Zooming Past Zoloft-David Servan-Schreiber-Life Challenges

Doorways of Support and Inspiration:
Depression

Zooming Past Zoloft David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., PH.D. Excerpted from Instinct to Heal: Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy (Rodale, 2004)

Researchers at Duke University have recently carried out a study comparing the antidepressant effects of jogging with those of Zoloft, a well-known and effective antidepressant. After 4 months, patients treated with either approach were doing equally well. The medication offered no particular advantage over the regular practice of jogging. Even combining the medicine and jogging at the same time did not enhance the effects. On the other hand, a year later, there was a major difference between the two types of treatment. More than a third of the patients who had been treated with Zoloft had relapsed, whereas 92 percent of those who had followed the jogging program were still doing well. They had decided on their own initiative to keep on exercising even after the study had ended.

Another research project at Duke has shown that youth and good health are not necessary to get benefits from physical exercise. Depressed patients aged 50 to 77 benefited just as much from 30 minutes of brisk walking (without running) three times a week as they did from an antidepressant. The antidepressant relieved the symptoms a little faster, but not more effectively. That was the only difference.

Regular physical exercise may not only heal an episode of depression, but can also probably help prevent one as well. In a population of normal subjects, people who were exercising at the beginning of the study were much less likely to experience depression during the next 25 years.

I have experienced both the treatment and prevention effects of exercise in my own life. When, at 22, I first arrived in America, I hardly knew anybody. My first months were filled with all the usual orienting activities of immigrants. Besides my courses in medical school, which were very time consuming, I was looking for an apartment and moving in. Starting all over again without parents around to tell me what to do and how to do it was fun at the beginning. I remember the pleasure I took in the simple joy of buying curtains, or even a frying pan, for the first time. But after a few months, once I had settled in and was caught up in my study routine, my life seemed particularly empty, devoid of pleasures.

Without my family, my friends, my culture, my favorite "hang-outs," I suddenly realized that I felt as if I were slowly withering away. I remember one evening in particular, nothing seemed to matter or make sense except classical music. I listened to it endlessly instead of delving into my studies. I even said to myself that conducting an orchestra was the only profession that might be worth practicing in such a cold and indifferent world.

As I did not have the slightest chance of succeeding in that profession, my pessimism as an isolated immigrant only got worse. After several weeks in this stark mood, I realized that if I did not react, I was going to fail my exams. Leaving France to come all the way to America just to fail would've been absurd -- then I really would have a reason to be depressed!

I didn't know where to begin, but I knew I had to shake myself out of the stupor that left me sitting around for hours not doing anything except listening to the same tapes over and over. I thought about squash, which I had taken up in Paris before leaving. Luckily, I had even brought my racket with me -- and it saved me.

First, I joined a squash club. During the first 2 weeks of playing, nothing changed, except that I finally had something pleasurable to look forward to in my life. I knew that at least three times a week I would enjoy expending my physical energy and then taking a long, well-deserved shower.

Thanks to squash, I also met a few people who were nice enough to invite me over for dinner. Little by little, I made friends and found a rewarding social life. For a long time, I did not know whether it was the exercise or my new friends that helped me most, but whatever the explanation, it didn't matter much. I felt far better, and I was back in the saddle.

Later, I learned that even in the most trying times, if I ran for 20 minutes at least every other day, usually alone, I was then much better equipped to handle challenges, and that I was able, in any case, to avoid the throes of depression. And despite all of the research and investigations that I've done, nothing that I've learned since has led me to change what is still my "first line of defense" against life's uncertainties.

*endnotes have been omitted

Reprinted from: Instinct to Heal: Curing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy by David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D.

For more information, please visit the author's website at www.instincttoheal.org or www.writtenvoices.com