Blue Dreams
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Five of the seven recovered: Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 72.
Wife reporting that her husband: G. P. Hartigan, “Experience of Treatment with Lithium Salts,” cited ibid., 187.
“has kept very well since”: Ibid.
In 1961 Schou wrote to Hartigan: Ibid.; Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 75.
“From the age of twenty he suffered”: Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 75.
Dangers of lithium-based salt substitutes: Ibid., 49.
Most asylums had huge canisters of lithium left over: Ibid.
On Shepherd and Blackwell’s criticisms of Schou: Healy, Mania, 115–19.
It was an impression: Healy, The Psychopharmacologists, 2:267.
“clearly felt that when I showed gratification”: Ibid.
Blackwell and Shepherd’s criticisms of Schou and Baastrup: Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 80.
“How could I put him”: Ibid., 87.
“He was a genial man”: Healy, The Psychopharmacologists, 2:249–50.
“Critical debate is what science thrives on”: Ibid., 268.
Blackwell countered that Schou’s entire professional life: Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 85.
Schou’s study design and trial: Ibid., 88.
“They saw a killing here”: Healy, The Psychopharmacologists, 2:250.
Clinicians in the States began applying to the FDA: Johnson, The History of Lithium Therapy, 102.
Lithium approved in the United States: Ibid.
“therapeutic effects of complicated compounds”: Ibid., 67.
“it has never really excited neuroscientists”: Personal interview with Alexander Vuckovic, May 21, 2015.
“as good a symbol of the vacuity”: Healy, Mania, 168.
Semisodium valproate an effective treatment for mania: Goleman, “2 Drugs Get a New Use: Soothing Mania.”
Numerous anticonvulsants were repurposed: Healy, Mania, 168.
The term “mood stabilizer”: Ibid., 174.
Gabapentin grossed $1.3 billion: Ibid.
“I’ve found it to be as effective”: Personal interview with Alexander Vuckovic, May 21, 2015.
3. Early Antidepressants: The Three-Ringed Molecule and the Psychic Energizer
Evidence that depression is genetic: Neves-Pereira et al., “The Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor Gene Confers Susceptibility to Bipolar Disorder,” 651.
Broadhurst’s first impressions of the Geigy office: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 69.
“nothing intrinsically special”: Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, 37.
“making life did not require”: Ibid.
Broadhurst and the executives at Geigy aware of developments: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 69.
Desire of Broadhurst to avoid creating a “me too” drug: Ibid.
“the spotlight fell on iminodibenzyl”: Ibid., 71.
Geigy’s organic chemists created derivatives of the substance: Kramer, Ordinarily Well, 5.
Eventually the team narrowed in on G22150: Ibid., 72.
Kuhn agreed to test G22150 on patients at Münsterlingen: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 69.
Kuhn believed that the best way to test a drug was not through clinical trials: Steinberg and Himmerich, “Roland Kuhn,” 48–50.
Geigy abandoned G22150: Healy, The Psychopharmacologists, 2:72.
Their scientists soon identified a new focus, G22355: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 69.
“The road to Münsterlingen” and the trial of G22355: Ibid., 72–73.
The word “antidepressant” was not in existence: Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, 52.
“we wondered if the apparent mood elevation”: Ibid., 73.
“I well remember the look of suspicious disbelief on his face”: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 74.
Kuhn’s new clinical trial: Ibid.
Kuhn’s approach to patients: Kramer, Ordinarily Well, 30.
The first patient to show a change was Paula J.F.: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 52.
“It was clear that G22355”: Broadhurst, “The Discovery of Imipramine from a Personal Viewpoint,” 74.
“the last person [he] would have expected”: Ibid., 75.
“I remember how amazed Abraham was”: Ibid.
Kuhn’s claims and reputation: Ibid., 50.
Kuhn’s style of psychotherapy: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 49.
Those suffering from vital depression: Steinberg and Himmerich, “Roland Kuhn.”
Lehmann managed to get his hands on some samples: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 57.
The drug would be most useful: Ibid., 52.
World Health Organization series of studies: Ibid., 59.
