After an exhaustive and comprehensive study, doctors have finally been able to pin down the vague but persistent set of symptoms plaguing everyone and come to the surprising conclusion that every single American human suffers from seasonal depression.
“It’s true,” Dr. Kim Bass, the lead scientist in the study announced dully from a podium, “not that it does anyone much good to know it. But now you know it. Everyone has it. That sinking feeling in your heart when you start to notice the sun setting at four in the afternoon? The early-morning nausea that keeps you from getting out of bed? The seizing, flushing, frenzied attacks that grip you alone in the car as you barrel down the road in the dark to your windowless office building; that’s seasonal depression, and you have it, and everyone has it, even the people in Hawaii have it, they just don’t know it yet.”
“Everybody has it and nothing’s any good.”
Scientists were at a loss when it came to practical treatments. “I guess we could just move,” Dr. Bass said quietly, as if only to herself, hunched over a chair mechanically eating a peanut butter and Fluff sandwich, “but where would we go?” She burst into tears. “Our whole lives are here.”
“Those stupid lamps don’t do anything,” she added, folding the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and gesturing furiously at a very expensive, carefully calibrated light therapy chamber. “It’s a stupid fucking lamp. It’s not the sun. It’s not summer. It’s not anything.”
“It’s not anything,” she concluded, before burning the rest of her lab notes for warmth.
but will the pb&fluff help?
: (
It has to. It’s our only hope.
I feel the need to pipe into this conversation because of my username. But I really have nothing of value to add to the matter. Carry on.
maybe if we switch out the PB for Nutella?
Ow.
damn it Mallory, you can’t tell people that EVERYONE has seasonal affective disorder, it’ll mess up the curve! what if everyone at work starts saying, “It’s the weather, man, the whole seasons thing”? I’ll have to come up with a whole new excuse for my mediocrity.
not that that will stop me from saying, “I’ve got mad SAD,” whenever anyone asks how I’m doing. it is my bright star in the vast, dark universe of wintertime.
I have the stupid lamp, it doesn’t work.
I love my lamp! It’s literally the only thing that keeps me from sleeping 16 hours a day, waking only for a few hours to sit in bed in the dark. The key is to bring it in bed with you and angle it facing your head and then set it on a lamp timer so it switches on 30 minutes before your alark clock goes off.
I love my lamp too! When I notice myself getting into a really crabby spiral, i try really hard to get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning to put on my lamp and do a little bit of youtube yoga or stretching. this makes me an infinitely nicer person in the winter.
It doesn’t work because you know that light is a lie. It is still Winter. You know that. The light knows that. It’s all a desperate deception.
It doesn’t make me feel better emotionally, but it helps to keep me awake long enough to put my daughter to bed.
Any port in a storm.
This. It helps keep me awake to a normal time of night, which in turn prevents me from oversleeping, which in turn prevents me from getting apathetic and depressed.
I told my psychiatrist that the lamp doesn’t work and she looked at me in SHOCK AND HORROR. I now think she’s a fraud.
The lamp worked miracles for me when I lived in the PNW, and the sun went away for months but it was still warm enough to go outside. Now that I live in Chicago, my lamp cowers and begs for mercy.
Chicago is ruining my life, and I never even needed a lamp in the PNW. Just rolled merrily along through all the grey and rain! This is some next-level shit, though.
Today IS awfully nice, though.
DON’T JINX IT. (I just peeked at Chicago’s 10-day forecast and cried myself to death)
I’ve been avoiding it but I just looked and now I have tears in my eyes as well. GODDAMNIT. I’d suggest forming a support group but there is no way in hell I’m doing anything besides home-work-home-weep until spring gets here. (Though I did watch “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” on Netflix the other day and found it weirdly comforting. The part where they burn an effigy of winter is really cathartic.)
Nothing can defeat the crushing weight of Winter, but the lamp makes it a little easier to stay out of bed all day.
My stupid lamp seemed to help when I was in a really bad phaseand mostly just waiting for the meds to kick in. But once I’d improved it doesn’t seem to lift “ehh, I’ll live, but everything’s vaguely shitty” up to “good.”
The crocuses have started to come out in Holland! I took a picture.
