The Sad Truth About SAD

Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Upon first impression it seems like a made-up illness; something Big Pharma can run ads about at 3am on a Tuesday when nobody but the students and insomniacs are up. It doesn't have the same punch as better known disorders like "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" or "Borderline Personality Disorder", or the current darling of mainstream media: "Bipolar Disorder". Try explaining to someone that you have "Seasonal Affective Disorder" and it comes off sounding like your trying to get a snow day when you're in your thirties.

But Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD, for short), isn't some new-age lingo for "the winter blues". It wasn't conjured up by pop psychologists to support the use of simulated sunlight indoors. It's not an excuse that people use to get out of work or take more naps during the dark, winter months. SAD is a disease. It's a form of depression and effects a person's brain, body and life equally as much as a major depressive episode. I know, because I have SAD.

The way this sneaky form of depression works is by messing up serotonin receptors in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter which in normal, healthy people serves to mediate appetite and responses to food. It heightens and lowers mood. It helps to regulate blood sugar and pain. The brain creates its own serotonin in response to a number of stimuli, one of them being our good friend SUNSHINE.

Although the vast majority of people manage to live perfectly normal lives during periods of low light, some, like myself, stop producing adequate amounts of serotonin. Or rather, we produce TOO MUCH. The serotonin is taken back to a neuron to be recycled before it can even be used by the brain. This process is called reuptake, and some reuptake is necessary for the brain to function normally; but when too much of a neurotransmitter is being recycled, it means there's not enough to meet the body's needs.

What happens then?

Depression. Dark, horrible, hopeless depression. I'm not talking about feeling 'sad' a lot or finding yourself crying over petty things like Fancy Feast commercials and burnt toast. I'm talking about not being able to get out of bed. I'm talking about staring at an open refrigerator for ten minutes without being able to decide what to have. I'm talking about staring at a blank Word document, knowing you have to finish this report by the afternoon, and being completely incapable of forming even a single sentence in your mind. I'm talking about a diet of breakfast cereal because your dishes are all in the sink and you just don't have the energy to wash them. I'm talking about showing up to work in the same clothes for three days because you can't do the laundry. You can't read books or enjoy music. You can't find comfort or happiness around friends. And all the while there is an aching, grinding fatigue laying over everything you do, begging you to go to bed, go back to sleep; a fatigue that NEVER leaves, no matter how much time you spend in bed, and no matter how much metric tons of caffeine you dump into your body.

Now that you know the basics about SAD, let's talk about the things no one will tell you: the things you can't find on a Wikipedia page.

1.) It doesn't happen every year.

Just because the word 'seasonal' is in the name, doesn't mean that you can rely on it to occur with any regularity. Some winters you'll managed through with maybe a little weight-gain and a pale complexion. Other winters will slam you into the ground like the mighty hand of a horrible Norse deity and proceed to grind your broken body into the unforgiving ground for THREE GRUELING MONTHS.

And there's no sings indicating which years will be the bad years and which ones will turn out all right. Nothing predicts it. You may be having the time of your life mid-November, and come the end of January have missed nine days of work and can no longer operate a coffee machine. Or, conversely, you may start feeling run down during the Holidays, but find that the new year starts off without a hitch and brings many satisfying months of productivity.

You just never know. You may have it two years in a row and then not again for another five. You may not have any symptoms for two or three years and then get absolutely NAILED with it without any prior warning. This bastard is tricky. Which brings us to #2.

2.) It sneaks up on you.

Depression isn't a one-hit-one-kill kind of illness. You don't go to bed feeling fine and wake up feeling empty, useless and exhausted. Colds and flus come on quickly, and make their presence known as soon as they arrive. Seasonal Affective Disorder creeps in the back door and begins ever so carefully to mess up your brain, spoiling little parts of it at a time, so that you don't know--you NEVER know--exactly when it begins to happen.

