Winter Depression or S.A.D. A Real Life Account
Without Prejudice
Every Winter I get S.A.D. or Seasonal Affective Disorder. I can feel it coming on in the Autum, a whisper of dark days to come licks at my spine and sends a shiver of knowing through me. An old friend and enemy. People around me say they look forward to Winter, that they feel brisk and lively and can spend time indoors in front of warm fires as the rain pelts down. I look at them in amazement as I feel no such delight, just dread.
This year the cold weather was upon us before we knew it. One minute heat and sun were with us and within days the sky turned turned dark and feral. I wasnt prepared. I decided in my wisdom I had enough of medication and stopped taking my Cymbalta (My brain does this to me, at times ) and within a week was a crying sobbing mess. I felt myself shrinking from company, all social contact.
Luckily I was with my Daughter and she told me to get to the Doctors pronto. I had run out of the pills and needed a new script and the thought of actually going to the Doctors seemed a task that was insurmountable. The next day I ran all the way to the Doctors, grabbed the script and ran all the way home.
For the next week I took my meds religously and realised I needed to do some practical things as well to get through the Winter. I usually get away for three months to Queensland but this year I decided I would face it my self. Face Winetr Depression in the face and stare it down. I bought a bright light, not the Blue Spectrum light as the Doctor told me.
"Ring Phillips and get a Blue Spectrum Light", he said,
"Dont bother with extra meds, just take your normal dose and get the bright light, $340"
I made my own brightness and thought hang the extra cost, as regards electricity, I need it.
So now during the mornings, I write as ever but gather as much light as I can. When the sun shines I open all the drapes, turn on all the lights, including the ultra bright one in the lounge room and bathe myself in light. When the tiredness comes upon me in the afternoons I read. Apparently reading novels relieves depression for some reason and I find disappearing into another life as in a novel soothes me.
Years ago I read an article of a Man that had depression and found it hard to understand, he took ages to steady himself on meds, its a struggle at times to find the right medication, one that allows you to be happy but doesnt send you into a spiral of side effects. I find Cymbalta works for me a 60 mg dose daily after an initial two weeks of 30 mg, you have to work your way up to the full dose. He stated that when he was bad the only person who understood was his Dad.
He would ring his Dad and say that he was
"Scared of lamb chops again!"
And the Dad immediately understood.
I know that sounds strange but I knew exactly what he was talking about. The pinkness of the chops, their rounded curls of fat lying in the pan was enough to depress him, my Sister cant stand bathrooms that are dark in the daylight. They depress her.
My depression indicators are dirty dishes in the sink, or dirt anywhere. It speaks of poverty and depression and probably reminds me of my clinically depresssed Mother, sleeping all the time, while the world went on a round her. Her only escape sleep, her refuge, her womb, her safety. In those days when my Mum was alive there was no cure for depression. Just sedatives that made depressives worse. She grew enormously fat on them and took to wearing voluminous Karftans before she died.
It kills me to even think about my elegant aristocratic proud British Mother wrapped in yards of fabric before she died. She also had an overactive thyroid which she would never allow them to operat on and they said that the thyroid woke up the latent mental condition she had since the War. The mental condition affected the thyroid and vice versa and for her at the end of her days it was an endless round of pills, E.C.T numerous times, that didnt work, violent outbursts, and Psychiatric Hospitals.
We were sure that Mum was still in there, somewhere, in that tired and bloated body with her beautiful blue eyes bulging in rage. But she wasnt, she was already gone and took her own life at 53, sick of it all and not wanting to affect her Family and Dad any more. He stayed with her to the very end. Convinced his beautiful Natalie would come back to him one day. She never did. Just quietly went away, laid her head on her handbag, laid her tired body down and took a whole bottle of pills with a can of soft drink, in a park, at night, Melbourne Cup Day, 1976.
She was tired of the struggle and in the years before she died was completely scizhophrenic, she heard voices, saw things that we could not see. Woke us in the middle of the night screaming at things, she shook with an ague first thing in the mornings and would march determinedly up and down the verandah, signalling Heil Hitler to the consternation of the neighbours.
