The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers - Hardcover

Tone, Andrea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465086586 ISBN 13: 9780465086580

Publisher: Basic Books, 2008

Synopsis

Anxious Americans have increasingly pursued peace of mind through pills and prescriptions. In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that 40 million adult Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder in any given year: more than double the number thought to have such a disorder in 2001. Anti-anxiety drugs are a billion-dollar business. Yet as recently as 1955, when the first tranquilizer Miltown went on the market, pharmaceutical executives worried that there wouldn't be interest in anxiety-relief. At mid-century, talk therapy remained the treatment of choice.

But Miltown became a sensation the first psychotropic blockbuster in United States history. By 1957, Americans had filled 36 million prescriptions. Patients seeking made-to-order tranquility emptied drugstores, forcing pharmacists to post signs reading more Miltown tomorrow.” The drug's financial success and cultural impact revolutionized perceptions of anxiety and its treatment, inspiring the development of other lifestyle drugs including Valium and Prozac.

In The Age of Anxiety, Andrea Tone draws on a broad array of original sources manufacturers' files, FDA reports, letters, government investigations, and interviews with inventors, physicians, patients, and activists to provide the first comprehensive account of the rise of America's tranquilizer culture. She transports readers from the bomb shelters of the Cold War to the scientific optimism of the Baby Boomers, to the just say no” Puritanism of the late 1970s and 1980s.

A vibrant history of America's long and turbulent affair with tranquilizers, The Age of Anxiety casts new light on what it has meant to seek synthetic solutions to everyday angst.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrea Tone is Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine at McGill University. She is the author of numerous articles and books including Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, named one of the Best Books of 2001 by the Washington Post, and which inspired the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary on the birth control pill. Devices and Desires received wide acclaim. The New York Times described it as marvelously eye-opening” and American Scientist praised it as remarkable...richly textured...[and] engaging to read.” Her work has been featured on ABC, PBS, NPR, and the History Channel, and in the New York Times. She lives in Montreal.

Review:

O magazine
“A fascinating history of our dependence on downers.... Thoughtful, timely, and evenhanded."

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0465086586
• ISBN 13: 9780465086580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320