Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are

A compelling and troubling exploration of a generation raised on antidepressants, and a book that combines expansive interviews with substantive research-based reporting, Coming of Age on Zoloft is a vitally important and immediately engrossing study of one of America’s most pressing and omnipresent issues: our growing reliance on prescription drugs. Katherine Sharpe, the former editor of Seed magazine’s ScienceBlogs.com, addresses the questions that millions of young men and women are struggling with. “Where does my personality end and my prescription begin?” “Do I have a disease?” “Can I get better on my own?” Combining stout scientific acumen with first-person experience gained through her own struggle with antidepressants, Sharpe leads the reader through a complex subject, a guide towards a clearer future for all.

This blend of investigative journalism and personal memoir asks the tough questions about the Prozac generation:

• A History of Antidepressants: From the "psychopharmaceutical revolution" of the 1990s to today, discover how drugs like Zoloft and Prozac changed American culture and the conversation around mental illness.
• SSRIs and Identity: Tackles the defining question for a medicated generation—exploring what happens when you can’t tell where your personality ends and your prescription begins.
• Talk Therapy vs. Medication: Through personal experience and deep research, Sharpe weighs the benefits and drawbacks of treating depression with pills versus psychotherapy.
• Living with Depression and Anxiety: Follows the author’s own ten-year journey with antidepressants, from a college diagnosis to the difficult questions of life as a young adult.

When Katherine Sharpe arrived at her college health center with an age-old complaint, a bad case of homesickness, she received a thoroughly modern response: a twenty-minute appointment and a prescription for Zoloft—a drug she would take for the next ten years. This outcome, once unlikely, is now alarmingly common. Twenty-five years after Prozac entered the marketplace, 10 percent of Americans over the age of six use an SSRI antidepressant.

In Coming of Age on Zoloft, Sharpe blends deeply personal writing, thoughtful interviews, and historical context to achieve an unprecedented portrait of the antidepressant generation. She explores questions of identity that arise for people who start medication before they have an adult sense of self. She asks why some individuals find a diagnosis of depression reassuring, while others are threatened by it. She presents, in young people's own words, their intimate and complicated relationships with their medication. And she weighs the cultural implications of America's biomedical approach to moods.

“It is difficult to do justice to Katherine Sharpe’s beautifully written memoir and reflection on her rite of passage with Zoloft and other antidepressants-she wonderfully conveys the profound issues these drugs raise. This is a book for anyone taking or thinking about taking an antidepressant, anyone who prescribes them, anyone who wonders about their suitability for someone they know or anyone who wants a mirror held up to our time.” - Dr. David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac and The Antidepressant Era

“Katherine Sharpe asks questions about identity and society that have probably occurred to most people her age who’ve taken medication for depression, but unlike most people she has worked to seek out answers. Coming of Age On Zoloft is a fascinating look at how drugs and trends have shaped the identities of individuals and of a generation -- provocative without being sensationalistic, skillfully written and totally necessary.” - Emily Gould, author of And the Heart Says Whatever

“A knowing account of what it is like to grow up on psychiatric medications....Balanced and informative--an education for any parent considering psychiatric medication for a troubled adolescent.” - Kirkus Reviews

“A fascinating look at how drugs and trends have shaped the identities of individuals and of a generation-provocative without being sensationalistic, skillfully written, and totally necessary.” - Emily Gould, author And the Heart Says Whatever

“Beautifully written. . . . This is a book for anyone taking or thinking about taking antidepressants, anyone who prescribes them, anyone who wonders about their suitability-or anyone who wants a mirror held up to our time.” - Dr. David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac

“Sharpe is excellent at detailing the positives and negatives of these drugs … But she is best at probing broader societal issues … This is a fine book that nicely weaves together personal, sociological, and philosophical perspectives for a thoughtful view of how antidepressants are shaping many people’s lives.” - Publishers Weekly

“Intuitive and investigative, personal and historical, narrative-rich and fact-packed….Part of what makes this book riveting is the way Sharpe sets her own story within the larger context of cultural, social, and psychiatric changes that moved depression (along with other mental illnesses) into the medical spotlight.” - Elle