SHARE IT WITH US PLEASE
It didn’t quite come out as I hoped (can’t quite see the roses) and some yards had more crocuses in them, but:
LIVING THINGS WITH COLOR. I feel better. Thank you!
Just that sentence, “The crocuses have started to come out in Holland!,” made my heart swell with hope and light and color.
It’s been a real mild winter here, which has been pretty nice but I think the Dutch are sort of disappointed because no one’s been able to go ice skating.
Aha I was just complaining about the cold, but I’m used to warmer winters than this where I’m not expected to ride my damn bicycle everywhere.
I’m not saying it’s been pleasant, per se, as it’s still been damp and rainy and constantly grey and windy when you’re trying to get home, but it has been pretty mild temperature-wise. Last year there was a whole three weeks or so of proper cold.
They’re coming out in London too!!
There are green shoots in England! I think they’re daffodils; I must have missed the snowdrops this year.
Honest question though does anyone have any cure for the early morning nausea that keeps you from getting out of bed? Whenever I google it I get pregnancy morning sickness info and that’s definitely not what’s happening
Is it related to your blood sugar? I find if I go to bed hungry (or peckish) and I wake up, sometimes I’m so hungry I’ve gone around the bend into nauseated from hunger, so I have to have something I can quickly shove in my face like a smoothie or a hard candy or something before I can really eat.
Orrrr sometimes if I know there’s a big snowstorm out there it’s early morning anxiety and there’s nothing for that except deep breathing techniques, etc.
No advice, just saying same here! When I was a little kid, my dad would keep mini-peanut butter cups around specifically so I could have one upon waking and not be a little demon.
That’s adorable.
Oooh that’s smart! I’ve been so stressed at work lately that I haven’t been eating well (which is also why it took me so long to reply to this!) and I can see that being the issue. Especially since the only thing that fixes it is gatorade, and after that some food. My problem is that sometimes I’m so nauseated I can’t imagine cooking, and then it just gets worse. I might start keeping a smoothie by my bed (maybe next to the open window to keep it cold?)
Do you take birth control and take it right before bed by any chance?
If this is what makes me nauseous in the mornings, I will punch* the pharmacy. My prescription packet came with instructions to take the pill at night to avoid nausea. >:(
*My SAD manifests in expressions of violence that will not actually come to fruition. Don’t worry pharmacy, I like you.
Maybe it isn’t it, but might be worth trying to take your bc with food, or shifting the time a bit and seeing if it helps. I was on a low estrogen pill, and if I ever missed one and had to take 2 in the same day (even 12 hours apart), I would wake the next morning and have to throw up.
But I guess a good test would be, does it happen even when you are on your placebo pills? Either way hope you find relief soon!
I don’t, I have a paragard IUD so I’m not sure if hormones are causing this. And I don’t think it’s the IUD, as I had it for 2 years before the nausea started.
Unfortunately I think this is a question best answered by your PCP 🙁 #internetfail
I know but it’s so hard to get time off work so I was hoping the internet could explain it to me. Being a substitute doctor is probably the only thing the internet can’t really do : (
Have you treated it like morning sickness nausea? By which I mean: granola bar or something beside your bed (pop tarts, sadly, were too sweet to work for me. Stupid trail mix worked, but eating trail mix at 7 am is abhorrent.) – eat as soon as you wake up, lay there for ten minutes scrolling through your phone, then deal with the day.
No idea if it’ll help you, but it’s worth trying if you haven’t.
I will try that! Eating a small light meal and having some gatorade works, but I’m usually too nauseaus to think about cooking. I like the idea of keeping a granola bar or trail mix by my bed and eating it when I wake up. Usually the nausua gets worse when I sit/stand up so if I started nibbling lying down (while sitting with my SAD lamp, multitaskin!) it might help. Thanks for the tip!
Might also be blood pressure related? This use to happen to me when I was a runner in HS, and had super-low blood pressure (ahahahaha, that doesn’t happen anymore). I’d have to get up and move around for a bit, and get things moving, and then I’d feel OK. I also second the blood-sugar question.
