This is disturbing...
Paxil Americana
New York is in a medicated state of mind.
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By Tina Brown

May 15, 2003 |

At first I thought New Yorkers were in a better mood because the war was over.
Now I'm beginning to suspect it's because everyone is on drugs. Legal ones,
that is. At a big media party the other night most of the talk in the buffet line
was about how something called Buspar is so much more effective than Paxil
for taking off the sharp edges. As one brisk female executive told me after an
altercation with a "difficult" colleague, "I don't talk to people anymore who aren't
on meds. They're too much work."

There's always a commercial payoff to any cataclysm in America and in the
case of 9/11 it was the marketing of anxiety. It suddenly legitimized every other
form of affluent terror and brought the subterranean pill thing -- growing since the
explosion of Prozac in 1987 -- out of the closet. Now, at water coolers all over town,
people earnestly debate which prescription drugs make the best "chasers" to even
out the side effects of the meds they're already taking. There's even a certain
one-upmanship about which one you're on. It's cooler to throw away that you're taking
Luvox for anxiety rather than the more familiar Xanax ...
You can read the rest of this article at Salon.com but you have to click through a
bunch of ads for a one-day pass if you are not a subscriber...
It's worth a look though, especially for the cartoons...