Lizzie is a prize-winning student heading off to Harvard for her freshman year, where she intends to study journalism and launch a career as a rock music critic. However, Lizzie's dysfunctional family situation includes an errant father and a neurotic, bitterly hypercritical mother who has led Lizzie to a struggle with depression. When her all-night, drug-fueled writing binges and emotional instability alienate her roommate and best friend, Ruby, as well as both her boyfriends, Lizzie seeks psychiatric counseling from Dr. Diana Sterling, who prescribes the wonder drug Prozac. Despite success as a writer and some mellowing out thanks to her medication, Lizzie begins to feel that the pills are running her life and faces some tough choices about her future.