PMS gained fame (and became a great topic for Johnny Carson jokes) in 1980 in a widely reported trial in which the sentence of a British woman accused of murder was reduced because she claimed she was suffering from PMS. In 1994, a Virginia woman argued in court that when police arrested her for erratic driving, it was not due to alcohol but to PMS. She was acquitted of DWI.

(Note to myself: Figure out whom, or what, I can blame next time I rear-end the Dodge minivan in front of me while I'm rocking out, listening to the Dead on my car radio, and my foot slips off the brake.)

In 1997, the same husband-and-wife research team that concocted PMS Escape, Richard and Judith Wurtman, were granted by the FDA a method-of-use patent on Prozac to treat symptoms associated with PMS. Through a sublicensing arrangement with a company the Wurtmans founded, Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Lilly today retains rights to manufacture Prozac as a PMS treatment.

The usual dose for PMS relief is 20 milligrams a day, the same maintenance dose that most Prozac users take. PMS sufferers report the effects can be felt within 48 hours, while it can take as long as a month for Prozac and similar drugs to work against depression. Women who take the drug for PMS often can limit their intake just to the days when PMS hits the hardest, say the researchers.

Prozac (along with Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Celexa) belongs to a pharmacological family called SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Serotonin is like mind candy produced by the brain (and it's legal): the more serotonin, the greater the sense of well-being. SSRIs allow the brain's receptor nerve cells to continue to bathe in this soothing nectar.

There's a price to be paid for such bliss. Side effects hit as many as 75 percent (depending on whose statistics you believe) of those who take the drug. They include agitation, insomnia, nausea, headaches and a marked drop in libido. But going without sex may be a small price to pay for being rescued from PMS hell. And how many women in the clutches of PMS want to have sex anyway? And how many (non-masochistic) men would want to have sex with them?

Judith Wurtman, the MIT cognitive-brain scientist, puts it this way. Referring to studies of women with severe PMS, she said: "Serotonin gives a sense of vigor. It took away apathy, that blah feeling. It took away agitation, anxiety. It took away impulsivity and carbohydrate-eating binges. Women in the study could now recall things such as where they put their keys, whether they turned off the computer. It raised their self-confidence."

Like anyone else in the workplace, Wurtman easily recognizes the PMS-strafed woman aka bitch on wheels. "A female boss who praises her workers three weeks out of the month, then berates them when she has PMS, takes a tremendous toll on everyone in that workplace."

And at home. "A mother who is sometimes placid and sometimes a raving maniac makes a child wonder about the stability of his world," says Wurtman.

Personally, I am very glad Wurtman is not a man, saying all these horrible things about women.

The extreme form of PMS is called premenstrual dysphoric disorder. In up to 8 percent of premenopausal women, the condition is serious enough to rupture their lives and their families. Women between the ages of 25 to 34 are more than twice as likely to experience PMS than women 35 to 44. Menstrual cramps, by the way, are not considered part of PMS.

The federal judiciary has cleared the way for PMS to be classified as a disability, and (as such) a condition potentially protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Barbara Cavuoto, a payroll manager at Oxford Health Plans Inc., said she was excluded from senior management meetings at the Trumbull, Conn., company because of severe PMS, a condition about which her supervisor was aware. A federal district judge in Connecticut on June 22 ruled that a jury could determine whether Cavuoto's employers broke the law.

It is probably no surprise that Prozac has been approved for sale as PMS therapy. Prozac and other SSRIs have become like utility infielders. In addition to depression and now PMS, physicians often prescribe the drugs for panic attacks, anxiety, binge-eating, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), seasonal-affective disorder (SAD) and even something called CSD (compulsive-shopping disorder). The last "disorder" is not a lame stab at Rodney Dangerfield humor: Stanford University researchers are conducting a study of 24 shopaholics, all women, to see whether SSRIs can curb their wanton spending habits. The study is not being underwritten by the women's husbands.

Sign up to receive free e-mail updates from Salon -- now in 17 different varieties!