We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.

The line frames a sweeping diagnosis of contemporary adult life in the United States: material strain (debt), physical health crisis (obesity), and widespread coping through substances and pharmaceuticals (addicted and medicated). Read as a cultural critique, it suggests that many people are living under chronic stress and disconnection, turning to consumption—of credit, food, drugs, or prescriptions—to manage anxiety, shame, and overwhelm. In Brown’s broader work, such claims typically function as a preface to her argument that vulnerability, connection, and emotional literacy are antidotes to numbing behaviors and to the social pressures that drive them.