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a b s t r a c t Anti-depressant treatment can be viewed as an exercise of biopower that is articulated through policies and practices aimed at the reduction of depression, population healthcare costs and effects on labour force productivity. Drawing upon a feminist governmentality perspective, this article examines the discourses that shaped women’s experiences of antidepressant medication in an Australian qualitative study on recovery from depression. The majority of women had been prescribed anti-depressants to treat a chemical imbalance in the brain, manage symptoms and restore normal functioning. One-third of participants identifi ed anti-depressants as helpful in their recovery, while two-thirds were either highly ambivalent about, or critical of, medication as a solution to depression. Thirty-one women who identifi ed the ‘positive’ benefi ts of anti-depressants actively constituted themselves as biomedical consumers seeking to redress a chemical imbalance. The problem of depression, the emergence of molecular science and the push for pharmacological solutions are contributing to the discursive formation of new subject positions – such as the neurochemically defi cient self. Three themes were identifi ed in relation to medication use, namely restoring normality, signifying recovery success and control/uncertainty. Anti-depressant medication offered women a normalized pathway to successful recovery that stood in stark contrast to the biologically defi cient and morally failing self. These women’s stories importantly reveal the gender relations and paradoxes arising from biopolitical technologies that shape selfhood for women in advanced liberal societies.