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Happy pills in America From Miltown to Prozac David Herzberg The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 2008. 296 pp. $45.00. ISBIM: 978-0-8018-9030-7 (hardcover).
Reviewed by James H. Kocsis
Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and
Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, New York, New York, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
"Happy pills" - in particular the anxiolytic drugs Miltown and Valium and the antidepressant Prozac - have been spectacularly successful "products" over the last 5 decades, largely because they have widespread off label use. Miltown, launched in the 1950s, was the first "blockbuster" psychotropic drug in the US. However, by 1970 it was reclassified as a sedative and considered a controlled substance due to the risk of dependence, and its market was largely replaced by Valium. Valium, approved in the early 1960s, became the top-selling pharmaceutical in the US in the 1970s. While still prescribed today for che short-term treatment of anxiety, it is now largely used in the treatment of epilepsy and spastic disorders. Prozac, brought to the US market in the late 1980s, is used to treat major depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, bulimia, and anxiety disorders and today is the third most prescribed antidepressant on the US market. These drugs...