Pharmakon (novel)

Pharmakon is a 2008 novel written by the author Dirk Wittenborn. Though a fictional novel, it was greatly influenced by Dirk's relationship with his father, who was a psychologist.

The novel is written in 3 different parts. The first part, entitled "Book One," is about a psychologist by the name Will Friedrich who is competing in the competitive Yale psychology department in the 1950's for recognition. He decides to pursue creating a anti-depressant out of a plant he heard of called "The Way Home." Though much research and testing, he is finally able to create a drug ready to be experimented on people. The trial commences and Dr. Friedrich receives good news able his product; the drug works at stopping depression. However, when one of the patients of his drug trial is taken off the drug, he goes through serious withdrawal and creates a hit list. After murdering Dr. Friedrich's business partner, he attempts to murder Will Friendrich but is found by the police. Sadly, through all of the commotion, Will's youngest son becomes lost and is later found dead.

The 2nd part of the novel occurs 7 years later and is told from the perspective of Will's newborn son, Zach. Will moved his family away from the Yale community in attempts to run away from the murderer in his past. Zach is sheltered and grew up not knowing about his family's prior life at Yale, in order to protect him from the horror's of his family's past. However, this lack of information hurts Zach when the convicted murderer escapes from the mental hospital and kidnaps Zach, though eventually lets him go for some unknown reason. This event haunts Zach for the rest of his life, and the rest of the 2nd part of the novel follows Zach growing up and how that incident affected him.

The 3rd part of the novel deals with Zach as a grown up and his drug problem. He tries to piece his life together, but he pushed away most of his family and he finds himself alone. The novel ends focusing back on Will Friedrich, as he wonders where he went wrong raising his children.

In the media, the book has not received much attention but has earned multiple raving reviews from credible sources such as The New York Times and The Seattle times. It currently has 3.5/5 star rating from users on Amazon.com.

Plot Summary

The novel Pharmakon is divided into three parts within the book. The first part of the novel, titled “Book 1”, takes place in the 1950’s and centers around Will Friedrich; a middle aged, nontenured professor of psychology at Yale University. Though extremely smart and known around campus for his ability to take a set of data and “calculate the standard deviation in his head”, Will is having a hard time figuring out an idea to climb the social ladder into the upper circles of the Yale elite. This all changes when will overhears Dr. Bunny Winton about an exotic plant called “gai kan dong” or , “The Way Home.” She describes how this plant has been used by a native tribe in New Guinea to calm people after traumatic events. Friedrich sees this plant as a possibility of creating an anti-depressant, and after a bit of research, tracks down Dr. Winton to see if she is willing to become his partner in experimenting with “The Way Home.” She agrees and they begin testing on the same plants used by the New Guinea tribe. After isolating the active ingredient in the plant, Winton and Friedrich test the drug on rats and experience positive results. Excited that this plant may actually provide a breakthrough in anti-depressant drugs, they decide to move forward and test “The Way Home” on human subjects. This is where Casper Gedsic is introduced into the story.

Casper Gedsic is originally described as a “bearded with pimples and peach fuzz, too shy to look a person in the eye.” We learn as the novel continues that he has contemplated suicide at least once before, and is a “highly functional obsessive compulsive with schizophrenic tendencies.” Casper decides to sign up for the drug trial for “The Way Home” an almost immediately begins to see a change on his perception of life. Things that once obsessively bothered Casper he is easily able to brush off, and instead of worrying about the world he starts to become confident with who he is. Casper’s new found confidence enables him to clean up his appearance and become friends with Whitney Bouchard, an extremely rich, Yale football player. Casper documents his relationship with Whitney through his sessions with Friedrich, which occur weekly to help document the drug’s effects on the users.

Although the drug initially just allows Casper to block out his insecurities, over time he becomes cocky and eager to social climb. During one of his sessions with Friedrich, he recalls his accounts of how he acts as though he comes from money in order to gain favor with Whitney’s friends. In another session, he speaks of how he had stole Whitney’s girlfriend, but it is okay because “everybody at the yacht club” does it. Friedrich takes note of Casper’s seemly complete disregard for Whitney’s feelings, but does not look into the matter any further. These sessions with Casper continue until the end of the drug trial.

