I get something like seasonal psychosis. My psychotic symptoms become worse when it starts getting dark at 6. I do kinda like winter when it snows, because it brightens things up. I'm also phobic of the dark, so that helps.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Yeah, I have it really bad too. Here's my list
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Light therapy - big big help. Get one of those sunlamp alarm clocks, deliberately sit in bed with it pointing at the corner of your eyes for half an hour when you wake up and check your bears. I've also got one above my desk. I'm considering just replacing some of my regular housing lights with stupid bright ones. The converse of this is that you also have to start turning off lights before bed.
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Melatonin - take one half an hour before bed, and try to always to go bed at about the same time of day. Doesn't really help against basic depressive blahs, but it stops most of the complete zombie days
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Vitamin D supplements - maybe helps, it's hard to tell honestly
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Exercise, eat yer vegetables, etc - I mean it helps, but it's also like the first thing that depression tries to undo, so I don't think this is that reliable
I wanna say with melatonin that a lot of the supplements out there are overdosed, supposedly because the correct dose is trademarked (after a study at MIT found it was best at about .25mg). I use a liquid melatonin by life extension where I only take 3-4 drops and that has kept my sleep schedule on point for years now, and I have pretty bad sleep habits.
How do you trademark a dosage?
I guess it was a patent thing? I dunno the story is weird. I think I found a blog that talks about it a bit
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/12/did-a-melatonin-patent-inspire-current-dose-confusion/
Huge +1 for melatonin, helps me massively with sleep. Had struggled to fall asleep for years and years before I started.
For melatonin, you actually want to take it 3-4 hours before you go to sleep, as it takes a few hours to actually be absorbed/become effective. Also you generally don't need more than 1 mg. The low end effective does is 0.3 mg.
Got any recommendations for specific sun lamps? I have one but its kinda just obnoxiously bright and cant tell if its doing anything
I got mine a gazillion years ago and they don't make them anymore, it's a Nature Bright Per3. I don't recommend any current Nature Bright lamps, but look that one up to get an idea - it's a small bedside table style lamp with a clock, sunrise/alarm feature, and one of those articulated swiveling heads like a reading lamp. Each of those details (clock, alarm, swivel) is great, look for something like that. It also needs to be 10,000 lux, but now that LEDs are cheap and everywhere, that should be easy.
And yes, the operative thing is that they're obnoxiously bright. They're supposed to be as bright as the sun (if they're 2 feet away and the sun is its usual distance away). Ideally it's pointing into your eyes at an angle for 30 minutes while you're doing something. Some people say first thing in the morning, others say as close to noon as possible. Regardless, because you want to aim it at yourself from a specific distance at an angle, some sort of pivot head is a very good idea.
I’ll give my current one another chance and look around for others. Thanks for the advice! My current desk lamp is quite dim i could probably make use of it that way and point it at the wall to get a lot more light
Oh yeah, pointing my sunlamp at a wall is easily enough light to see the whole room by. Handy.
Just tried this and using my dimmer lamp next to my bed and it honestly feels better already. Idk why artificial light only works if its pointed at a wall otherwise it makes me feel gross. Like ceiling bulbs make me feel exposed for some reason… just autism things.
I was in rehab with a guy that suffered from seasonal depression and he'd end up relapsing in the winter, so you're not allow. Like others have said maybe vit D might help a bit?
I'm not a doctor or an endocrinologist or even intelligent. But when I start to feel like this during the winter I take a vitamin d pill and sometimes a magnesium pill. It's probably a placebo but it seems like it helps me
Ill give magnesium a go but vitamin d i did try and it didn’t help much. Its such a weird steep downward spiral it feels like something more is going on.
seasonal a-something disorder? I suffer from it too.
seasonal affective disorder
Have you found anything that helps?
I had some special bulbs that I installed in a place I used to live, they were supposed to replicate full sun spectrum or something, and help alleviate the worst of it, and it seems to help some but I dunno how much of that was my own thinking versus actual help.
I'm not the most outgoing, bubbly of sorts, but I notice an absolute change in my outlook when winter rolls around. It's a small part of why I live where I live, winter is pretty tame comparatively so more sunny days than say Seattle or Portland.
Does excercise like taking a walk do anything? I hate to suggest medication but have you tried a SSRI/SSNI?
Did have ssri’s for a bit and they worked until they kinda just started making me feel hollow and lost the ability to feel joy. Exercise is actually impossible for me in winter I simply lose the will to move. Fine in summer i go outside and scorch myself in the sun for hours but i literally cant even bring myself to go outside unless im forced to in winter months and i hate it
I am the exact same. I just can't handle the cold. I can handle 95-100f days for weeks on end. I complain about the heat but I can handle it. The cold is another matter entirely. It makes my fingers hurt. It makes my joints hurt. I love to camp, but can't handle it in the winter, I won't do anything but sit under blankets and shiver.
Give me the heat, please.
