Photo by Sarah Jackson
I read with Post-It notes. Each time I find a quote or something of interest, I mark it with a colourful square. But when I read Katherine Sharpe’s Coming of Age on Zoloft it was starting to get ridiculous. Reading the Introduction, I’d marked each page. By Chapter Two I had a book that resembled a peacock and was becoming unwieldy. So I gave in. Which now gives Coming of Age the status in my library of being a book without Post-Its—which means the reverse of what it suggests.
Now based in Berkeley, Katherine met with me recently to talk about how she approached the book, how her viewpoint shifted over the writing of it, and where she finds herself now on the subject of mental health.
On writing the book:
The impetus for the book came at a moment when Katherine realized the prevalence of antidepressants amongst young people in the US. She was aged 19, sitting on a friend’s porch with some of her college girlfriends when the subject of antidepressants came up. For some reason, she blurted out to the group: ‘I take those,’ head down, expecting imminent ‘social excommunication.’ But the rest of the girls admitted that they did too. As Katherine wrote: ‘There were seven girls on that porch. Every single one of us, it turned out, was or had been on antidepressants… “This is really weird,” somebody said, and the rest of us mumbled assent.’
But what’s interesting about Coming of Age is that though it has aspects of her personal story—Katherine told me that she’d aimed for ‘less than half memoir’—it brings in other genres, like investigative reporting and science history. Katherine has ‘read a lot on depression’; given her ‘bookish’ nature, the act of research in and of itself was ‘comforting.’ The book assimilates this breadth in themes of self, other drug memoirs, and histories of psychopharmacology, and posits a view that is balanced, rather then vehement, on the subject.
On antidepressants:
At the beginning of our conversation Katherine mentioned that she had seen writing the book itself as a moment of defiance against the drugs: ‘When I was in college, I was worried that antidepressants might make me less creative,’ she said, ‘so the idea of writing about them felt like a way to gain control. Like if Zoloft takes away my creativity, then I’m going to write about Zoloft.’
She began writing the book in a critical spirit, but after interviewing others about their own antidepressant use, she felt she had to ‘honor the experiences’ of those who had positive as well as negative feelings about medication. Although Coming of Age had started from the perspective, and maintains the perspective, that ‘psychiatric drugs are overprescribed’, it also acknowledges that for some people ‘psychiatric drugs have an amazing impact.’ Some people were ‘clear about needing medications, while others really struggled with the decision to take them.’
On therapy:
One of the chapters I appreciated the most, which felt closest to my own experience, was that on therapy. Katherine sees this as the ‘heart of the book…’ It was also one of the first chapters written. In Coming of Age she describes how for her, talk therapy acted as a ‘shared pursuit of narrative.’ In the act of articulating our stories, we can start to grasp them. It’s the process of acquiring language that can frame, and make sense of, our emotional attitudes and experiences. But it was also the process of being in therapy that shifted her relationship to the drugs:
‘Therapy didn’t convince me that antidepressants were useless, but it did move me toward a more specific estimation of the things they can and can’t do. For me, I decided, antidepressants were great at blasting through the most acute states of anxiety and sadness…. But as I continued in therapy, I saw more clearly that there were things I had needed for a long time, as much or more than I needed drugs. Antidepressants had gotten me moving but they hadn’t given me the sense of direction I craved. They had picked me up, but they hadn’t made me more self-confident in any meaningful way.’
On being happy:
In writing Coming of Age, one of Katherine’s goals was to question how accurate and useful diagnostic labels like ‘depression’ really are. She noted that ‘the line between normal feelings and disordered feelings is not that stark.’ But we’ve come to label problem feelings as disorders more freely than ever. Over the past 20 years, we have become increasing confused about what normal emotional states and thoughts look like: as one of the therapists Katherine interviews in the book tells her, there’s been ‘a broader cultural shift that has blurred the line between mental illness and the baseline quotient of sadness, anxiety, and stress that into each life must fall.’ There are those things that are about just being a person and those things that could be determined as symptoms: the complicated part now is defining which is which. In Coming of Age, Katherine points out that receiving a psychiatric diagnosis is as likely to cause further distress as it is to give comfort. That’s why she cautions readers to start by asking whether negative feelings are pointing toward something that’s truly upsetting or stressful in their lives, rather than reaching for the conclusion that they’re a sign of something wrong inside.
