According to Wired, SSRI antidepressants may subtly alter the fundamental chemistry involved in romance:

"There's every reason to think SSRIs blunt your ability to fall and stay in love," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University biological anthropologist who has pioneered the modern science of love.

Years ago, when I was on Prozac, a friend who was also taking the drug asked me, "Can you cry? I can't cry. I think it's making it so I can't cry." She had a manic, giddy look about her. While I could, in fact, cry, I did feel that while the drug had smoothed out my rollercoaster emotions, I had become so even-keeled that while I didn't feel like shit, I wondered if it was because I couldn't feel like anything.

Wired's Brandon Keim writes:

According to Fisher, humans have three distinct but interconnected love-related brain systems: one for sex, another for attachment and another for romantic love. This is still hypothetical - nobody knows exactly what love does in the brain - but Fisher has been a pioneering researcher on romantic love's neurobiology, and dopamine indeed appears important.

Reduced dopamine levels, however, are an inevitable effect of SSRIs. Reduce dopamine, say Fisher and Thomson, and the possibility of love itself is reduced.

While I am no longer on Prozac (it's something else now), I have absolutely fallen in love. While Fisher's theory is biologically plausible, there's no definitive evidence. And I wonder if it's just different falling in love when depressed, as opposed to when not under the thick veil of despair. Could it be that when you're depressed, every emotion is so magnified that the overwhelming cascade of feelings washing over you when falling in love seems epic? When you're more level, are you less likely to lose your head? Not to say that the spark, magic and tingle of love isn't there — but is it less likely to be all-consuming to a stable individual?

Antidepressants May Thwart Quest for True Love [Wired]

[Image via Brent Moore's Flickr]

• Emily Blunt and John Krasinski: totally sitting in a tree, kissing and whatevs. Perez suggests "Bluntinski" as their celeb couple nickname, but we feel we can do better! How about Krunt? Or EmJo? [Perez]

• Jim Carrey wanted to clear up the comments he made the other day on Larry King about Prozac's lack of long-term efficacy. "There are a lot of different ways to skin a cat," Carrey tells People, "It's important to think on our own…There is drug company money that goes into the educational system. I'm saying you have to look outside that, and consider the other possibilities for people." Thanks Jim. There's no possible way I could think for myself unless a celebrity told me how to. [People]
• Hugh Jackman says that Hollywood was not fun for his wife Deb, especially at the beginning. "When we first went to Hollywood people would ignore her. She’d call it the chopped liver syndrome. She would be literally hit away as [women] tried to get to me. It takes adjusting for me too. Sometimes I don’t understand why I am getting this attention." [Telegraph]
• Hugh Jackman's director in Australia, Baz Luhrmann, has a new project lined up for himself: a remake of the Great Gatsby. This could either be fantastic or a garish Technicolor travesty. Can't wait to find out which one! [Deadline Hollywood]
• William H. Macy will replace Jeremy "Thermometer" Piven in the David Mamet play Speed the Plow for part of the run. The role will be shared with Norbert Leo Butz. [NYM]
• There will be an Icelandic venture capital fund named for Bjork. The fund "will invest in sustainable businesses that create value through leveraging Iceland's resources, nature, culture and green energy." Who wouldn't want to buy into Bjork with those values! [AFP via Yahoo]
• Chris Brown and Rihanna: on a luxurious Hawaiian vacay. Us: jealous. [Perez]
• Cisco Adler, best known for his elephantine balls and dating Mischa Barton, will now be known as a dude who got arrested by another citizen in Fargo, North Dakota. Quoth Michael K. of Dlisted, "Following his performance at The Hub, Cisco got into a fight with a dude and while he was being kicked out of the club by security, he punched one of the employees in the nose. Before the police showed up and arrested him, the employee who got punched out performed a citizen's arrest on Cisco. CITIZEN'S ARREST! I love a good citizen's arrest." [Dlisted]
• David Bowie's stepdaughter, Stacia Lipka, won an $80,000 settlement against the City of New York after what sounds like a harrowing ordeal. "Lipka claimed Detectives Richard Vecchio and John Holbert violated her rights by photographing her nude body after she reported having been raped and was on suicide watch in October 2003…In addition to the lewd photo shoot at Staten Island's St. Vincent's Hospital, Lipka also claimed Vecchio molested her during one official visit." Vecchio was acquitted of criminal charges but was fired from the NYPD. [NYP]
• Which Celebs have the most followers on MySpace? Zach Braff, Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez. A truly distinguished trio! [AP]
• Music icon Quincy Jones is sad about kids today and their lack of knowledge about music history. "I was in Seattle about a month ago, and I asked a kid, 'What do you think about Louis Armstrong?' And he said, 'I've heard the name,'" Q laments. "I said, 'What do you think about Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker and Coltrane?' He said, 'I've never heard of them.' And that hurts me a lot. Because it's easier to get where you're going if you know where you came from." Then he added, "Now get the hell off my yard!" [CNN]

