In Women, What is ATD? (1 Viewer)

antidepressants.
nasty little things take away the highs and lows and leave you bland and lethargic and apathetic.
 
Thanks for that. Came across a mention of "ATD" in the poem "love is a dog from hell", p. 229-230, from the same book, last night, and wondered what it was myself. Now I know. Cheers (without the need of ATDs)!
 
antidepressants.
nasty little things take away the highs and lows and leave you bland and lethargic and apathetic.

Antidepressants work for some people - prozac nation, etc. Personally I think a nice bottle of red wine works as well, but then I have never been clinically depressed.
 
Prozac and that sort of antidepressant are pretty new. I think hoochmonkey is talking about major antidepressants like thorazine. When I was a drug-seeking youth (aka the good old days) I once took one of these only to end up feeling exactly like hoochmonkey describes... deadened and just wishing I could go to sleep until it wore off.
 
Thorozine is for psychotic problems not depression, like bi-polar, schizophrenia, etc. Never heard of it being used for depression, but I could be wrong, maybe thorozine was used for other stuff in the old days, but it is one powerful anti-psychotic!
 
My cousin used to sleep all the time when he was on a variant of Thorazine. In any case, I've been mostly enjoying Women. It's been reading like Hot Water Music I think in that it's like a bunch of short stories (but in this case the craziness is mostly due to Lydia, who also happens to tie the narrative together). Although, this has caused me not to be able to read it for an hour or more at a time.
 
the first time i read women, i really didnt like it very much. the second time i read it, i was reborn and now its a favorite of mine.
 
It's mentioned in chapter three.

I can't find anything about it in chapter three! It must be in another chapter (unless they fucked up when they translated it into danish)...
 
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It might not be in Chapter three but it's definitely within a chapter on either side. The acronym might have been translated out. In any case, the acronym is used probably 4 more times in the book (as I have now finished it).
 
I've checked chapter four. The fucking danish edition don't mention ATD. Only that Lydia had a breakdown and spent time in an asylum, nothing about medication. That only goes to show that Buk has to be read in english. You loose too many details in translation. Thank god I only have three of my Buk books in danish (Women, Factotum and Hollywood). I'll have to buy the english editions or I'll need ATD's as well...:)
 
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You know Klaus Lynggaard. He probably had a few of those pills during translating:p But aside of that he has done a pretty good job don't you think?
 
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I've seen him on tv many times. He's a writer and not a translater per se. I've compared "Ham on rye" in english with his translation into danish and he does take some liberties with the language here and there. F.ex. he translates the word "crazy" into "dybt go'nat" ( something like "far out" in english). I think he should have used the danish word for crazy instead of choosing a slang expression. He's not the worst choice for translating Buk into danish but I wish he would have stayed clear of danish slang and the like. And if he don't know what ATD is, he should find out. Instead he chooses to ignore it, which to me is a kind of censorship. Lydia was on ATD's in "Women". That's important to know. You can't just leave it out...
 
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ATD wasn't used in reference to Lydia, it was used in reference to an (until later, I believe) unnamed fat girl.
 
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I see. So it's not Lydia but another girl. Still, it's left out of chapter four. You said in an earlier posting that the word ATD appears about four more times in the book. I have'nt checked the rest of the book in danish yet, but my guess is that it's left out completely since it's not in chapter four. Anyway, it just shows you that one should'nt read books in translation when you don't have to...:)
 
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It's used less than a half dozen times I know for sure. Lydia wasn't as far as I can tell, but she probably could have used some.
 
Nobody was taking antidepressants in the 70s when Women was written. I believe "ATD" refers to anti-thyroid drugs. "April was on ATD and fat." A side effect of these drugs is weight gain.
 
Thanks David. I believe you are correct. I dug around and saw there was a piece called "ATD Or You And We". There was an alternate title/version listed called "AFDC for you and me". AFDC seems to be a much less obscure welfare program. Presumably these terms were common 40 or more years ago.
 
Nobody was taking antidepressants in the 70s when Women was written...]
They were, but not in the volume of today, Sixties and Seventies it was Benzodiazepines that were being overused, highly addictive and over prescribed.

Prozac and that sort of antidepressant are pretty new. I think hoochmonkey is talking about major antidepressants like thorazine. When I was a drug-seeking youth (aka the good old days) I once took one of these only to end up feeling exactly like hoochmonkey describes... deadened and just wishing I could go to sleep until it wore off.
Thorazine is an antipsychotic with a tranquillizing effect, if you're not psychotic... and I don't think you are, at all chronic:) then it would make you want to sleep or keep you out of mischief a while.
 
