Sarah and I watched the movie Prozac Nation last night. I had picked it up off the shelves based on the strength of Christina Ricci. I enjoyed her earlier in her career as a dark young female character in The Ice Storm, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the Adams Family. The idea of some Prozac depressive sounded like a good continuation of the role for her. The opening scenes had her sitting naked in her room talking to her mother, which was a treat, but I could already see that Ricci had gotten older and either for the role or to please the Hollywood crowd she had gotten dangerously anorexic thin. While I may be deluded in my memory I had always liked her partially because she was a little chubby.

The real disappointment in Prozac Nation was that it was boring. I didn’t read the original Cynthia Wurtzel book that was an international best seller but the movie was a very self-indulgent journey by the autobiographer that didn’t show a very deep exposure of the author. The boring and painful to watch structure of the movie made me wonder whether the original book sold because of the content or because the title was marketed to 30 million Prozac takers, their family, and friends by Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company pushing Prozac. The content also had an unexpected shortening from when Ricci went onto Prozac and the ending when she finally got back to writing and everything was honky-dory. While she had a cry for help suicide attempt in front of her therapist that might have appeared as an attack on the safety of Prozac, the general message seemed to be “use Prozac, it works great if you got troubles like I do.” So I had to wonder if the Eli Lilly Corporation had a hand in turning a troubled life into a two hour Hollywood infomercial for a brand name pharmaceutical. Fluoxetine is off patent with generics available anyways so it really should have been retitled Fluoxetine Nation if it wasn’t going to be a Prozac advertisement.

Watching the trouble for the main character made me think and worry about how tough it might be to have some mental health issues with Madeline. When I look around at myself, Sarah, and our families I can see bits and pieces of mental health issues that look biological to me and make me worry that we could recombine our genes in a way that leads to a troubled child. I wish I could rule things like depression, manic depression, or obsessive compulsive disorders out as possibilities for my baby. There was probably a good reason that I was rejected as a sperm donor a few years back. I had checked a box labeled “family history of manic depressive illness” in the questionnaire. They said the sperm swam and were normal but they cut me loose after a test donation so I believe that the survey was it. If they were worried enough to reject a donation then what am I really getting into on my own?

I guess a father starts worrying about things like this before his children are born. Aaron said today that bringing home a new mother who is different in many ways than the wife you know is more of a shock than bringing home the new baby. I am now finding that there is already the added shock of myself evolving quickly into a new father. It is already starting with the new throbbing node of worry for the welfare and happiness of my child working overdrive in my mind. The father is arriving inside of me and I found Prozac Nation generally nauseating because of it.