I'm just going to give you the full transcript to highlight the ridiculousness:

KING: Didn't you suffer from depression?
CARREY: Yes, yes. I'm on a manic high right now. Can't you tell?
KING: How did you get through that to this?
CARREY: Well, that's another thing. You know at the risk of like opening up the whole Tom Cruise Prozac argument, you know, I don't disagree in many ways. I think Prozac and things like that are very valuable to people for short periods of time. But I believe if you're on them for an extended period of time, you never get to the problem. You never get to see what the problem is, because everything is just kind of OK. And so, you don't deal. And people deal when they get desperate.
KING: So how did you do it?
CARREY: I take supplements.
KING: Vitamins?
CARREY: Yes — well, it's not — well, it is vitamins. But it's also certain elements of the brain like Tyrosine and hydroxytryptophan that they're treating depression with now. It is a natural substance that's in your brain. Instead of being a Serotonin inhibitor, which just uses the serotonin you have and Prozac and things like that — it just uses the Serotonin you have and it doesn't allow it go back into the receptor. It metabolizes your serotonin after a while and you have to keep taking more and more to feel good. This actually creates dopamine and creates serotonin. It's a wonderful thing. It's amazing. I'm going to talk a lot about it in the near future.
KING: You're going to write about it?
CARREY: Yes.

Look, these "supplements" seem to have worked for Jim Carrey, and good for him. But Prozac works for other people, and not just for short periods of time. And I'm sure those people don't really want to hear some L.A.-fried new agey bullshit about how they're just not "getting to the problem" or "dealing with their issues." At the beginning of the clip, he babbles on about how getting "mugged in an alleyway [or] hit with a brick in the face" is the best thing that ever happened to you because it's "how the universe works." Pretty easy for someone who gets $20 million a movie to say, right?

CNN Larry King Live Transcript 12/15/08 [CNN]

They're also over-prescribed by a health care system that's in bed with big pharma. Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, were accused earlier this year of suppressing a third of the drug trials they performed in order to win FDA approval. From the New York Times report, it sounds like some of Lilly's original trials had results similar to the University of Hull: "In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin."

According to Dr. Paul Keedwell, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, the fact that Prozac might not work is a good thing, because depression only makes you stronger. "In its severe form [depression] is terrible and life-threatening, but for many it is a short-term painful episode that can take you out of a stressful situation for a while, according to Keedwell. "It can help people to find a new way of coping with events or your situation, and give you a new perspective, as well as making you more realistic about your aims."

Again, a resounding No shit. Being happy all the time is not only impossible, but dreadfully boring and creatively stifling. There is a range of human emotions that we're all meant to feel. Dealing with post-modern malaise will, for most of us, be a life-long struggle, and severe depression (as anyone who has ever experienced it knows) is a different animal entirely. So to conclude, Prozac doesn't work for everyone, it's normal to be depressed sometimes, and big pharmaceutical companies are filled with crooks and liars. Call me when they discover that Prozac makes you grow a second vagina.

[Image via AdBusters.]

