to big pharma's reps. It is to withstand a world descending into the pits because quick fixes are on offer for every existential woe.

If you are a person who resists escaping from yourself with drugs, then this book is for you. If you've already taken the easy way out, and proved to yourself and the world that you're too weak to face the emotions that arise from within your own being, then spare us your PR for big pharma and it's corrective psychic surgery. You're not one to whom this book speaks. You're not one that would have rather gone mad or died than take to an inauthentic, drug-soused existence, just to keep that fake smile on your face. You're not one who, after overcoming depression on your own without help - with pure mental and emotional fortitude - needs offer your two cents in an attempt to make more of us into what you are. You're no one to denigrate those intelligent souls who see what is going on in this world and that there can be more choices than inebriation or anesthetization to prevent one facing reality as it is.

Once you've bitten down on the happiness pill, and gorged yourself on Artificial Happiness, you've nothing of importance to say about the subject, except to admit that in the end the drugs didn't work to solve your problems. They only served to repress them, to make it possible for you to avoid authentically dealing with your world, your choices, your childhood trauma, and day-to-day relationship issues.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsARE WE TAKING DRUGS TO FALSELY CREATE AN ARTIFICIAL STATE?

Anaesthesiologist and philosopher Ronald Dworkin is also the author of books such as Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, Law's Empire, Is Democracy Possible... Read more

Published on June 8, 2012 by Steven H Propp
2.0 out of 5 starsvalid..to a point.

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... Read more

Published on July 29, 2009 by Bibliofiend
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is a terrific book

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. Read more

Published on May 25, 2009 by Eclectic Reader
4.0 out of 5 starsYou need to read the entire 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... Read more

Published on June 22, 2008 by A. Richards
4.0 out of 5 starsNo Happiness? No...Know Happiness

the kinds of artificial happiness talked about mostly in the book are drugs, obsessive exercise and herbs and stuff. Read more

Published on March 31, 2008 by Nathan
1.0 out of 5 starsAre publishers that desperate for material?

The big mystery about this book is how it got published. Does Dworkin have a relative in the publishing industry? Read more

Published on March 3, 2008 by DC gal
1.0 out of 5 starsBoring

This book talks very little about what the title implies. It's like he had a two paragraph idea and decided to write a 300 page book about it.

Published on October 21, 2007 by Jungatheart
5.0 out of 5 starsWell written

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... Read more

Published on November 13, 2006 by Blake J. Butler
1.0 out of 5 starsAlarmist hysteria from a man who knows nothing about depression

Ronald Dworkin's book does a disservice to anyone who could be helped by antidepressants, or who is currently being helped by them. Read more

Published on September 17, 2006 by Robert L. Duquette
3.0 out of 5 starsInteresting Book

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... Read more

Published on August 17, 2006 by Tammy Brinkman

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