1) The article discusses how many teenagers today exhibiting moodiness or rebelliousness are being prescribed antidepressants and stimulants, when in the past such behaviors were considered normal parts of adolescence and development. 2) It argues that widespread medication is suppressing important aspects of growing up and cultural change, as seen in iconic figures like Holden Caulfield who would likely be medicated today. 3) While acknowledging medications can help some teens with serious conditions, it questions their overuse for normal developmental behaviors and suggests non-medical support may be better for many borderline cases.

1. The Danger of
Suppressing Sadness
What if Holden Caulfield had been
taking Prozac?
BY WALTER KIRN
Considering his wealth of symptoms--lethargy, forgetfulness, loss of interest in friends and
studies--can there be any doubt that Holden Caulfield, the dropout hero of J.D. Salinger's
1950s masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye, would be on Luvox, Prozac or a similar drug if he
were a teenager today? No doubt whatsoever. A textbook teen depressive by current standards,
Caulfield would be a natural candidate for pharmaceutical intervention, joining a rising
number of adolescents whose moodiness, anxiety and rebelliousness are being interpreted
as warning signs of chemical imbalances. Indeed, if Caulfield had been a '90s teen, his
incessant griping about "phonies" and general hostility toward mainstream society might have
been nipped in the neurological bud. The cultural consequences? Incalculable.
With the stroke of countless pens on thousands of prescription pads, the American coming-of-age
experience--the stuff of endless novels, movies and pop songs--could gradually be rendered
unrecognizable. Goodbye Salinger, Elvis and Bob Dylan; hello psychopharmacology. "The kids in
my school traded Zoloft and Prozac pills the way kids used to trade baseball cards," says Stephen
Morris, an Episcopal priest and former chaplain at a Texas parochial school. Of course, this
school experience doesn't prove that schoolyards everywhere have turned into bustling
prescription-drug bazaars. But Morris, who headed a schoolwide committee called
Addressing Behaviors of Concern, recalls that "the problems we focused on were not
dramatically different from my own youthful experiences." At least three-quarters of the time,
says Morris, the kids in question were placed on medication in what he saw as the beginning of a
vicious cycle that frequently worsened the original problem. "Challenges that teachers used
to handle are being handed over to psychiatrists. Instead of dealing with kids inside the classroom,

2. they yank them out, put them on drugs and stick them back in with glazed eyes a few days later.
No wonder the kids end up as outcasts."
Such outcasts may someday form their own majority, if this trend continues. The pain and confusion of
growing up, once considered the proper subject of gloomy poetry read under the blankets and angry rock
songs rehearsed in the garage, can now mean a quick ticket to the doctor's office. And it doesn't take a lot of
acting up for a restless teenager to attract professional attention. On a website sponsored by Channel One, a
television network for school-age youth, a recent posting written with the help of the National Association
for Mental Illness classified the following behaviors as possible symptoms of manic depression in teens:
"increased talking--the adolescent talks too much," "distractibility," "unrealistic highs in self-esteem--for
example, a teenager who feels specially connected to God."
That last one is a doozy. And heartbreaking. Could it be that Cassie Bernall, who bravely professed her
religious faith while staring down the barrel of a gun at the height of the Columbine massacre, was not so
much a hero and a martyr as an untreated candidate for lithium? For the education establishment to go on
red alert at the first sign of spirituality in their students would be a devastating development.
What is happening here? For better or worse, an institutional drug culture has sprung up in the
hallways of All-American High, mimicking the one already established among depressed
adults. As was pointed out in the May issue of Harper's magazine, the line between illicit,
feel-good drugs such as marijuana and amphetamines and legal mood-altering
substances such as Luvox, Wellbutrin, and Effexor is a blurry one. Many of the same
optimistic claims--enhanced concentration, decreased anxiety, a renewed capacity for feeling
pleasure--are made for both types of magic bullet, whether they are bought on the street or in
a pharmacy. A profoundly mixed message is being sent to teens when certain substances are
demonized for promoting the same subjective states touted on the labels of other compounds.

3. Adolescents, who are famously alert to hypocrisy among their elders, will surely be the first to
catch this irony.
At least one hopes so. Teenage skepticism--Holden Caulfield's bitter gift for
discerning inconsistencies in the solemn pronouncements of adults--may be one of the
troubling traits on the medicators' target list. A pill that tones down youthful b.s. detectors would
certainly be a boon to parents and teachers, but how would it enrich the lives of teenagers? Even if
such a pill improved their moods--helping them stick to their studies, say, and compete in a
world with close to zero tolerance for unproductive monkeying around--would it not rob
them (and the rest of us) of a potent source of social criticism, political idealism and cultural
change? The trials and tribulations of growing up yield wisdom for all involved, both kids and
parents. The young pose a constant challenge to the old, often an uncomfortable one, almost
always an unexpected one, but meeting that challenge with hastily filled prescriptions may be
bad medicine for everybody.
For teens who need medication just to function or lessen the real dangers they might pose to
others or themselves, the new medications may truly be miraculous. I know from my own
experience with clinical depression (contracted as an adult and treated with a combination of
therapy and drugs) that such diseases are real and formidable, impossible to wish away. But for
kids in the murky emotional borderlands described in books like The Catcher in the Rye,
antidepressants, stimulants and sedatives aren't a substitute for books and records, heroes and
antiheroes. "I get bored sometimes," Holden Caulfield says, "when people tell me to act my
age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am--I really do--but people never notice it. People never
notice anything." Maybe if people start noticing first and medicating second, more of today's
confused young Caulfields will stand a chance of maturing into Salingers.