I was tired in November, sure. It had been a hard semester. Everyone was tired by then, and we were looking forward to our winter break. But by January I was still tired. Stress, maybe? The switch to the new semester and new classes? Maybe I wasn't getting enough sleep. Maybe I wasn't eating right. When was the last time I actually had enough energy to get through the day? I couldn't even remember.

Forums and websites that I've read say that February is the worst month for people with SAD, and that's probably because by February the depression has been germinating inside of you for three months or more. Little changes in overall mood, a small increase in appetite, a little difficulty getting organized: these changes are imperceptible at first. It's not until they all culminate into their ultimate destructive power that you even notice they're there. Then all of a sudden you ask yourself: "What happened to me? Why can't I concentrate? Why is doing laundry so HARD all of a sudden? Where did these bills come from? Why haven't I paid them? What day of the week is it? Did I miss an appointment yesterday? I've had four cups of coffee today... why am I still so, so tired..?"

It's impossible to pinpoint exactly when the depression starts, and it probably starts at different times for different people. But what is true of almost everyone is that by the time it's gotten bad enough to be noticeable, you're already powerless to stop with it.

3.) It's not just feeling PHYSICALLY tired.

Although fatigue and a desire to sleep are both parts of SAD, and usually parts of other depressive illnesses, it's really the MENTAL fatigue that does the most damage. Many of us have jobs, and most of those jobs don't involve a lot of physical labor; but almost every job is going to require either problem solving or decision making at some point, and depression robs you of the ability to do either.

Let's say you're a cashier, and a lady says her coupon took off for the wrong item. What should you do? Well, you can check her receipt, make a couple of refunds and redo the coupon, or you could call the manager, or you could say "It's the same amount you're saving regardless of which item it's used on" -- but if you have depression, none of that happens. In a depressive haze you can't even think of what to say. You stare at the lady's coupon like it's some magical star-baby that you know nothing of and have never before beheld. You try to make sense of the situation around you and find that nothing is coming together in any logical order. You're tired--you know that. This lady is irritating--you know that to. You don't know what you're supposed to be doing other than sliding things over the scanner and occasionally punching in numbers. Now your manager is coming over and she looks mad. What just happened, anyway?

Here's another scenario. Let's say you made an appointment to meet a client at 11am. At 10am you start trying to get your shit together so you know how to handle the client's problem. What do you need? Where did you put it? Where is the appointment, again? You check your e-mail ten times to make sure. Now you've lost your pen and can't write it down. It's 10:45 and you don't have any materials to give the client. You try to remember how long you had to prepare but everything before yesterday is a blur. You forget your client's name. You pop a caffeine tab to make sure you can get through this meeting. You sit in your chair and gaze listlessly at your client while they tell you about their issue. You only hear about half of it. You have no idea what to say. You keep asking questions to get the client to talk more because you don't know how to help them. At the end the client asks: "So what should I do?" And you have absolutely nothing to say.

During depression your mind spasms closed. You become cognitively paralyzed and prevented from completing even rudimentary tasks. Tight cap on a bottle? You won't open it. Friend invites you to lunch? You won't know what to say. Standing at a vending machine? Good luck choosing something to purchase. Your mind is either a blank fog or a montage of racing, disconnected thoughts. Nothing makes sense or feels solid. Time loses all meaning. Days can drag by like years or they can feel as fleeting as minutes. Every once in a while you'll have one incandescent moment of clarity when you think to yourself: "This isn't me. I'm capable and competent and I've been doing this job for years--why can't I do it now? Why can't I do ANYTHING?"

