Americans' use of medications like Prozac has soared over the past few years. Is our growing pill habit a necessary antidote for our increasingly stressful lives, or do we just feel entitled to happiness on demand?

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Crippling Stress

It happened on a sultry September morning in 1998, right after Denise Pinel, then 38, dropped off her two sons for their first day back at school after a busy summer. Walking through the door of her Westminster, California, home, she felt achingly empty. Suddenly, Pinel was enveloped by a suffocating sense of dread: Her heart started racing, her head pounded, and she couldn't catch her breath. "I was so frightened; I thought I was having a heart attack," she recalls.

Her symptoms subsided after a few hours, but over the next two weeks she had several similar episodes. "I felt like I was spiraling out of control," says Pinel, who finally sought help from her family doctor. After reviewing her symptoms and giving her a physical, the doctor diagnosed panic attacks and gave Pinel a prescription for a tranquilizer. But the drug made her feel groggy, and its calming effects lasted only about six hours per dose. Once the pill wore off, the crippling anxiety returned, and soon the attacks were happening almost daily. So Pinel's physician prescribed an antidepressant that is also used to ease anxiety. He further urged her to seek counseling to sort out what was triggering her anxiety.

In therapy, Pinel learned to acknowledge all the stress she was under and give herself permission to be upset about it. Her firefighter husband would often put in 24-hour shifts at the firehouse, then go to a job site for the plumbing-contracting business he and Pinel ran together. Pinel felt like everything was on her shoulders: overseeing the business, doing all the household chores, managing the finances, and raising their two boys. "My husband was never home," says Pinel, who felt they had grown apart after 16 years of marriage. "But since he was sacrificing for his family, I felt I couldn't say anything." That fateful morning, all of her unresolved tension and bottled-up feelings flooded over her with the force of a tidal wave.

After much soul searching, Pinel and her husband divorced amicably. That was four years ago. Today they share custody of their sons, who are now 18 and 13, and Pinel works full time as a receptionist at a law firm. Although she still takes an antidepressant daily to keep her panic attacks from recurring, she also uses skills she learned in counseling to pinpoint her stressors and what she can do to alleviate them. "I'm more proactive now about lessening my stress when it starts to build up," she says, "rather than squelching my feelings."