Anti-Depressants 'Of Little Use' [BBC News]
Depression Makes Sufferers Stronger' [Telegraph]
Researchers Find A Bias Toward Upbeat Findings On Antidepressants [New York Times]

Earlier: What's The Difference Between A "Real" Depressive And A "Lazy" Pill Freak?
In Defense Of Depression

But back to happy marriages: According to Time, "A 2006 paper that tracked mortality over an eight-year period found that people who never married were 58% likelier to die during that time than married folks were. Married people have lower rates of all types of mental illnesses and suicide." What's more, James Coan, a neuroscientist from the University of Virginia, says that a husband is just as good as Advil.

Coan and his colleagues conducted an experiment in which married women underwent brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the scans, the women were told they were going to receive a painful electric shock. The researchers then watched to see how the subjects' brains responded to the threat and found that among happily married women, hypothalamus activity declined sharply if husbands held their wives' hands during the experiment. Women who reported being less satisfied with their marriage—and women whose hands were held by strangers—got little such relief ... "This suggests," he says, "that your spouse may function as an analgesic."

Marry Me [Time]
Sorry, But Marriage And Sex DON'T Go Together [Daily Mail]
Wildly In Love [Time]

Related: One Is The Loveliest Number [Salon]

Here's the thing: as someone who's been clinically depressed before, I can say without reservation that depressed people are fucking terrible to be around. They're whiny and boring and terrifically self-involved. Obviously it's their illness talking and depressed people should be treated with care and affection by their friends, but when you're reading a memoir, you're essentially hanging out with the narrator for 300 some odd pages. Unless these women are fantastic writers or have something revolutionary to say on the subject of X-chromosome blues, I imagine these books are going to be a painful slog. Just reading Merritt's piece in the Observer was an exercise in cliché and canned facts. "I couldn't cope with the smallest decisions," Merritt writes. "Often I didn't eat because the effort of deciding what wanted and then preparing it seemed as daunting as running a marathon." I'm not trying to belittle Merritt's depression, but her writing — that marathon metaphor? — is about as innovative as Wonder Bread. Not to mention the fact that she spends several paragraphs talking about the over-prescription of Prozac and other SSRIs, which was news in like, 1997.

I'll reserve final judgment until I read these books in their entirety, but in the meantime if you want to read a truly brilliant memoir of madness, check out Sophie's Choice scribe William Styron's Darkness Visible. If any of these new crop of bummermoirs comes even close to Styron's beautiful despair, I'll eat my hat.

A New Plague Facing Women [Guardian]

Earlier: <a href="http://jezebel.com/gossip/sigh/elizabeth-wurtzel-hot-crazy-depressive-genius-writer-slut-is-now-40-316249.php

Elizabeth Wurtzel, Hot Crazy Depressive Genius Writer Slut, Is Now 40">Elizabeth Wurtzel, Hot Crazy Depressive Genius Writer Slut, Is Now 40

Do Antidepressants Really Ruin Your Love Life?

Whoa, whoa wait. Back. It. Up. I've never experienced any sexual side effects, so I decided to do a little research to see if her stats held water. And just by doing a quick Google search, I found several articles refuting that 70 percent statistic. Take this article from the Harvard School of Public Health, which summarizes several studies on the sexual side effects of SSRI users and reports that the highest percentage of sexual side effects in any of the studies is 34%. (Strangely, the fear-mongering subhead of the Psychology Today article, "How SSRIs Wreak Havoc On Courtship", is just as misleading, as the article itself notes that a diligent shrink will work with a patient to find the right combination of meds that you know, doesn't clit-block an orgasm.)

But could I be calling bullshit on this study prematurely? Perhaps! So I'd like to see how the medicated Jezzies out there stack up to Psychology Today's statistics. Take our poll below, won't you?
I can't wait to hear what you pillheads are experiencing.

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Sex, Love, and SSRIs [Psychology Today]
My Boyfriend is on Zoloft [Psychology Today]
The Power of Love [Psychology Today]