After the drug trial concludes, Friedrich and Dr. Winton are both excited due to the positive results of the trial. Once home, Friedrich received a call from an intoxicated Whitney, talking about how Casper had changed ever since he stopped taking his medication and how he had created a list of everybody he blamed for his current state of despair, with Friedrich and Dr. Winton being at the top. Casper appears at Friedrich’s house while Will was outside with his wife and children. With a gun at his side, Casper begins to approach the unknowing Friedrich, but then for some unknown reason changes his mind and turns to leave. Friedrich spotted Casper as he is walking away with the gun and informs the police that Dr. Winton may be in danger. The police arrive at Winton’s home to see that Bunny Winton had been shot dead and her husband had been beaten in paralysis. The police immediately rush back to Friedrich’s house to protect him and his family in case Casper came back. As Friedrich was talking to the police and everybody was speculating why Casper may have left them alone at first, Will’s youngest son, Jack, disappeared. After much searching, they found his lifeless body next to a fallen birdbath in the garden outside. The next part of the novel, entitled “Book II” begins approximately seven years after the conclusion of the first part. Will Friedrich has moved his family away from the New England area into New Jersey in attempt to start over away from the Casper incident. Will quit his job at Yale and took a teaching job at Rutgers which, while less prestigious, made him a full professor at double his previous salary. Casper, being caught by the police, was able to convince a jury he was mentally unstable and was sentenced to a lengthy term in the Connecticut State Hospital for the criminally insane. Though Casper was locked away, the Friendrich’s wanted to disassociate themselves from him as much as they could, so when the baby Zach was born 2 years after Dr. Winton’s murder, the family kept everything from the past a secret. The rest of the story is told from the Zach’s perspective. It wasn’t until Zach was four and a half year’s old when he first heard that he had a brother named Jack who died before he was born. It was then he realized that his family had many secrets, though he didn’t find out anything about Casper until the age of seven. When Zach was seven, he was ashamed of the fact that he didn’t know how to swim. Will tried every psychological method to get through to Zach that he would be okay, but Zach said he was terrified of “losing touch with the bottom.” One day when Zach was left home under the care of his irresponsible older sister, and went outside alone to set up a lemonade stand. While he was attempting to make a proft, a man drove up and got out of his car and started talking to him. It came up that Zach was afraid to swim, and the man persuaded Zach to get in his car under the premise that he would teach him. The man took Zach to a remote lake and allowed Zach to ‘fall’ into the water. Zach was struggling and thought he was going to drown, but as he started having too much difficultly the man saved him and brought him home, dropping him off at the side of the road before speeding off.

The reader then learns that this mysterious man was Casper Gedsic, who had recently escaped from the mental hospital with plans on extracting revenge on Will Friendrich. After all these years, Casper was convinced that it was Friedrich’s fault that he felt depressed again once he stopped taking “The Way Home.” When Zach gets dropped off at his house, his parents are frantically searching for him with help from the police. They soon are able to realize that it was Casper who had taken Zach “swimming”, but they are dumbfounded on why he would let Zach live. After about a week of searching by the police, they are finally able to track down Casper once again and place him in a higher security mental hospital, which he never escapes from for the remainder of his life.

Though Zach was relatively safe, this event traumatized him for the rest of his life. The fact that a notorious murderer with a grudge for his family was the same man who taught him how to swim haunted Zach, especially because he became fond of Casper before he found out he was a known murderer. The novel then skips ahead a few years to when Zach and his brother, Willy, are attending the same private high school and the family has moved into the mansion with all the money their father was now making. At school, Zach is having an issue escaping Willy’s shadow due mainly to the fact that Willy is athletic and popular while Zach is a bit introverted and anti-social. All of this changes when Zach breaks down to a girl he likes and begins to tell her all about Casper. The word that Zach came face to face with a murderer spreads around school quickly, and increases Zach’s popularity tremendously. He starts to be bombarded with requests by people to tell them about “the boogieman” that has haunted the Friendrich’s his entire life. Zach’s torn because he has no resentment towards Casper, while the rest of his family still views Casper Gedsic as the devil. This divide between his world view and his parent’s world view cause him to begin to rebel. He soon gets into drugs, which came fairly easily because many other popular students were also using illegal substances. He does all of this without his father’s knowledge, and though he wants to admit to his parents his drug problem at times, he never lets them into his world. He goes through high school this way, and eventually gets into Yale largely due to his essay “Growing Up With Casper”, which his father is appalled by.

Part 3 of the novel, entitled “Book 3”, begins 21 years after Zach received his acceptance letter. He his laying on the floor of his sisters guest house going through cocaine withdrawal trying to figure out where life went wrong. The reader learns that Zach dropped out of Yale and moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. It is there that he started his affair with cocaine, but after many years of addiction he is attempting to get clean. He hasn’t talked to a majority of his family for years, especially his parents. He decides he wants to try and contact them now that he is clean, but his attempt goes horribly awry when his father see’s him and recoils thinking that Zach is just there to rob them. This enrages Zach and he storms off and goes live with an old friend in the city, never speaking to his parents again.

A few more years pass and Zach still hasn’t talked to his family. The novel then puts the focus back on Will Freidrich. He and his wife Nora are still happily married, living in their mansion by themselves now that all their kids have grown up. Will reflects on where everything went wrong for his children, because none of their lives turned out how they had hoped they would. He recalls his own childhood, and begins thinking that if he was in his thirty’s knowing what he knows now, he would be able to make a real difference in the world. “Old man thoughts,” he describes them, but Will is now an old man. The book ends with Will laying in bed at night contemplating on these introspective thoughts, trying to cry because he knows from psychology the therapeutic values of tears, but he is unable to. After all the anti-depressants he had helped make during his lifetime, he wonders if there is any way somebody can prescribe tears.

Critical Reception

Pharmakon has received mixed reviews from critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times describes Pharmakon as “a smart, eccentric coming-of-age story about an entire culture’s maturation process, not just one about the workings of a single family.” The Seattle Times writer Mark Lindquist declared Pharmakin as “a smart, pharmaceutical pick-me-up.” Though there are multiple good reviews, there have also been some negative ones. Due to the somewhat disjointed way the story was written, some critics found it a bit hectic. David Daley of USA Today said that the novel was “moments of genius, surrounded by confusion and bloat.” Other critics, such as Lionel Shriver of The Telegraph, felt that the story started off great, that it started to lag towards the second half making it “almost a wonderful novel.” Overall, the book has been received well and has been rated 3.5/5 stars by the users of Amazon.com.

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