Oooh possibly. I have always had my blood pressure show up as low in every checkup ever. My mom has the same issue so I never worried about it, but I also don’t exercise so maybe that’s part of it. I might start combining the above tips (granola bar in bed, morning smoothie) with a little exercising (I just bought Nicole’s mini elliptical!! so I can work out from home with no judgement) to see if that helps.
I have no solution for you, I just am chiming in to say I am very familiar with this problem. The eating solution others have proposed sounds promising, except I take my thyroid medication first thing in the morning and have to wait thirty minutes to eat and for some reason the glass of water I drink with the pill sometimes makes the nausea worse? Ugh, bodies. I don’t know.
Water makes it worse for me too! The only liquids I can have are gatorade and thick liquids (like a smoothie) until a few hours into the morning. If you can take your pill with a smoothie maybe that would help?
Morning nausea for me is directly related to how much sleep I’m (not) getting. So if I wake up after three hours, I feel like I’m going to barf, six hours and I can deal but it takes me hours to warm up to the concept of breakfast, and if I’m getting the eight-ish hours I actually need I can eat breakfast right away in the morning. Nothing I do at night (besides going to bed on time) really seems to make a difference.
Oooooh that might be it. My sleep has been terrible (due to my stressful job, as I mentioned briefly upthread) and so I am either wayyyy oversleeping or not sleeping at all. I also have a terrible commute (3 different subway lines!) because my job is in a ridiculous neighborhood so I have to wake up earlier than I’d like. On the weekends my nausea isn’t really that bad, but that’s probably because I sleep until I wake up naturally.
I have had the gamut of early morning anxiety nausea, early morning “why the hell is it only Tuesday” nausea, not eating enough the night before so I’m so hungry I feel like I’ll barf nausea… the thing that works for me for all of them is keeping saltines next to my bed. Sometimes I wake up at like 5 am, feel like shit, eat a couple crackers and can go back to bed for a couple more hours. Then by the time I wake up, I’m ok. Aside from saltines, some water, chocolate (…..no shame in eating chocolate this early if it’s FOR YOUR HEALTH), and lying on my back and doing deep breathing also can all help.
Hope that it gets better for you <3
I like that idea!! I might make a little snack drawer on my windowsill for in bed munchies!
I also have the birth control-related response. I figured it out because when I’m not on it, I don’t have that problem. But as soon as I go back on it, it takes my body a while to adjust when I take it at night. It seems to be worse when I take it on an empty stomach, or very late after it’s been a while since dinner. 7-10 hours after seems to be the peak. Taking with food helps!
It’s snowing all over my will to live.
But-but-but! Winter! Sunlight sparkling off of snow! Pink in your cheeks! How attractive everyone looks with snowflakes on their eyelashes! The incomparable existentialism of standing ankle-deep in an untouched snowbank staring at a full moon!
WINTER OLYMPICS. >:(
Ankle deep? Where the hell do you live? The snowbanks are between waist- and shoulder-deep around here. And they can go fuck themselves, along with everything else about the winter.
Okay, fine, ankle-deep is wishful thinking, but my point stands! Winter is glorious.
Winter! People rifling through my recycling bins for cardboard to go sledding on, then leaving it all over the street! Chapped skin! Bloody noses! Aching joints! Feet that never, ever get all the way warm! Cars sliding through intersections because their brakes don’t work in the ice! The overwhelming certainty that no one would even notice if I stuffed my head in an oven! Stepping in the neighbor’s dog’s shit while helping the kids make a snowman because my neighbors think their dog’s shit disappears into a void after it sinks warm and stinking through the snow on my yard!
Bah. Humbug.
I would love you if I were still able to feel love.
Love me from afar, as my ability to give a fuck whether I have showered or not fled in terror six weeks ago, and I lack the motivation to go find it.
To be clear, I have showered at some point during the past six weeks. Possibly even multiple points.
You must be a time-traveller from December! I felt like you once. And then winter really happened, and it was terrible.
This is the only real explanation. December: snow is delightful, there are pretty lights everywhere, everyone is happy. Then January happens and there will never be light or warmth again, and all you have to look forward to is February.
Except February somehow exists outside the space-time continuum, so although on paper it’s only 28 (sometimes 29) days, in actuality February lasts for 100 centuries.