It would take five men to hold her down as they adminstered knock out medicine and tried to get her to Hospital. She had fugue states that found her miles from home, freezing in just a thin nightie, shaking and smiling, crooning. She looked for my dead brother Jamie, in the months leading up to her death. She said he was in Woolies and she had lost him and needed to find him.
I like to think she has found him now, across the great divide, and they are together again along with Dad and my daughter, her grand daughter I was pregnant with when she died.
I never wanted to go the way my Mother did and her death served as a warning for the rest of my Family in regard to depression. My Sis and I have it and we are more than aware of its dangers, even so we have times when we get sick of taking the tablets and decide to go off it. Usually our kids shriek at us and can tell when we are off it. A flatness of character, a snappiness of temper, a sadness that amkes us cry copious amounts of tears. We are "Not Ourselves".
Winter depression lifts in the Spring. Its a melancholy that has its ups and downs. I know that it will lift, I know I will be better, I know that I am here for a reason, I know my kids would be devastated if anything were to happen to me. I want to live another 40 years in life, see my grand kids, marry, have kids of their own and I know that because of my Mum I would never do anything to myself that would hurt others. So I cook those damn lamb chops and eat them piece by piece, wash my dishes and stay awake in daylight hours.
I know that Winter will not win. I should be hard wired for Winter being born in Edinburgh, but then coming to the land of Sunshine at two years old, changed all that. I am a survivor. I have no damage of war to claim me in memory and horror. I will wait it out, wait out the Winter in my bright lights and work and sun some times. I will write about it and hope I can help otherrs. And when I feel myself shrinking away from others, will move instead towards them. My Mother became an aetheist after Jamie died, I feel a connection with spirit, I always have and to me its a sin to take your own life.
When I go it will be quietly in bed, just drifting off, surrounded by my loved ones, no sad cold lonely park for me. I value myself too much.And my daughter Lauren will be waiting for me across the Heavens and once again we will be together, she will be smiling, the warm breezes of spring in her smile. She will hold out her hand and say,
"You did good, Mum"
Love Janette
Every Winter I get S.A.D. or Seasonal Affective Disorder. I can feel it coming on in the Autum, a whisper of dark days to come licks at my spine and sends a shiver of knowing through me. An old friend and enemy. People around me say they look forward to Winter, that they feel brisk and lively and can spend time indoors in front of warm fires as the rain pelts down. I look at them in amazement as I feel no such delight, just dread.
This year the cold weather was upon us before we knew it. One minute heat and sun were with us and within days the sky turned turned dark and feral. I wasnt prepared. I decided in my wisdom I had enough of medication and stopped taking my Cymbalta (My brain does this to me, at times ) and within a week was a crying sobbing mess. I felt myself shrinking from company, all social contact.
Luckily I was with my Daughter and she told me to get to the Doctors pronto. I had run out of the pills and needed a new script and the thought of actually going to the Doctors seemed a task that was insurmountable. The next day I ran all the way to the Doctors, grabbed the script and ran all the way home.
For the next week I took my meds religously and realised I needed to do some practical things as well to get through the Winter. I usually get away for three months to Queensland but this year I decided I would face it my self. Face Winetr Depression in the face and stare it down. I bought a bright light, not the Blue Spectrum light as the Doctor told me.
"Ring Phillips and get a Blue Spectrum Light", he said,
"Dont bother with extra meds, just take your normal dose and get the bright light, $340"
I made my own brightness and thought hang the extra cost, as regards electricity, I need it.
So now during the mornings, I write as ever but gather as much light as I can. When the sun shines I open all the drapes, turn on all the lights, including the ultra bright one in the lounge room and bathe myself in light. When the tiredness comes upon me in the afternoons I read. Apparently reading novels relieves depression for some reason and I find disappearing into another life as in a novel soothes me.
Years ago I read an article of a Man that had depression and found it hard to understand, he took ages to steady himself on meds, its a struggle at times to find the right medication, one that allows you to be happy but doesnt send you into a spiral of side effects. I find Cymbalta works for me a 60 mg dose daily after an initial two weeks of 30 mg, you have to work your way up to the full dose. He stated that when he was bad the only person who understood was his Dad.
