I know this is not earth shattering or even unexpected behavior from this particular "author", but I didn't want to be alone in my annoyance. If only the notion of shame still existed in our culture, maybe we wouldn't have to put up with these shallow nincompoops anymore. What an outrageous bi***(I can say that, can't I--it was the title of one of her own books, after all.) ---the Queen---
Canadians, clean your house.
"The facts of the matter are that Venlafaxine was not adequately tested before it was licensed, that the true results of even those ridiculously short tests were not fully disclosed and that as a direct result real people have suffered real pain and anguish and suffered real losses - their homes, families, jobs and businesses.
The reports and articles, in particular, of Farah, Giakas, Moore, Parker and Pinzani referred to in the Social Audit Table and those of Settle, Boyd, Macbeth, Raby, Rosenbaum and Haddad (see additional sources) amount to a considerable body of evidence that Venlafaxine is addictive in a very real sense - that the onset of withdrawal symptoms can be so rapid and severe that patients are unable to discontinue the medication.
Likewise, the risk of long term treatment with Venlafaxine, particularly at higher dosage levels, is equally clear. Serotonin Syndrome is a potentially lethal condition which is easily diagnosed. Yet the condition is invariably misdiagnosed as a relapse of depression and treated in the worst way possible, by adding to or increasing the very medication that is causing the problem."
Remeron: "Most important fact about this drug:
Remeron makes some people drowsy or less alert, and may affect judgment and thinking. Don't drive or participate in any hazardous activity that requires full mental alertness until you know whether Remeron has this effect on you."
Wellbutrin: "Seizures are the perhaps the most worrisome side effect. Wellbutrin was removed from the market after its initial release due to the occurrence of seizures in some patients." Wellbutrin side effects.
Haldol: Haldol side effects.
"Haldol is an antipsychotic medication generally prescribed for the long term care of antipsychotic therapy.
Caution should be used prescribing this medication. Haldol can cause psychotic behavior and hallucinations. Haldol should never be taken within 14 days of antidepressant usage.
If you just reread the above paragraphs twice, you read correctly. It can and does cause the same psychotic reactions it is prescribed to treat."
Saturday, February 16, 2002 – Print Edition, Page F2
The last time Elizabeth Wurtzel was supposed to meet here for lunch, she never got on her flight from New York. "She has the flu," her publicist said, "and this time I believe her."
Wurtzel, pinup babe of the Prozac generation, is a recovering drug addict whose last remaining dependency is the first-person singular. In a 1998 interview with a New York newspaper, she breezed in late, removed her sunglasses and said, "I'm always late. Didn't they tell you I'd be late?"
In a 1995 interview with The Guardian, Wurtzel refused to answer her lobby intercom in New York, her door or her phone. Three hours later, her agent told the reporter and photographer that they would have to wait another day because the author had just had an awful week. "It's Tuesday afternoon," the reporter replied.
Wurtzel was just 26 when she wrote Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. Her memoir sold like, well, Prozac. On the book tour, she began taking heroin to survive the horrors of room service.
Publishers bid up her next book, about strong women in history like Bathsheba, Hillary Clinton and herself. The winning, or losing, publisher paid $500,000 (U.S.) for Bitch. It bombed. It turns out that Wurtzel, now 34, wrote it while snorting crushed Ritalin pills, which is also why she missed her deadline by a year. The effort of writing that last book is, brace yourself, the subject of her new book, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction.
At Bistro 990, I've been waiting so long the waitress thinks she's misunderstood and that I'm actually dining alone. She asks for my guest's name so she can escort her promptly to the table when and if she arrives. She's shown Wurtzel's new book, with its fetching author photo in tank top and jeans, blond hair tousled as if she just fell out of bed.
"Can't miss her," the waitress says in a clipped British accent.
A moment later, Wurtzel appears. She's in jeans that expose her pale, white midriff. Under a thin, blue turtleneck, she appears to be braless. Her famously generous breasts, bared for the cover of Bitch (and GQ magazine), look smaller, sadder and droopier.
The waitress offers to hang up Wurtzel's coat. The author hesitates. She rummages distractedly through the pockets. "I'm just afraid the busboy will spill something on it," says the waitress, who is herself blond, slim and attractive.