4.) Everything suffers

It's not just your state of mind that goes to Hell during a depressive episode, it's everything. Your job, your finances, your credit score, your house, your family and friends, any hobbies you had, your diet--everything. When you can't think logically or functionally, and when getting out of bed in the morning feels like running a pentathalon in plate mail, it's all you can do just to make it through the day. You may show up to work, but your work will suffer. You'll get in trouble for forgetting things or for taking too long or making basic, entry-level mistakes like sending a document to the wrong person, or leaving the copy room unlocked. You may go out with friends, but you can't keep up with their conversations; you're withdrawn and moody. You spend every minute out of the house yearning to go back to bed, and it shows. By the time you get home you're too exhausted to care about anything. Mold and mildew are growing in your bathroom. The living room is coated with dust and cracker-crumbs. Your laundry is piled ankle-deep on the floor, along with garbage, luggage and important materials you need for work. The sink is filled with dishes and the trash is gathering flies. You take a look at your messy reflection in the mirror before collapsing into bed. Even though you sleep for nine hours, waking up to that alarm clock feels like waking up in Hell.

This past February I lived on a diet of breakfast cereal and toast. I didn't do laundry for two months. I would go days without showering. If I balled up a napkin or a wrapper and tossed it down, it would just stay there. I gained eight pounds. My car insurance almost got cancelled because I hadn't paid. I was late on the rent. I started getting coughing fits and sore throats from indoor allergens. I kept cancelling plans with friends so I had more time to sleep. After I ran out of cereal bowls, I just started eating with my hands. Crumbs got everywhere. I couldn't find any clean clothes to wear. I'm sure I must have smelled bad. I had headaches and stomach aches every day. Any real food left in the fridge decayed. When I came back after a week of Spring Break, I looked around my apartment and was appalled that anyone had actually lived there. It was squalor. It was unhealthy. But during the month of February, I couldn't care less. It was all I could do just to survive from one day to another.

5.) You're never going to remember it.

One of the problems with cognitive paralysis is that you can't form new memories very well. By the second week of February, I couldn't remember January at all, and by March I was down to a memory of maybe two days. My whole future was one week and my past was yesterday. Even now, although I know I must have done work and visited friends and eaten cereal last month, I can't really REMEMBER doing it. I just have knowledge of having done it. I don't remember anything from my classes, either. Everything is just a hazy blur, like the memory of a dream. My mother told me that I have SAD every year, but I can't recall ever letting the house go to Hell as much as it did. I don't remember being unable to make decisions or being late on so many payments or isolating myself from my friends.

And you won't either. By the time the pall of depression starts rolling back and you can start completing the everyday tasks that had formally been impossible, the memory of the SAD will have withered into all but a shadow in the back of your mind. In June you'll remark to a friend "This year's going by awfully quickly" -- and indeed it will, because you missed the first quarter of it. Sometime in the future you'll look back on the winter of your SAD and remember a few randoms things: something a friend said, or anything newsworthy that happened during that time. You won't remember the depression.

Not until the NEXT time it gets you, anyway.

A Nightmare

I don't know whether this was a two-part dream or simply a very long dream, but to me it seemed to have two distinctive story lines. Note that there is no sure-fire way to have a nightmare quite like going to bed while you still have caffeine coursing through your system.

This dream started out with false awakening. A man was standing at the door of the bedroom, and at first I thought he was a delivery man as I am expecting a package. He came over to the side of the bed and was revealed to be a friend of a friend that I had met all of one time at a bar last year. I found it terribly difficult to wake up. I sleep with a blindfold and taking it off seemed a trial in and of itself. I wondered how the man had gotten into my room since I was sure I had locked the door, and in the back of my mind thought that perhaps he had come for sexual favours.

"I made this for you" He said, handing me an envelope. Inside was a drawing he had made of a monetary paper note that was of a currency I have never seen. As I unfolded it, it turned out to be quite a lot larger than a dollar bill, and although the illustration was nice, I couldn't understand why he would give me such a thing.

"Oh, this is really nice!" I said politely.

By now the man had taken up position on the bed to my right. He responded by saying: "Think you could give me ten bucks for it?"

So it was MONEY he was after, and not sex.

I turned to give him back the note when I found he had changed into another man I knew, one who, while obviously interested in me, was never someone I would consider having a relationship with. Often, this person's barely veiled advances put me on edge, and in the dream I suddenly became very upset and worried. His hair was done up in the style that Dennis Hopper's had been in the live-action Super Mario Brother's movie, and there was a great deal of mousse all over it.