Also, I just got off of Lexapro and Wellbutrin. They helped for a while, but seem to have lost effectiveness, even with counseling and the lot. My doctor suggested upping my dose but I really don't want to get into SSRI/SSNI withdrawal again. A long time ago I kicked opium with tramadol, and the tramadol withdrawal was 2x worse than the opium. SSRI shocks are absolute hell to me.
It's called vitamin d fam. Get a supplement
Take a vitamin D suppliment comrade. It probably won't fix it but it should help
Am I like the only motherfucker that like winter? 
I mean the weather recently has been mostly clear skies and no snow ( 
WHICH SUCKS BECAUSE SNOW IS GREAT) so I can't complain much. The worst part is probably not having the sun help me wake up in the mornings, and thanks to this thread I now know sunlamps are a thing. 
Also don't get me started on full moons which are beautiful as fuck this time of year, too bad I missed the last super moon, a night walk then would've rocked... 
Also........ crima 
British winter is a special kind of miserable because its always overcast and its always raining. Clear skies are great and snow is great when I went to Finland in November i was very happy also sauna really just is the fix for dark winter days. The thing about snow is it actually makes everything brighter owing to it being white and reflecting all the light its actually quite blinding so it works as its own sun lamp and makes even darker days more tolerable. But we dont get snow much and when we do the infrastructure collapses instantly but my boss will still tell me i need to be in the office
HOLY SHIT THERE'S A SUPER :moon: ON JAN 3RD LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO
Oh yeah, I exercise, a lot
It helps, especially those days when I just feel like this
Yes. I have bad depression normally but December through February is just awful.
In addition to what everyone said about Vitamin D supplements or food rich in Vitamin DBuy a light therapy lamp that is rated at least 10,000 lux and sit in front of it (within 12-18 inches of your eyes) within an hour of waking up every morning for 30 minutes.
that is a long time
That's the minimum amount of sunshine you need daily.
Was going to come in here to say this. Get a happy light guys, getting that light into your eyes right away in the morning makes a big difference. I’ve had issues with depression my whole life that tend to spike in the winter and this made a very noticeable difference.
Yeah it started around end of november for me about 4 weeks before solstice. If it's really tied to day length I should get out of it around end of january. Used to be way worse one year it was like 8 weeks before solstice and it really did take until beginning of march. Also I'm so sleepy and tired all the time because I'm a mammal in winter damnit. Envious of squirrels rn.
Yes and I've found a genius way of dealing with it by not leaving my home all month.
It was easier when i could work from home but now i have to be in the office and its just a bleak commute
My workaround for that was catching the flu
When im sick i have to “make up” office days by coming in more days the following week for how long i was sick for i hate this job so fucking much
Yeah it fuckin sucks. And everyone says garbage like "you need the cold gray days to appreciate the nice sunny days!" But like....why the fuck should I be so extra miserable half a goddamn year?
I wish people could seasonally migrate if they wanted.
Had multiple flocks of geese fly over my house today, on their way to somewhere nicer, and I felt envious...
I have this but the opposite
i got the exact opposite, sometimes i wish i could split the difference with someone so i wouldn't hate life in the summer and they could do alright in the winter
It has been rough as shit for me too these last two years. Not sure what changed.
Yes.
Now who tf are you? Are you a clean bird?
Foots been hurting, ears are clogged which is throwing my sense of balance off so I’m going to the ENT tomorrow for it, still need to do some Christmas shopping, and i’ve got to rearrange a bunch of furniture and take a door off in the house by Saturday morning because my washing machine died and they have to take the old units out and the new ones in via the front door even though the back door is much closer because the last home owner decided when she redid the kitchen to put in a narrower back door so a standard washer and dryer can’t fit through it, plus it’s the busy season at work.
So yeah, you could say my mental health has taken a hit lately.
I've always loved gray skies but I'm depressed all year regardless. I once knew someone who visited my hometown and saw how gray everything was and got visibly upset by it, but they also couldn't comprehend being depressed except for understanding in the abstract that some people get sad and then CW.
idk, I don't like it because it's sad, it just always felt pleasant to me, like how fog is beautiful.
Anyway, obviously I'm not challenging your reaction to it or anything, brain chemicals are funny (though I would ask if it's just a correlative thing with a vitamin d deficiency or something).
Yes. Sorta'. It's not SAD I don't think, but because I need to become almost nocturnal to keep the woodstove going because everyone else in this house has some undiagnosed secret-mystery trauma of not being able to put a couple logs into a woodstove when they walk by it maybe once or twice a day for me for some reason.
Experienced, like, 3.5 hours of daylight today because of it.
Yes. And its christmas time so im busting my ass at work day in day out while having Merriment and Good Cheer jammed down my throat like im the asshole for not liking this shit cause mostly it just means I have to work harder for nothing so other people can have The Joy of Christmas. The cultural need to play the same 15 asinine and soulless or super religious and from the 19th century or earlier over and over half of which are basically children's songs. No one really likes these and those who do should be punished for it or at least be forced to listen to real music.
Same I get really sad during December but it's mostly related to my childhood and having to pretend to have a normal relation with my relatives
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