Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds

Author: Lauren SlaterPaperback:Publisher: Back Bay BooksISBN 10: 0316370622ISBN 13: 978-0316370622Hardcover:Publisher: Little, Brown and CompanyISBN 10: 0316370649ISBN 13: 978-0316370646The explosive story of the discovery and development of psychiatric medications, as well as the science and the people behind their invention, told by a riveting writer and psychologist who shares her own experience with the highs and lows of psychiatric drugs. Although one in five Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug, the fact remains that nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, not even their creators understand exactly how or why these drugs work -- or don't work -- on what ails our brains. Lauren Slater's revelatory account charts psychiatry's journey from its earliest drugs, Thorazine and lithium, up through Prozac and other major antidepressants of the present. Blue Dreams also chronicles experimental treatments involving Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, the most