Wellbutrin: the Happiest of Happy Pills

     The marketing copywriter at Burroughs Wellcome who came up with the brand name Wellbutrin for bupropion in 1974 was a genius. After two decades of widespread use of the tongue-in-cheek term “happy pills” for antidepressants, the naming of Wellbutrin for the synthesized drug bupropion created by chemist Nariman Mehta in 1969 conveyed all of the hopeful enthusiasm of “happy pill” without any of the ridicule.

     It was like the mass miracle of soma, the synthetic mood drug from Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. Like soma, Wellbutrin could act as an instant escape from reality to replace religion, traditional medicine, and alcohol by giving you a permanent “holiday” from reality.

     Well…butrin. Rolls so smoothly off the tongue. Perfect. 

     The eternally optimistic “Wellbutrin” tag helped propel the drug to 30,000,000 prescriptions per year by 2023. It had become the third most prescribed antidepressant by then and it made a fortune for then manufacturer Glaxo-Smith Kline. Almost $6 billion in just one short pre-2012 period alone.

     That was the figure revealed during the massive lawsuit over Wellbutrin that cost GSK a $3 billion settlement of civil and criminal charges for its illegal off-label marketing of the drug. It certainly remained a happy pill for GSK as they measured their revenue/penalty dollar ratio. 

     Besides its happy little name, Wellbutrin also became known as a popular antidepressant without the conventional antidepressant drawback of weight gain. In fact, many of those prescribed Wellbutrin lost weight.

     Of course they did. It’s “speed.” 

     That explains the black box side effects warnings for insomnia, anxiety, and high blood pressure. When you’re tweaking, you do feel pretty good, but there are these minor drawbacks. There are some other more major drawbacks, though, like seizures, eating disorders of anorexia and bulimia, and death from liver failure.

     Wellbutrin is quite easily available, if you have the right shrink. Anybody who has a “major depressive disorder” can get it. That 1980 DSM III diagnostic label can be given to somebody who has been experiencing a low mood, some hopelessness, and a loss of interest in activity for just two weeks. Of course, if one has “seasonal affective disorder” – feeling low during the winter, for instance — one can also be prescribed this little happy pill to get you through all those cold, lonely nights. The Center for Disease Control did state in a 2026 report, though, that there was no link discovered between seasons, sunlight or latitude location and depression rates. Ah, well.

     Don’t tell a prescribing psychiatrist that, though. It might make him unhappy.