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. You've ceased being a whole person, so what you say about this or that is hardly going to provide others with valuable insight and understanding, is it? Only the man who has deeply thought about life, and who can face looking at himself with care, has interesting things to say about life, something that will assist others. All you have to say is "I'm doing great thanks to these bromides...I'm well and truly anesthetized so i advise you to go get some too." That's very helpful.
For serious readers, willing to fight to the death to overcome their mental and emotional troubles without help from the medical manipulators, i recommend the works of Thomas Szasz, particularly "The Medicalization of Everyday Life" and "The Myth of Mental Illness." Also "Against Happiness" and "The Power of Negative Emotions." Also "Emotional Intelligence," by Daniel Goldman.
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