He started flirting with me in the most revolting manner. "Oh, you're just so cute!" He said, rubbing his head all over my breasts and getting mousse on my shirt. I extracted myself from his grasp and got out of bed.

"I want you to leave." I said, "I don't know how you got in here but this is my apartment and I want you to leave now."

He got up too, but it didn't look like he was leaving. He just kept smirking at me like I had cracked the world's most high-brow joke. I realized I didn't have my cell phone in my pocket, nor did I know where it was. "I'll call the police if I have to." I meant it to sound threatening, but my voice cracked and squeaked out. At this point I was terrified that I was going to be raped.

"Yeah, good luck getting enough money for THAT." he said sardonically as he brushed passed me to leave. All the sleazy flirtatiousness had gone from his voice. He now sounded serious and mean.

Eventually he DID go of his own volition, but as I turned around I found that there were two more people in my apartment. One was an old acquaintance I had known from middle school who had never been quite what I would consider a "friend". The other was apparently her boyfriend. They were moving furniture into my apartment, setting up a dining room table and chairs against the wall of my bedroom, and I instinctively knew that there was more furniture in the adjoining room. They were moving in.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Setting up the table!" She responded.

Briefly, I thought that perhaps the landlady was mad at me, and had allowed these two newcomers to move into my apartment without any fair warning, forcing me to either live WITH them or move out into an apartment I couldn't afford. "This is MY apartment," I stated. "You don't live here!" She stared blankly back at me, as though she hadn't heard or didn't understand what I was saying. "I want you both OUT NOW!" I was sick of all these intrusions!

It occurred to me that perhaps this was my punishment for not paying my car insurance bill on time, so I left to house to get stamps at the post office. I still could not find my cell phone, but at least I had my keys.

Out in the street there was a great commotion, and I saw that a man had high-jacked what can only be described as a crane and was using it to run down and murder people. Within moments of seeing this destruction I was aware that the man was a wanted killer, who routinely went on rampages like this one, murdering everything in his path. I was also aware of some unspoken connection between the killer and I, as though he was my creation, or maybe that we were two sides of the same person. He also might have been the manifestation of my cathartic side; but perhaps I'm getting too Freudian.

Whoever he was, the dream switched to third-person perspective and I watched in horror as he ran down pedestrians on the sidewalk, smearing the concrete red with their blood. I have done this several times myself while playing Saints Row II, but this dream capitalized on the reality of violent crime, and people died screaming around me as I ran for safety from this dangerous maniac.

Enter the Dogs.

Dogs are often featured in nightmares; which is odd because in real life I am quite fond of dogs, although at the moment I do not own any. These were not the sweet and cuddly kind of dogs, though; nor were they the noble, faithful kind. These dogs were monsters. They were disease-ridden and covered in scabs, sores and blood. They were fiercely aggressive and would attack any moving creature. They traveled in packs of now fewer than six and sought their pray tirelessly. Much like the Uruk-hai of Middle Earth, they did not know pain, they did not know fear and they feasted on man flesh.

These dogs were everywhere. I was attempting to make my escape onto campus, where I figured the killer would find it difficult to manoeuvre his crane, but it seemed that every corner I turned around held another pack of savage, diseased dogs. I could not outrun them. I was stuck in my realistic body which lacks both agility and speed, plugging along for my life while packs of ravenous beasts tore after me.

I came to an area of water that had once held a bridge. The bridge had been destroyed, but pieces of it remained half-submerged in the water. While making my way to the furthest piece, the dogs had found another victim and were tearing him apart just beyond my sight. I didn't care. I was glad it wasn't me. One of the dogs had not followed the others and was swimming in my direction. It would never stop until I was dead. I pulled out the only weapon I had on me, which happened to be an XBOX controlled, and immediately pulled up my weapons screen.

My only weapon was alligators.

