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Lauren Slater suffers from mental illness her whole life and is now trying a new and experimental drug called prozac
It seems like one thing after another from starving herself to, most recently, checking and "fixing" everything her hands can touch. She is to be one of the first people taking Prozac. -
Lauren doesn't even take her new medication until 5 days after visiting the doctor.
She was very nervous about what might happen and when she does, becomes even more nervous because her heart rate slightly insceases. She doesn't know if it is a side effect or just more anxietly so she decides to sit down and wait it out. -
Lauren Takes advantage of her new found health by going to her first rock concert and sleeping with a man she meets there.
When she rushes to see if she's pregnant the doctor tells her she has an O-shaped hymen and is still medically considered a virgin. When they cut it she cries because she feels that the six imaginary friends that she has living inside of her have been aborted. -
Prozac starts to work 5 days after taking it which is unusual because it's a slow-acting drug
Lauren wakes up one morning and realizes she got 8 hours of sleep for the first time in many months and also, she feels different. When she walks around her apartment she sees that her OCD symptoms have vanished, When she turned the stove or faucet on and off, she trusted them without repeatedly switching, checking or tapping them. -
After 6 months of being on Prozac, Lauren wants to stop because she's lost her creativity.
She explains to her doctor that she doesn't feel like she's gotten anything accomplished because she hasn't been writing, She eventually decides to stay on because the doctor reminder her she's stayed out of hospitals for this long which is an accomplishment on its own. -
After one year on prozac, Lauren decides to accept it as a part of her life.
She now has friends, a steady job and she can't complain about her life and where it was going, She moves out of her basement apartment and even finds a man named Benett -
Comfortable with her life, she takes a trip to Kentucky where Prozac suddenly stops working.
She finds her hands betraying her again, tapping, checking, counting her steps and even walking backwards through doors which Lauren finds humiliating. When she calls her doctor infuriated, he tells her to increase her dose. -
Lauren takes a higer dose even though she's afraid of it abandoning her again.
The higher dose lessened her OCD symptoms but it never worked like it did before. It also completely took away her sex life even after trying all kinds of herbals. -
After 10 years of Lauren being on Prozac, she admits she's dependent on it and doesn't want to be
Her success feels fake because she wouldn't have achieved it without the drug that took so much away from her, She keeps taking it because the good might outweigh the bad and unfotunately she is taking more than what the FDA reccomends even after several failed attempts of lowering her dose.