Wurtzel still hesitates. The waitress reassures her that the coat stand is right nearby. The author remains paralyzed. Finally, the waitress scoops up the coat, announcing briskly, "Just so it looks like I'm doing my job."
The waitress is Wurtzel's doppelganger. Looking at them both, you sense the unfairness of life. While one provides high maintenance, the other is high-maintenance.
A nearby table of four asks the waitress how she ended up in Canada. What they mean is: How did someone like her end up clearing tables?
"England is a country with a past. Canada is a country with a future," the waitress says.
Wurtzel, meanwhile, is a writer with a past. When she snorted Ritalin, she couldn't tell the difference between it and cocaine. "And they give this to six-year-olds," she says, putting in a plug for her book.
Her hands tremble as she studies the menu. She says she's clean now, but still on medication. Whatever it is, it seems to adversely affect her ability to make minor decisions.
"Is the monkfish good?" Wurtzel asks the waitress.
"The salmon is my favourite. The monkfish is good as well."
The author furrows her brow. "Oh. Okay. Well. You're actually saying the monkfish isn't that good."
"I just said the salmon is my favourite. Sorry. The monkfish is fine."
Wurtzel turns to me for help. So have the monkfish, I tell her.
Later, Wurtzel leans across the table. "The waitress scares me," she says. "Is this some secret Canadian thing I don't know about? Canadians are supposed to be nice."
Her enormous brown eyes, rimmed in charcoal, look genuinely puzzled. "It's the one way you really know you're not in the United States," she confides. "People are so, ah, subservient there. This is one thing the United States does better than anyone else on Earth: It's a service country."
Wurtzel grew up in that bastion of servility and subservience, New York City. The only child of parents who split when she was 2, she attended Orthodox Jewish schools, where she obsessed about the hair on her legs. At Harvard, she obsessed about comparative literature (and tried to kill herself). She also defaulted on her student loans.
At 24, she worked briefly as a pop-music critic for The New Yorker, then began writing absurdly narcissistic books. Random sampling (p. 54) of her latest oeuvre: 38 I's and 17 me's.
Last September, Wurtzel was at Bistro 990 for the Toronto International Film Festival's premiere of Prozac Nation,scheduled for release in May. Then she flew back to New York.
On Sept. 11, Wurtzel, who usually gets up at the crack of noon, was asleep when her mother called to say a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. "My main thought was: What a pain in the ass."
Her apartment was at ground zero, on Greenwich Street, south of Chambers. She could see the twin towers from her window. Or she could have, if she had bothered to get out of bed.
Then the second plane hit, and more people called. Wurtzel finally hauled herself up in time to watch one tower collapse. "I had not the slightest emotional reaction," she recalls. "I thought: 'This is a really strange art project.' "
Wurtzel takes a tiny bite of monkfish and ponders the worst terrorist attack in New York's history. "It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head."
She takes another bite of monkfish. "It was just beautiful. You can't tell people this. I'm talking to you because you're Canadian."
Then her windows blew in. Airplane chunks landed on her roof. Wurtzel crawled into the basement and was later removed from the building. To this day, she can't understand why everyone else was so upset. "I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."
Wurtzel became hysterical only when she realized she wouldn't be allowed back to fetch her cat. She used her psychiatrist's husband, who is head of the New York City hospital association, to get her past police lines.
"I cried about all the animals left there in the neighbourhood," Wurtzel says. But she has remained dry-eyed about all the human victims. "I think I have some kind of emotional block. I think I should join some support group for people who were there."
Asked if she has written about her eyewitness account of the World Trade Center attack, Wurtzel tosses her blond mane. "You know what was really funny? After the fact, like, all these different writers were writing these things about what it was like, and nobody bothered to call me."
She says she'd like to get back into reporting, but then corrects herself. "I don't want to tell other people's stories," she confides over a plate of chocolate-brownie ice cream. She means she wants to, brace yourself, write more about herself. "I don't think, when I tell my story, it's solipsistic. When I'm telling my story, it's other people's stories. It's connecting."
jwong@globeandmail.ca
Did somebody say "Bitch".
1) There are many many more of her type around than folks here might think.
2) They think that we are the ones who are what is wrong with America.
3) They control the media.
4) They control the education of your children.
Cold Bi**hes Anonomyous, maybe?