NEW YORK, NY- Shares of drug maker Pfizer took a nosedive on Thursday, not only because the company's blockbuster antidepressant Zoloft had lost patent protection but also because its CEO Hank McKinnell appears to have lost his will to live.

His radically altered demeanor was in evidence during yesterday's post-Zoloft press conference. When asked how the company would adjust to life without the drug that earned Pfizer $2.6 billion last year, McKinnell simply shrugged. The deflated CEO surveyed the room with his wet, sunken eyes and began reading from his tattered journal.

"You spend years researching new drugs and hoping against hope that just one of them will pay off," read McKinnell. "You invest everything you have, your money, your heart and soul, and eventually it all comes down to this: nothing. I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter."

To this dismay of his colleagues, McKinnell has reportedly taken to holding high-level meetings on the ledge outside his fourteenth-floor office and filling the company newsletter with lengthy poems about death and dying.

the darkness shrouds me like
a cloud of patent lawyers
i am left ugly and hollow like a
failed clinical trial
shareholder knives stab
and cut
deep into my vanishing soul
my blood drips down the balance sheets
like cold fall rains
why am i so alone?

Members of the board of directors have attempted to intervene on several occasions but with no success. Every time someone asks McKinnell what's wrong, he shouts "nothing!" and runs off to weep under his desk.

To most informed investors this despair seems unfounded since, according to Pfizer's most recent annual report, the company has several promising drugs in the development pipeline. However, McKinnell does not hold out much hope for another Zoloft-like success.

"Maybe there's one or two that don't suck as much as the rest, but on the whole they're just awful," said McKinnell, drying his eyes on his necktie. "I suppose it would actually be tons worse if we actually had something decent up our sleeves. I mean, what's the point in trying, anyway? We'll just lose patent protection in a few years and have to give it away. Everything I loved is gone, and I can never have it back again, not ever."

Wall Street analysts now fear that Pfizer's management has lost its direction as well as its mind, and it now seems that a proxy fight over control of the company could be in the offing. McKinnell, on the other hand, says that he welcomes such an eventuality. In fact, sources inside the company allege that he has repeatedly attempted to relinquish power to various underlings as well as anyone unlucky enough to wander through his office during one of his many crying jags. So far, the 63-year-old PhD has found no takers.

As if all that weren't enough, Pfizer has announced a strategic partnership with a competitor to produce a generic version of its own drug. While that may seem like a sensible way to recapture some of the lost revenue, this new offering will also be competing with Pfizer's own branded version of Zoloft.

"I know it sounds stupid," said McKinnell, banging himself on the head with a shoe. "And believe me, it is. I'm so stupid. So stupid! But it's not like we're going to make any money on it. Zoloft was a dumb drug, anyway. I'm glad it's gone. I hate Zoloft."