Böhringer was made aware of Geigy’s work on G22355: Kramer, Ordinarily Well, 8.
G22355 becoming imipramine; Kline and MAOIs: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 54–69.
Reserpine also an effective antipsychotic: Baumeister, Hawkins, and Uzelac, “The Myth of Reserpine-Induced Depression,” 207–20.
Kline abandoned reserpine: Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac, 1–40. See also Ramachandraih et al., “Antidepressants,” 180–82.
Reserpine did become an indispensable research tool: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 64.
Rabbits pretreated with either imipramine or an MAOI: Ibid., 66.
Pretreated rabbits’ synapses: Lebrand et al., “Transient Uptake and Storage of Serotonin in Developing Thalamic Neurons,” 823–35.
Two-thirds showed marked improvement: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 64.
Kline alerted company executives to his findings: Ibid., 67.
Kline reported his study results to the New York Times: Ibid.
Within the first year 400,000 people: Kreston, “The Psychic Energizer!”
Kline preferred the term “psychic energizer”: Rapley, Moncrieff, and Dillon, eds., De-Medicalizing Misery, 179.
Reserpine has been shown in other studies: Ramachandraih et al., “Antidepressants,” 180.
Rats treated with reserpine became more active: Boulton et al., Neurobiology of the Trace Amines, 221.
Differing levels of serotonin in depressed people: Valenstein, Blaming the Brain, 104.
Side effects of the tricyclics and MAOIs: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 116–17.
Account of David Foster Wallace’s struggle: Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, 297–301. See also Max, “The Unfinished”; Lipsky, “The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace”; and Los Angeles County coroner’s report, September 13, 2008.
Pharmacist wrote to Blackwell: Blackwell, “Adumbration,” 201.
Blackwell and a colleague ingesting cheese: Ibid., 208.
Patients on MAOIs having bad reactions to cheese: Blackwell, Bits and Pieces of a Psychiatrist’s Life, 156.
Blackwell claimed that there were forty deaths: Blackwell, “Adumbration.”
A prominent study in Britain: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 119.
Debates about the safety of the medication: Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 54.
4. SSRIs: The Birth of Prozac
The monoamine hypothesis of depression: Delgado, “Depression,” 7–11.
Theory predominated until Arvid Carlsson further refined it: Healy, The Antidepressant Era, 165–66.
Zimelidine made some people ill: National Center for Biotechnology Information, “Zimelidine.”
Serotonin is omnipresent in the body: DePoy and Gilson, Human Behavior Theory and Applications, 107.
Eli Lilly considering Prozac as a possible weight-loss drug: Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac, 31.
“more human suffering has resulted from depression”: Kline, “The Practical Management of Depression,” 732–40.
Serotonin is one of the oldest neurotransmitters: Azmitia, �
��Serotonin and Brain,” 31–56.
Annual sales reached $350 million: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 15.
Americans receiving disability payments: Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 6–7.
Incidences of depression have increased a thousandfold: Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac, 31.
Infant animals secrete the stress hormone cortisol: Feng et al., “Maternal Separation Produces Lasting Changes,” 14312–17.
“I have forfeited my estate to the king”: Solomon, The Noonday Demon, 386.
“the secret of life’s greatest mystery”: Belic, Happy.
Bolo grew despondent after the birth of her daughter: Personal interview with Ann Bolo, July 7, 2014.
“the psychiatrist as psychotherapist is an endangered species”: Carlat, Unhinged, 4–5.
“Doing psychotherapy doesn’t pay well enough”: Ibid., 5.
Even in Eli Lilly’s published research: Kirsch, “Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect,” 128–34.
Pharmaceutical companies need only come up with two studies: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 287.
The six major antidepressants beat the placebo: Greenberg, “Is It Prozac?”
Difference between antidepressants and placebos “trivial” and “clinically meaningless”: Ibid.
The FDA approved Prozac after just six to eight weeks: Insel, “Antidepressants.” See also Rossi, Barraco, and Donda, “Fluoxetine”; Buchman and Strous, “Side Effects of Long-Term Treatment with Fluoxetine,” 55–57.
Few studies on the long-term side effects of serotonin boosters: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 10.