Winter is glorious for a little while, BUT:
The snow is literally a meter deep on flat ground and stacked up into mountains two stories high in parking lots. We had an ice storm and my husband’s car was frozen into a puddle after we chipped ice two solid inches thick off of it. Ankle-deep snow is but a fond wish at this point. It’s snowed something like 75 out of the past 100 days. It got so cold that our cars wouldn’t start. I’m not standing around staring at the full moon, I was outside gloveless for ten minutes last night putting on new wiper blades (because winter killed the old ones) and my hands were numb. Snowflakes don’t land on your eyelashes but ICE CERTAINLY FORMS ON THEM, which is an interesting and fascinating treat .
NOPE. I’m done with sweaters, I’m done with snow blindness (the sunlight is nice until you literally cannot see anything because you’re surrounded by snow and ice. I’m done with spinning and fishtailing on the roads and being horrified at other drivers. Done with wearing my snow boots and parka everywhere, done with wearing my space gloves all the time. Done with not being able to open my windows because they’re frozen shut. Done with not being able to make concrete plans because snowstorms keep coming up and CLOSING THE HIGHWAY (and I live in Canada, not a stranger to snow!).
DONE.
Ugh, that’s fair, I can’t imagine living somewhere rural in the winter. I’m a (Canadian) city girl, and I walk almost everywhere, so with the right gear the snow doesn’t bother me much.
Maybe a slightly less unpopular opinion: I would rather live through Canadian winter for the rest of my life than eternal Ontario summer. Summer can fuck itself eighteen times over.
YES YES YES! I spent eight years in Ontario and hated every summer. +30C and I’m a sweat puddle inside of thirty seconds. Give me my -30 winters year-round before I go back to that!
FYI, I grew up in north-eastern Canada so maybe my attitude is a condition of my experience 🙂
I love winter so dearly that I often spontaneously clap when a snowstorm drops its first flakes down on us. I walk around saying “how beautiful! so twinkly! the lights! the snowmen! the crisp winter breezes!” I love boots and scarves and tromping through an unbroken blanket of snow and coming home to hot chocolate and a pile of blankets and lying in bed listening to the wind howl outside.
But even I am getting PRETTY DARNED TIRED of this business.
[edited to add: for me, it’s not the weather itself THOUGH ICE STORMS AREN’T HELPING, it’s the parking bans that seem to happen once a week now.]
I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to spring, but mostly because spring brings my birthday and dresses and fruit-y drinks and patio season.
Basically, I love all seasons. Except for summer (see above).
Haha, my car is parked so high atop a snowbank that I’m genuinely curious what position it’ll be in when the snow melts later this week. People have parked vertically, it seems.
I have no quarrel with winter except that the shorter days fuck with me and keep me from enjoying it.
My friend has a #sadlamp and I sat in front of it for four hours drinking manhattans and painting my nails and I felt FANTASTIC afterwards. So there’s your cure, Dr. Bass!
Last year I thought I had SAD because I couldn’t concentrate or stay awake or remember anything. I was flunking out of grad school in the goddamn last semester. Turned out to be a B12 deficiency, also known as LACKING THE INTRINSIC FACTOR, which makes it sound like I have no soul and am basically a macaroni necklace.
I dunno, I feel like if I could tell people I was ‘lacking the intrinsic factor’, I’d be doing it all the time. Sure, they’d probably be pretty confused when I didn’t then follow it up with an explanation, but that’s what smiling mysteriously is for, right?
Dude, yes. I had B12 and Vitamin D deficiency and while I am also on antidepressants now, it is entirely possible that my whole problem was just lack o’ vitamins.
I have this right now except because of work, but I think I just have “this job sucks” syndrome.
I have both of these things right now, the “this job sucks” and the “ugh last semester of grad school.” Gotta be better about taking my vitamins, I mean…. it can’t hurt, and it might help.
Hey can I join this party? Ahahahahahahaha *sob*
What a coincidence, I seem to be suffering from the same syndrome. So does my coworker.
We mustn’t forget the utter despair of when it gets warm and springlike for a few days in February, and you start thinking like maybe spring isn’t a lie, but then it drops back down to -30 and there’s a blizzard and surprise! you won’t see green grass until May and all the Nutella in the world won’t make it better.