I didn't care. I pointed the crosshairs at the one dog still after me and hit the trigger over and over again, determined to kill this dog as dead as possible. I was completely consumed by fear of it. Out of a nearby drain pipe came several large alligators who went over and ate the dog up, piece by piece. Then they hung out there in the water, blocking my path back to dry land. It seemed I had inadvertently marooned myself on this broken piece of bridge. The water below was a turquoise green and mostly clear, but not clear enough. I saw something shadowy beneath the surface, and although it could have been rocks, I wasn't taking any chances.

Somehow, I got back to the road. I recall running down the length of an empty lot toward traffic, and distantly thinking in my mind: "This is a dream. I'm having a nightmare right now." Even so, there has not been one instance in my life where I have been able to lucid dream. Despite knowing that it was my dream, my creation, I also knew there was nothing I could do to control it. I could only try to survive until I woke up.

It was darker now, and cold, and the only thing I wanted in the world was to get in a car and drive, drive, drive as fast as I could away from that horrible place. A man in a semi stopped next to me and got out. I can't remember precisely what he said, but it was clear he was offering me a ride. Just as I was about to get in the cabin, another pack of dogs attacked us. I was all out of alligators. Most of the dogs went after the truck driver. I wheeled around and tried to boost myself into the cabin, but wasn't fast enough. One of the dogs attacked me. It seemed like it leaped a great distance to do so, latching firmly onto my crotch.

I was so totally consumed by terror that I lost my mind and lay there on the floor of the truck kicking and screaming and crying without any ability to save myself or escape.

I passed out for a moment in the dream. When I came to, the dog had gone. Screams echoed in the street. The murderer was still on his rampage, as were the roving packs of dogs. I climbed into the driver's seat and pulled out onto the nearly-ruined highway. The truck cabin had turned into a mini-van, and the weather outside had gone from clear to swirling snow and ice. The entire road ahead of me was coated and no plows were in sight.

I have never been able to execute driving successfully in my dreams. Not once in all of my life, and this was no exception. I felt completely out of control, unable to keep the car in my lane or even going in the right direction. The windshield wipers and turn signals seemed foreign to me. I suddenly became aware that there were other people in the van: a man in the front, and a man, woman and child in the back.

The man in the front turned to me and said: "If you're going over, you better bundle up!"

At first I didn't understand. Then I saw what we were headed for: an immense drop-off that cascaded down the rocky side of cliff into a valley filled with grinding ice. This was some kind of extreme sport and I had neither the equipment nor the knowledge to perform it! At this point I had completely lost control of the car. It was essentially driving itself. I was lucky that they had an extra suit in the back. The man and woman handed it up to me, and I barely got it on in time. The suits were filled with helium pockets, and pulling a string caused them to inflate. This created a cushion of air around the wearer that prevented injury during what would otherwise be a fatal car crash.

We went over the cliff, and I couldn't see much because of the sheer size of my suit, but in the end we all made it down to the valley. The others got out and the little boy who had been in the back said: "Let's go again!"

I was back on the road again, close to the point where I had come across the first pack of dogs. I can't recall what I was doing. I think I may have been looking for other people to travel with since I felt so vulnerable by myself. The excitement of the marauding killer seemed to have died down. There were sirens in the distance but no more screams.

A young woman and her boyfriend approached me, and they were herding a group of toy-sized dogs. It was obvious the dogs suffered the same sickness as the ones that had chased me, for they were bleeding from the noses and covered in festering wounds. However, these dogs were friendly. They scampered up to me and whined for attention. Their tails wagged and their tongues lolled out of their mouths in anticipation of my attention. I stooped down and stroked a particularly happy-looking pug on the head.

"These dogs are sick," I said to the young woman.

"All dogs are sick here," she replied.

At that, the pug sneezed, and blood-streaked sputum shot all over its face and back. I stopped petting it after that.

"These dogs aren't like the other ones," the woman told me. "These dogs are pets. They have somebody to love."

