Artificial Happiness

Examines the rise of psychotropic drugs; alternative medicine; the belief in endorphins as a way to maximize health through exercise; and medicine's investigations of spirituality — all during the past thirty years — fitting them together into a story that puts Americans at the center of a novel social experiment: helping people feel happy independent of the facts in their lives. Though well-intentioned, Dworkin identifies a dark side, asserting that Prozac, for instance, is freezing people in unsatisfactory relationships and jobs, nullifying their impulse to change, because of the "happiness" induced by the medicine. – from publisher description.