Christopher Ymas
Unit 2 Assignment 3
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel is a memoir written about the author’s life of depression, addictions, and her relationships. The author is an extremist when it came to her depression. She would portray her emotions so that everyone knew that she had a problem and for some reason are still there for her. This novel best represents the movie Blow based on the life of George Jung. Jung was also addicted; he was addicted to drugs, money, dealing, and relationships. Which both Elizabeth and George can relate to their addictions and problems they encountered over their lives.
Elizabeth is taking medication for her depression, but the pain gets worse and worse as the days go by. “I’m going up to 102nd St. to get the coke; it will make you feel better.” She is hooked on drugs because all she wants is the pain to go away, and being a young adult in college parting, beer, and drugs are going to be used. That is the last that she needs because like George Jung’s father once told him as a young boy, “When you’re up, you’re up, and when you’re down you never think you’ll be up again but you do. Money isn’t real George.” Meaning when Elizabeth takes those drugs to make her feel better for the time being she takes them to feel better and then she feels even worse. She must stay together because eventually you’ll be back up again. What George’s father told him when he was a boy that stuck with him through his whole life. He dealt drugs and made tons of money but then when he crashed because of his business partner Diego, who stole all of his connects and the inside guys, he lost his wife and his daughter and then he worked his way back up the chain to have his daughter, who he lost because he was in jail, have the same respect for him again that she had so long before that. He did overcome it.
Elizabeth try’s the easiest way out of things. She cannot control what she does. She’ll have the loud cry for help without saying the words. Her actions speak so much louder than her words. Elizabeth had never once told someone to help her, she would just be screaming crying throwing a fit on the bathroom floor, almost killing herself. Which I believe is to be the biggest cry for help. If she really wanted to kill herself she would have done it already. She knows that she can overcome her problem but it still is extremely hard explaining why she has those fits. I fell this is also relevant to George because he would risk going to his parents’ house to talk to them, hoping that they still loved him. In the end his mother called the cops on him and he was arrested, his father was very upset he loved his son so much. George went there for help, he knew he wasn’t going for any other reason he misses the life that he used to have which was so innocent. But at the same time he was having the best time of his life.
Elizabeth and George both have the lifestyles of king’s but they also have a life of pain, death, and sorrow. Trying to overcome these obstacles they have to give up some of the most important things in their lifestyle’s, and possibly the only lifestyle that they ever known. George receives the help he needs to change but unfortunately it is for longer than life, because he resides in a Correctional Facility. As for Elizabeth I have not yet reached the end but as an assumption Elizabeth could not have done so badly for herself if she is able to write such an amazing novel with such detail about her own life.