The Couple Who Medicates Together

To women attempting to keep careers well groomed, kids well loved, and partners intimately allied, the idea that a pill could somehow make the whole enterprise hum is definitely provocative. If one or both of us went on antidepressants, would we give the finger to each other's backs less—and have each other's backs more? Would we cut down on the bickering, making our houses happier, healthier places for everyone? Might we just—to bastardize that old Romeo Void song—like each other better if we medicated together?

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Or is even posing questions like these—when the Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in 10 Americans over 12 now takes an antidepressant (with women 40 to 59 being the drugs' biggest consumers), when Bloomberg Rankings tells us antidepressant use has increased apace with the unemployment rate—proof that the pharmaceutical-industrial complex has already succeeded in pathologizing normal life challenges?