Exercise or Zoloft .. both
I just came back from a visit with my PCP. He’s generally a pretty nice guy who I chose because he went to the same program my brother-in-law did and I like the way they practice. Today, I was in for my 6-month refill of Zoloft. I have to see him every 6 months for the Rx because the therapist who I see every week can’t prescribe medicines. Prior to getting the Rx from my PCP I had to visit a psychiatrist for a grueling hour where they ask me if I am feeling depressed or anxious in many ways for an hour and when I say, “no,” they say, “Then why do you need the medication.” BECAUSE IT WORKS! If I go off I will likely feel those things again. But I digress...
Today my PCP asked me the usual questions and was happy to hear that I am keeping up with aikido and generally staying active. I said that I definitely notice if I miss a week of aikido. Then he said something about never missing a day. I responded, “The dojo isn’t open every day.” To which he said he only misses a day of exercise a month because exercise is his Zoloft. It seems like an innocent statement and I know my PCP supports me taking the medication because he continues to prescribe it and he has had long conversations about it with me. But this comment stuck with me.
When I first got to the current institution where I teach, I heard things like this all the time: you just need exercise, you just need to meditate, you just need sleep, you just need to eat well. And while these are all things that are good and helpful, they are simply not enough for me or for many other people. And statements like this only create further shame around taking medication for mental health issues.
When I went back on Zoloft seven years ago after being off meds for six years, I was the “healthiest” I had been in ages: I was cooking all of my food and shopping at a farmer’s market and I was practicing Bikram yoga 6 days a week and riding my bike to most of my commitments. I was meditating daily in addition to yoga. But I was still falling on the floor in a heap of tears regularly and finding it very difficult to do much more than these self-care practices and sleeping. Now, with Zoloft, I still do many of these things like meditating daily, practicing yoga on my own at home, and going to aikido every Sunday. But the difference is I can still go about my life. I get out of bed and do things. It doesn’t replace self-care, but it allows me to be in a better place so that self-care works.
I hope people will start thinking more before making statements about how they do x, y, z, so they don’t need meds. Because that is a value-laden statement and it depreciates the value of meds for the many people who do need them. Different people need different solutions and there is already so much stigma around mental health.
