Antidepressants- to take or not to take, that is the question

Historically speaking, it was only in 1988, that Ray Fuller invented Prozac. Nonetheless, the existence of this "happy pill" was not quite known until the publication of Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation", a bestseller, and a biography of one of the first people who took it. Not so long ago, maybe a couple of decades, just the mentioning of the word "antidepressants", would cause bewildered glances, and cautious "lets keep our distance" insinuations. Nowadays, it seems that depression has become as "ordinary" as flu, and many people started taking these pills as carelessly as vitamin C.

You can even find the definition of Prozac in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, according to which, "someone lively and excited may safely be described as 'on Prozac'". For example, "Critics compared the actress's performance to Bette Davis on Prozac." http://dictionary.cambridge.org

Furthermore, Prozac's seemed to become the "it-drug", a pharmaceutical Chanel-bag because of the vast number of celebrities that used it, and told all about it to the media. While celebrities of the past, who apparently had more class and dignity, took effort in hiding their depression (Audrey Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe, for instance), the Prozac generation seemed to erase the stigma; depression became a part of the professional designation - celebrities are expected to be miserable, and talk about it (Winona Ryder), or become front-page news after returning from clinics for antidepressant addiction (Robbie Williams).

Yet, it's not all attention, sunshine and daisies. Althought your doctor may give you some BS (Pardon my French) about how "it may be because it's not the right person", it is clinically proven that antidepressants diminish the libido, more furtherly, you may become unable to reach the big O. Worse than that, you may lose your ability to feel anything at all, you become a kind of a zombie, whose preferred company becomes his/ hers own apathy. It can feel convenient at the beginning (I mean the not falling in love part, not the lack of libido, of course), but afterwards it becomes plain boring, and worrying, especially if you're the artistic type, who needs emotions for inspiration.