My SAD Light

Last fall I bought a giant high-powered light for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. Prior to 2012, winter didn’t get me any bluer than anyone else. But that winter my mood was complicated by some actual medical problems I was having, and I became this sort of listless ghost of buried rage. It was like the “before” part of a commercial for SSRIs. I figured things would be better in 2013, because I had gotten on medications that were treating the actual physical issues I was having, but no. Again, the listless shade appeared. I would hover around the windows, turning my pale eyes upward into the thin winter sunlight, while making grim pronouncements about the futility of even breathing. Then we had an early spring – and all of a sudden, life, which had previously been a sad trick played by an uncaring god, was all BEAUTIFUL SINGING BLUEBIRDS.

(this guy is having an awesome time. Maybe it's the hat?)

I am not actually capable of remembering problems after they are over, so once spring arrived and I was happy again, I sort of forgot I had ever not been, and was prepared to go on just as before. But my husband does not have my selective amnesia, and two years of Winter Slump spurred him to action, researching SAD lights and then encouraging me to buy this crazy thing. I say crazy not because it doesn’t work – I think it does – but because I’m not sure that it should. The whole idea of turning a high-powered light on myself in the morning for 20 minutes as an antidote to The Sads feels kind of like I’m putting my faith in hippie tea and moonbeams. “Oh yes my chakras were out of balance so now I put a lump of hematite in my belly button on Mondays and that takes care of it.”

(I just can't deal with the chakra stuff.)

My SAD light is stupidly bright (it provides 10,000 "Lux", whatever a Lux is), and has that fluorescent, 7-11 at 3am quality – this is not balmy, tropical sunshine. It would probably be the worst light ever to have in a dressing room, and it also doubles as a torture device if you are hungover in any way. But it’s the second of February and I am feeling pretty much like a human being, instead of a hollowed-out accumulation of anguishes. I haven't tried to suck all the joy out of anyone's life in, like, a year! So, regardless of whether it ought to work, it does, and, bowing to American philosophical pragmatism, I will be keeping up my morning treatments.