“I think the industry is concerned about the possibility”: Ibid., 105.
Bolo was told that taking a serotonin booster: Personal interview with Ann Bolo, January 25, 2015.
Little evidence psychiatric disorders tied to a chemical imbalance: Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs, 5–6.
Lilly package insert for Prozac: Prozac package insert, Eli Lilly and Co., Indianapolis, 2017.
60 to 75 percent of people experience sexual dysfunction: Ferguson, “SSRI Antidepressant Medications: Adverse Effects and Tolerability,” 22.
As serotonin rises, dopamine decreases: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 122.
Prozac caused facial and bodily spasms: Ibid.
Redux damaged the serotonin neurons: Ibid., 95.
Hoehn-Saric reported on a twenty-three-year-old man with OCD: Ibid., 102.
Prozac makes it difficult to maintain an erection: Slater, “How Do You Cure a Sex Addict?” See also Montague, “Pharmacologic Management of Premature Ejaculation,” 290.
Surprisingly conventional existences: Ibid.
Dependency on a drug causing vulnerability: Alonso et al., “Use of Antidepressants and the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease,” 671–74.
Statistics on American women: Pratt, Brody, and Gu, “Antidepressant Use in Persons Aged 12 and Over.”
These medications can be responsible for “emotional blunting”: Fisher and Thomson, “Lust, Romance, Attachment,” 245.
“serotonin-enhancing antidepressants can jeopardize”: Ibid., 245–65.
Women will be more orgasmic: Fink et al., “Facial Symmetry and Judgments of Attractiveness, Health and Personality,” 491–99.
Oxytocin is tightly tied: Breed and Moore, Animal Behavior, 3–4. See also Freudenheim, “The Drug Makers Are Listening to Prozac.”
Over a billion dollars in sales of Prozac in 1993: Breggin and Breggin, Talking Back to Prozac.
“intense, violent suicidal preoccupation”: Teicher, Glod, and Cole, “Emergence of Intense Suicidal Preoccupation during Fluoxetine Treatment,” 207–10.
“death would be a welcome result”: Ibid.
She banged her head repeatedly against the floor: Ibid.
The drug agitated them: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 146.
Wesbecker on Prozac: Ibid., 137.
Account of Wesbecker massacre: Ames, Going Postal, 7–8.
“like a zombie, an automaton”: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 181.
Account of the Wesbecker trial: Ibid., 170–74. See also DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology, 35–38.
“My profession now practices”: Lieberman, Shrinks, 310.
Scientists have searched for evidence: Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs, 4–5.
Happy subjects do not necessarily: Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 72–73.
“Several weeks later”: Ibid., 81.
The likelihood of relapse: Ibid., 158, 169.
Rats’ neurons were “swollen” and “twisted like corkscrews”: Ibid., 170. See also Kalia, “Injury and Strain-Dependent Dopaminergic Neuronal Degeneration,” 92–105.
Helen Mayberg reported in 2013: Mayberg et al., “Toward a Neuroimaging Treatment Selection Biomarker,” 821–29. See also Friedman, “To Treat Depression, Drugs or Therapy?”
Long-term exposure to cortisol: Bergland, “Cortisol.”
Depressed “patients showed significantly more decline”: Frodl et al., “Depression Related Variation in Brain Morphology over 3 Years,” 1156–65.
Possibility that antidepressants are neurotrophic: Sairanen et al., “Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Antidepressant Drugs,” 1089–94.
Elizabeth Loftus on inducing false memories: Loftus and Pickrell, “The Formation of False Memories,” 720–25.
Valium another instigator of diagnostic drift: MacLaren and Lautieri, “Valium History and Statistics.”
Time magazine’s report on patient Susan: Toufexis, “The Personality Pill.”
Psychiatrists prescribe Prozac: Pettus, “Psychiatry by Prescription.”
Distinction between science involved: Shorter, A History of Psychiatry, 324.
“pharmacological hedonism”: Carlat, Unhinged, 104–5.
Serotonin boosters cause subjects to become peppier: Sobo, “Psychotherapy Perspectives in Medication Management.”
