‘Prozac Nation’ author Elizabeth Wurtzel dies 

Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of the memoir “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America,” died yesterday at age 52 of complications from metastatic breast cancer. Her 1994 memoir, which chronicled Wurtzel’s struggles with depression, drug addiction, and self-harm, was widely regarded as having paved the way for more mainstream, confessional writing about mental health and other issues. In her second memoir, published in 2002 and called “More, Now, Again,” Wurtzel detailed her continued substance use disorder, including asking people to ship her cocaine overnight through FedEx. “I now live in the atmosphere of cancer,” she wrote after her 2015 breast cancer diagnosis. She had a double mastectomy, and after learning that her cancer was caused by a mutation in her BRCA gene, Wurtzel began advocating that people be tested for it sooner.