At that point my alarm went off, and I came back to reality, realizing once again that my brain has a terrible time visualizing space and that my bedroom is in no way large enough to accommodate a dining table and chairs.... and also I should probably pay my car insurance now.

A Dream

In many facets of life I was dealt a poor hand. I'm not particularly attractive, I suffer from chronic low self-esteem, I'm terribly poor, and I don't have any defining traits or skills which set me apart from the rest of the masses. However; I do possess an uncanny ability to remember my dreams. I often remember dreams from separate REM sequences, especially since I am a light sleeper and likely to be awakened, however briefly, during nREM because a housefly ran into a window two doors down.

The following was a dream that occurred during the summer of 2010. I wrote it down originally as a Dream Interpretation question on Yahoo Answers, but failed to get any responses because of its length. You're welcome to make your own interpretation if you like, although the overriding themes of being hunted and apocalyptic destruction of mankind make its meaning pretty obvious to me.

For starters, I have a terrible fear of the ocean or any body of water that is big enough to hide a shark. Keep that in mind as you read this.

This was the second dream I had during a night of nightmares: it began with a teenage boy who I believe had some kind of mental incapacity or possibly brain damage. He couldn't speak but he loved to swim. I think I may have been one of his case workers, or maybe observing his case-worker (I don't know). Anyway, the boy's DNA was cross-genetically modified with a dolphin so that he would be able to communicate better. His habitat was in an oblong, underground facility with a large swimming area running down the middle. At first, everything seemed to be going well, but then the Dolphin/Boy got angry and very violent. He would leap out of the water and attack workers, dragging them into the water to eat them. He also learned to spit projectiles out of his mouth like bullets. I observed all of these atrocities from a third-person perspective, as though I was watching it on TV.

Eventually, it was down to me and one other scientist. We raced upstairs, away from the murderous dolphin hybrid, and we ended up inside my childhood home. It was about this time that Dolphin/Boy began to shape-shift, and he became a completely terrestrial monster of huge proportions with a gaping mouth and lots of teeth. He was incredibly strong and coming after us. The other scientist and I knew our only means of escape was to get into the Hummer and drive as fast as we could away from our terrible creation. The Hummer was parked at the end of the driveway. We just barely got inside when the monster started charging after us.

I gunned the ignition and sped off away from the house. At the end of the street, I noticed that the usual stand of trees had been completely removed. Beyond was a wide field full of large animals. There were wooly mammoths and giant boars and even some dinosaurs. The animals had found voices of their own and were yelling at us and charging the Hummer. They did not like what humans had done to the Earth, and were reclaiming it for their own. The mammoths were trampling down all the cities and buildings to make land for grazing. The boar and dinosaurs had hunted men to the brink of extinction. In my fright, I crashed the car into a rock, and as soon as we were out of it, a great herd of animals can and smashed it to pieces. They were very upset that humans had come into this land.

One of their leaders was a bird-like animal about eight feet tall who stood erect. I pleaded my case to him. I told him that humans were just as much a part of the Earth as the animals were, and that although we had made mistakes, we still had a right to live. He said that there was a part of the land his people had not touched yet, and that we could go there, but we had to hurry, or else he might eat us. The other scientist and I had very little time before the animals were allowed to kill us, so we ran. It was turning quickly into night. At the crest of a hill, we looked down into a broad valley bordered by trees. Instinctively, we knew that if we made it to the treeline, we would be safe.

I turned to her and said: "Even if we make it that far, there's no guarantee we'll survive." I had only a pocket knife and a cell phone on me; no tools, no shelter, no clothes except for what was on my back. We had no food or water, and it was getting very dark. "We have to try," she said, "It's our only chance." Into the night we ran, stopping occasionally to climb trees and look around. The animals there were much smaller and they mostly just ignored us. I wondered how long it would take for our terrible creation to find us, and if the other animals would stop him or kill him. We were hiding from a stegosaurus when I woke up.