prozac planet

It may have been yesterday, 30 odd years ago, Elizabeth Wurtzel published Prozac Nation.
A short confessional fiction that went to great lengths to describe apathy.
My grandma thought I too should take the Prozac.
Prozac is Fluoxetin.
Fluoxetin is a magical chemical combination that takes away your feelings, good and bad.
It's a lobotomy in a pill.
For faster effect, like cocaine but without the euphoria, it's probably best snorted.
My pineal is my entire face and my sense of smell is my guide through life.
I've done cocaine, it's stupid, the euphoria is fun but the anxiety for more, that follows, is not.
Wurtzel was two years older than I.
The year Kurt Cobain died I was living in Newburgh NY, with my grandparents.
Shampoo Planet was the other hip book to read.
Gen X was getting started with our families and careers.
The ocean smelled like the ocean then.
The ocean doesn't smell like the ocean anymore.
We all wanted to be Salinger, and it was sad.
Strip malls and treeless freeways, processed and packaged snack foods, a sky river of empty jets streaking tube people getting away to who knows where, or for how long.
Blockbuster videos and dunkin donuts.
Camels filtered and Dr. Pepper.
Winona and Johnny.
I didn't read Wurtzel's book, I read the review.
Reviews had become more interesting.
The entire ecosphere of opinion was nascent and had sex appeal.
Everybody it seemed, knew a little about everything, enough to share reality tunnels, affirmations that what we read about in fictions could be coupled with evidence they were true.
Cut to 30 years and the internet of things later and Joe Biden is facing Donald Trump in a general election.
It's 2020. Why are these old thing still operating? People everywhere are wrapping themselves in plastic and alcohol, so scared the cooties will kill them they won't even leave their houses.
Wurtzel died, in real life, yesterday.
Age 52, cancer of the breast, probably didn't feel a thing.