On those other things:
The book ends in an interesting place, at quite a distance from the drugs with which it started. Through thinking through what makes people happy, how they can get their needs met, how they can best function in the world, you find yourself a long way from 15 minutes in a GP’s office and seemingly endless prescription renewals. So Katherine and I ended up talking about how we manage our approach to our emotional selves, rather than how we can find ways to take away visible signs of emotional stress. We discussed ‘accepting certain strands of a person’ which could be handled with medication, but instead to ‘choosing to deal with these another way.’ Towards the end of Coming of Age, Katherine realized this about herself:
‘As we put the basic pieces of the system in place, I realized that there were some things that were true whether I was on medication or not. Connections made me happy. Transitions were hard. I realized how many of my depressions had come at times when structure—school, a relationship, a job—was withdrawn, severing many familiar routines in one swoop. I started to appreciate that if I did certain things (spend time with a good friend, go to the gym, say “no” to obligations I didn’t really have time for), I’d feel better, and if I did other things (spend too much time without seeing people, pile on more commitments than I could manage in a certain span of time, indulge my crush on that emotionally vacant guy), I’d feel worse. Feelings, even my feelings, were subject to their own rules of cause and effect.’
On Berkeley:
Which brings us to today; in many ways Coming of Age is also a ‘nostalgic’ book; it’s about looking back over our earlier college selves and how we attempted, and sometimes failed, to establish our independence and identity over our twenties. So when I asked where Katherine finds herself now, we were into a different conversation entirely. We were no longer talking about Zoloft and cures, but about working out ways of actively negotiating our susceptibility to certain emotions, and of building consciousness and tools around how we might best function. I asked Katherine, who is new to the Bay Area, whether there are any places or resources locally that she finds comforting and beneficial, emotionally. She was kind enough to develop the ‘light-hearted list’ that follows. It’s specifically about the East Bay, but it points to broader ideas of how ‘People build what works for themselves.’
A short, steep, exposed hike to a hilltop grove of trees, and one of the best local views of SF and the Bay. Gorgeous at sunset. Literally feels like you can walk away from all of your problems. Access to this set of hills is probably the best thing about living in Berkeley/Oakland, in my opinion, and lots of these entries reflect it!
Another (faster, longer) opportunity to get away from it all. Check out local Meetup groups for cycling, or try a group ride with Grizzly Peak Cyclists
Open-water swimming with a lifeguard before 5pm, and at your own risk (and free) after 5pm. A little jewel of a lake nestled in the Oakland hills. Warm enough to swim in (and I am a temperature wuss). Really pleasant family scene during lifeguard hours.
A little jewel of a swimming
pool, outdoors, behind MLK Middle School, where Alice Waters started the Edible
Schoolyard program some years ago. Small fee, with different hours for lap swim
and free swim.
A Sunday afternoon picnic in
Willard Park + some time rambling through residential and commercial Berkeley
neighborhoods = intense decompression! Always good people watching in this
park.
The world's best grocery store. Every vegetable and fruit you can possibly imagine, cheap. Nourishment and abundance, half a mile from home.
Little known fact: the world class UC Berkeley libraries are open to the public (except the main stacks, though you can pay a fee and get a card to go in there, too). The Morrison Library is a large room inside of Doe Library that is furnished as a luxurious reading room: current literary periodicals, recent high-quality fiction and nonfiction books, couches and soft chairs, wrought iron gratings, thick carpet, dark wood fixtures. I could spend days and days in there...
[You’ve probably got this, but the descriptions are Katherine’s not mine!]