He would ring his Dad and say that he was
"Scared of lamb chops again!"
And the Dad immediately understood.
I know that sounds strange but I knew exactly what he was talking about. The pinkness of the chops, their rounded curls of fat lying in the pan was enough to depress him, my Sister cant stand bathrooms that are dark in the daylight. They depress her.
My depression indicators are dirty dishes in the sink, or dirt anywhere. It speaks of poverty and depression and probably reminds me of my clinically depresssed Mother, sleeping all the time, while the world went on a round her. Her only escape sleep, her refuge, her womb, her safety. In those days when my Mum was alive there was no cure for depression. Just sedatives that made depressives worse. She grew enormously fat on them and took to wearing voluminous Karftans before she died.
It kills me to even think about my elegant aristocratic proud British Mother wrapped in yards of fabric before she died. She also had an overactive thyroid which she would never allow them to operat on and they said that the thyroid woke up the latent mental condition she had since the War. The mental condition affected the thyroid and vice versa and for her at the end of her days it was an endless round of pills, E.C.T numerous times, that didnt work, violent outbursts, and Psychiatric Hospitals.
We were sure that Mum was still in there, somewhere, in that tired and bloated body with her beautiful blue eyes bulging in rage. But she wasnt, she was already gone and took her own life at 53, sick of it all and not wanting to affect her Family and Dad any more. He stayed with her to the very end. Convinced his beautiful Natalie would come back to him one day. She never did. Just quietly went away, laid her head on her handbag, laid her tired body down and took a whole bottle of pills with a can of soft drink, in a park, at night, Melbourne Cup Day, 1976.
She was tired of the struggle and in the years before she died was completely scizhophrenic, she heard voices, saw things that we could not see. Woke us in the middle of the night screaming at things, she shook with an ague first thing in the mornings and would march determinedly up and down the verandah, signalling Heil Hitler to the consternation of the neighbours.
It would take five men to hold her down as they adminstered knock out medicine and tried to get her to Hospital. She had fugue states that found her miles from home, freezing in just a thin nightie, shaking and smiling, crooning. She looked for my dead brother Jamie, in the months leading up to her death. She said he was in Woolies and she had lost him and needed to find him.
I like to think she has found him now, across the great divide, and they are together again along with Dad and my daughter, her grand daughter I was pregnant with when she died.
I never wanted to go the way my Mother did and her death served as a warning for the rest of my Family in regard to depression. My Sis and I have it and we are more than aware of its dangers, even so we have times when we get sick of taking the tablets and decide to go off it. Usually our kids shriek at us and can tell when we are off it. A flatness of character, a snappiness of temper, a sadness that amkes us cry copious amounts of tears. We are "Not Ourselves".
Winter depression lifts in the Spring. Its a melancholy that has its ups and downs. I know that it will lift, I know I will be better, I know that I am here for a reason, I know my kids would be devastated if anything were to happen to me. I want to live another 40 years in life, see my grand kids, marry, have kids of their own and I know that because of my Mum I would never do anything to myself that would hurt others. So I cook those damn lamb chops and eat them piece by piece, wash my dishes and stay awake in daylight hours.
I know that Winter will not win. I should be hard wired for Winter being born in Edinburgh, but then coming to the land of Sunshine at two years old, changed all that. I am a survivor. I have no damage of war to claim me in memory and horror. I will wait it out, wait out the Winter in my bright lights and work and sun some times. I will write about it and hope I can help otherrs. And when I feel myself shrinking away from others, will move instead towards them. My Mother became an aetheist after Jamie died, I feel a connection with spirit, I always have and to me its a sin to take your own life.
When I go it will be quietly in bed, just drifting off, surrounded by my loved ones, no sad cold lonely park for me. I value myself too much.And my daughter Lauren will be waiting for me across the Heavens and once again we will be together, she will be smiling, the warm breezes of spring in her smile. She will hold out her hand and say,
"You did good, Mum"
Love Janette