They are actually among the most commonly-prescribed antidepressants in the U.S. Although they are commonly viewed as tranquilizers/anti-anxiety drugs, the same nervous system effects caused by benzodiazepines to treat anxiety are effective in the treatment of depression.
 
The title of the article you cite might lead one to depend on the title for clarification or "proof" of your statement. Benzodiazepines vs antidepressants suggests two classes; one for benzodiazepines and one for antidepressants. Quoting from what you linked to:

"While there has been a shift in recent years toward using such newer antidepressants as SSRIs and SNRIs as first-line treatments for anxiety disorders instead of benzodiazepines..."

"In trials that compared benzodiazepines with the newer antidepressants..."

I dunno; these two statements suggest to me that benzodiazepines have therapeutic indications as antidepressants; albeit perhaps not on the cutting edge. There's plenty of evidence out there that benzodiazepines have been prescribed as antidepressants.

Now, whether they are actually effective in that capacity is subject for debate. The context of this thread is what ATDs meant back in the '70s. It seems clear to me that they were prescribed as antidepressants back in the '70s and '80s,
 
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:wb:
Benzodiazepines are not antidepressants.

I didn't say they were antidepressants.If it reads that way, it's bad writing on my part, I'm sorry, I didn't think they needed any explaination as to which drug group they belong; they are depressants, or anxiolytics as they are called now.

They were, but not in the volume of today, Sixties and Seventies it was Benzodiazepines that were being overused, highly addictive and over prescribed.
Massively overprescribed, particularly to women, but as early as the mid sixties their negative effects were being attacked culturally, with books like Jacquelin Susann's Valley of the dolls and The Rolling Stones song "Mother's Little Helper" long before Roche (Valium) and others, along with GP's started to put the brakes on prescribing so easily.
But we've discovered it's a welfare benefit reference, I thought it might have been some reference to a local CB Radio thing. Glad I didn't say.:wb:
 
No doubt they were Purple and are, but not good practice. However if there is a high degree of anxiety along with depression which there can be, what an easy choice - to prescribe another pill. Certainly in the sixties and seventies, women across the U.S and Western Europe were going to their Gps in droves complaining of anxiety and depression/stress. Valium was seen as a wonder drug, It's name derived from latin, meaning be well and strong or somesuch. Roche chose very cunningly. turned out to be the first billion dollar drug.
 
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"While there has been a shift in recent years toward using such newer antidepressants as SSRIs and SNRIs as first-line treatments for anxiety disorders instead of benzodiazepines..."
Read more carefully. SSRIs and SNRIs are newer antidepressants than TCAs and she was talking about how most of the studies were comparing benzos with TCA's even though the newer antidepressants (SSRIs and SNRIs) are prescribed more often.

And yes I think a medical article comparing the two is pretty good evidence they are not the same. By the way we are only having this conversation because you have not actually taken antidepressants (be grateful for this). If you had you would surely not be suggesting they are the same type of drug as Xanax or Valium..

The point of this in regards to Bukowski is that the term "antidepressants" did not hit the popular lexicon until Prozac became legal and popular which was in the late eighties and thus not particularly likely to have impacted his writing.

On a more positive note I came to this thread because I did not know what ATD was. Now I know. Thanks everyone.
 
If you had you would surely not be suggesting they are the same type of drug as Xanax or Valium.
I'm not suggesting that antidepressants are necessarily "the same type of drug" as Xanax or Valium. Many classes of drugs (from a chemical structure standpoint) can have therapeutic indications for various conditions. No one type of drug is an antidepressant; nor are Xanax or Valium necessarily efficacious against a single condition (italics indicate that they may be most efficacious against a single condition, but as an illustrative example, many drugs have therapeutic benefit in a variety of conditions).

All I'm really trying to demonstrate is that benzodiazepines have shown antidepressant activity/efficacy:

http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/406244

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0006322395000497 (Note that alprazolam, which is indicated here as a possible option for those cases where other antidepressants are contraindicated, etc., is Xanax.)

This paper indicates that benzodiazepines have been used in conjunction with antidepressants to reduce anxiety and possibly increase efficacy of the antidepressant (in the interest of full disclosure; note that anxiety can no doubt lead to depression, so an anti-anxiety drug could also be viewed as an "indirect" antidepressant): http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11869584

The age of these articles suggests that, in the context of this thread (the 1970s), benzodiazepines may well have been prescribed as antidepressants. There's enough evidence for me to decide that this is a reasonable conclusion; especially in contrast to being certain that it is unreasonable.
 
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"Find what you love and let it kill you with antidepressants."
Charles Bukowski
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