Why anyone decided to settle this country instead of leaving it for the old gods is utterly incomprehensible.
February is such an asshole! It does that every time.
Today has been a trap.
*pulls covers over head; goes back to sleep*
I fucking haaaaaaaate winter. Stupid skin-drying winter literally makes my hands bleed. Bring on the humidity as long as it comes with some effing heat. gettin’ all Day After Tomorrow up in this bitch.
Ugh, yes. My hands feel like sandpaper, and my skin is just ANGRY. I try feeding it moisturizer, but it simply laughs in the face of my feeble attempts to hydrate.
humidifier?
The fact that I haven’t been able to run outside since December because of the ice has made me really depressed. The treadmill and the lighting in my gym generally are so soul-sucking.
I used to live in the southeast U.S., and I swear to God I had reverse SAD. I started getting depressed as soon as the days began lengthening after winter solstice, because I knew that hot, humid weather was coming again. And I basically hid out indoors for the entire duration of Daylight Saving Time.
Then I moved to the Pacific Northwest, where the weather is fairly mild all year long, and I’m actually *kind of* looking forward to summer for the first time in my life. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll actually get SAD in the winter like everyone else! A girl can dream…
Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, we really do have absolutely beautiful summers! Usually not too hot or humid, just beautiful and sunny. And lots of outdoor activities – concerts, plays in the park, etc – and everyone is in a great mood because we’re so glad to see the sun.
Honestly, the way the PNW reacts to summer kind of freaked me out. As a born and bred Coloradan, I was used to more of a “hey, it’s sunny out! and it will be sunny tomorrow! and also the next day!” rather than the mad rush to do all the activities in two months before the sun goes away again. Although I was definitely part of the mad rush by year three…
I just don’t understand how the PNW makes it through May and June. It’s nice almost everywhere by then, and it’s still drizzling. And not warm. So awful.
oh, so THAT’S why I haven’t showered in…[counts on figures]…77 hours.
Ugh. I hate winter. It’s cold and dark and cold. SAD is definitely a thing, especially where I live, but [HEAVINESS ALERT] I want to point out that spring can be a high time for suicides; people who are depressed during the wintertime sometimes put hope into the returning sun, that it will cure everything, and when things don’t change, they get desperate.
I know it’s heavy, but if anyone is seriously feeling down and out and it doesn’t look or feel like things will ever get better, reach out and talk to someone.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
NDMDA Depression Hotline – Support Group: 800-826-3632 http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
/I will get back to making jokes now
Nope nope nope. I live in an apartment building in a city entirely too far from any and all beaches. Therefore, after years of chronic migraines and light sensitivity, (which, to be fair, have now abated) I have conditioned myself to hate sunlight. Shorter days and longer nights are the absolute best. Fuck heat and humidity and sweating and never quite being cold enough, I will happily sit here with my cocoa and scarves and do absolutely nothing and feel no guilt whatsoever.
(My general distaste for sunlight and going outside and *doing things* may be indicative of another sort of depression, to be fair.)
I am a million and five percent with you.
Tomorrow it will be 68 degrees here (KY). I know that February lies and we will probably be back in a frozen Wintery hellscape before it’s all over, but for right now I’m just thankful for small miracles.
I’m in southern Ohio and am seriously considering shaving the fur off my legs and wearing a skirt even though the 67 degree high is also supposed to bring thunder storms.
Don’t forget the severe thunderstorm and tornado threat tomorrow!
KENTUCKY.
Ugh. my whole life is a Dar Williams song. Lasted into March, indeed.
This morning I whispered “What’s a crocus” to myself while sliding my way to the bus stop.
Love winter! Cold snowy days to stay is and cook delicious family dinners and scrumptious desserts..brisk cold days to wrap up in coats and scarfs and take long walks. Building snowmen with the kids, skiing on weekends..I don’t miss the heat and humidity of summer at all..and the high electric bills from the A C either. When life gives you snow days relax and watch movies.
If I have a snow day from work, I don’t get paid. There have been NINE snow days here since JANUARY. People are running out of options!