Prozac reduces frequency of ultrasonic cries in baby rats: Ibid.
Ann Bolo on going off of Prozac: Personal interview with Ann Bolo, December 18, 2016.
“a profession undergoing intellectual rejuvenation”: Lieberman, Shrinks, 234.
“hard to think of a single truly novel psychotropic drug”: Friedman, “A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs.”
Sufferers complaining of a light head: Solomon, The Noonday Demon, 288.
Cauliflower as a cure for depression: Ibid.
Patients of Rufus of Ephesus: Ibid., 305.
Sexual stimulation of genitals as treatment: Ibid., 291.
Depression was seen as a sin: Asch, “Depression and Demonic Possession,” 149.
Rufus’s “sacred remedy”: Solomon, The Noonday Demon, 290.
5. Placebos: The Dancing Disease
“Placebos are extraordinary drugs”: Buckman and Sabbagh, Magic or Medicine? An Investigation of Healing and Healers, 246.
“febrile, gasping for air, completely bedridden”: Klopfer, “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer,” 331.
X-rays showing that the tumors had shrunk: Ibid.
Mr. Wright’s tumors reappeared: Ibid., 333.
Ancient medicine consisted almost entirely of placebos: Shapiro and Shapiro, “The Placebo: Is It Much Ado about Nothing?” 12–36.
Theriac was an especially popular placebo: Ibid., 13.
In the 1970s endorphins were discovered: Hughes et al., “Identification of Two Related Pentapeptides,” 577–80.
Most patients were given a placebo: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect,” 103–4, 125.
How placebos might work, color correlation: Ibid., 104.
Imitrex versus placebo: Ibid., 52.
People with Alzheimer’s: Trivers, The Folly of Fools, 73.
Valium affects a person: Poole, Rethink, 214. See also Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, “Knowingly Taking Placebo Pills Eases Pain.”
No definitive profile of a placebo person: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect,” 33–34.
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sp; Outcome of sham surgeries: Ibid., 59.
87 percent reported subjective improvement: Ibid., 33–34.
Patient estimated that he was 95 percent better: Ibid. For statistics on later treatment, see also Moerman, “Explanatory Mechanisms for Placebo Effects,” 86.
“Electrical machines have great appeal”: Alan G. Johnson, “Surgery as a Placebo,” The Lancet, October 22, 1994, cited in Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect,” 64.
The belief in the surgery sparks an increase of dopamine production: Marchant, “Parkinson’s Patients Trained to Respond to Placebos.”
Making medications so strong they trump placebo: Greenberg, “Is it Prozac?” See also Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs, 78.
Psychotherapeutic treatment in the United States: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect,” 89.
all types of psychotherapy seem to work: Ibid., 90.
those who receive psychotherapy: Ibid., 90–92, 96–97.
Pennebaker’s experiment with college students: Ibid., 96–97.
Use of “causal words” improves health: Wapner, “He Counts Your Words.”
Correlation of the effect between experience of therapist and outcome was 0.01: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect,” 92.
Study involving skilled therapists and kindly non-therapists: Ibid., 93.
“healing effects of a benign human relationship”: Strupp and Hadley, “Specific vs. Nonspecific Factors in Psychotherapy,” 1135.
Account of overdose on placebo antidepressants: Stromberg, “What Is the Nocebo Effect?” See also Reeves et al., “Nocebo Effects with Antidepressant Clinical Drug Trial Placebos,” 275–77.
Voodoo death accounts: Cannon, “‘VOODOO’ Death,” 1593.
Researchers believe that nocebos precipitate: Häuser, Hansen, and Enck, “Nocebo Phenomena in Medicine,” 26.
When a newspaper releases a story about a suicide: Goleman, “Pattern of Death.” See also Gould, Jamieson, and Romer, “Media Contagion and Suicide among the Young,” 1269–84.
When an accident is reported: Harrington, The Placebo Effect, 65.
Account of Frau Troffea and the dancing plague of Strasbourg: Viegas, “‘Dancing Plague’ and Other Odd Afflictions Explained”; Sirois, “Perspectives on Epidemic Hysteria,” 217–36.