SAD all year round!!

Mystifyme, it's good to hear from someone else like me. I need medication and light therapy all year round too. Lack of energy is a biggie with me - I try to get out for a walk most days but some days I just have absolutely no energy to do so. It's so hard because it's only someone who has been there who understands. I live in Northern Ireland and the weather is so poor it really gets me down. Went to Majorca on holiday for two weeks earlier in the year and it really helped - trying to see if we can afford a cheap week there at the end of September.

I'm suffering from exactly the same thing and I'm severely hacked off with it. I'm getting the same feeling of abject despair that I suffer from each winter. I live in Bristol, and we haven't had a week of warm sunny weather in over three years. At the moment it's just grey, overcast and rainy every single day with a temperatutre of 17-18 degrees. It's not summer and it's not liveable in. I like the quote from the 12th Century Arab al-Idrisi, who described England as 'a land of perpetual winter'. On the plus side I'm going to sell my flat this Autumn, bank the equity, do a TEFL, and move somewhere warm and sunny. It's the only choice if I want to stay alive and have a happy life.

I think its the fact that we haven't had an actual summer in years, so people like us that suffer from SAD have to suffer all year long instead of just the autumn/winter months. It really is getting me down, as I know it must be a lot of you. Right now I'd just settle for a week not feeling run down and depressed, but with September looming and still not yet having any summer to call anything it doesn't seem likely.

if I could afford it I'd go on holiday somewhere warm but really have no money spare this year lol

I sooooooooooooo hear you both as well. Despite potions and pills and the light, I have had a really grim w/e.I never remember feeling so totally exhausted all the time.I have less get up and go than a sloth on sleeping pills. It's so unlike me. I've had SAD in the winter for a good few years and realise now that I have been affected during the last 2/3 summers as well. It's easy to put it down to all the other things going on in one's life! But I've made an appt. to see my very sympathetic GP . He might have some suggestions.Something's got to give, or I'll have to go off sick. I have a hol. in 3 weeks, but Scotland not Spain!And I really don't think I'm going to last out.But it does help to know that you are not the only one who just cannot physically manage without sun. No wonder they worshipped the sun in the old days!
Maggie.

I know what you mean about this rubbish weather, ive decided to stay on medication all year round, really hope you start to feel better soon.


Paul.

Im feeling ok thanks, my tablets help me to sleep, not sure how I would manage without them. The weather in Majorca should be nice and warm in September,im sure you will enjoy it, we have just come back from Menorca and really felt the benefit of the sunshine.

take care

Paul.

For some years now, my routine has been to spend almost all of my free time outside work indoors, usually at my computer desk. Effectively, my work was my way of meeting the outside world and if I was lucky with the good old British weather, it was my way of getting some sunshine light therapy. For me, the constant battle against tiredness is the one SAD symptom I hate, head and shoulders above the others (poor stress management; anxiety; depression; anti-social; major carbohydrate cravings... probably in that order).

Having been made redundant, along with all the other project staff at the end of June (company liquidation), winter has been extended somewhat this year (all the SAD symptoms are coming on in leaps and bounds, within a seven week period)...

Why? Silly me is so routined into spending my "home time" in front of the computer, I am finding it incredibly difficult to break the routine and go for daily ~4 mile bike rides, despite loving it when I am on my flourescent orange hub-geared steed! In a typical week since July, I have "done well" if I venture outdoors three times a week.

How does my body thank me for this indoor routine?
I worry and stress about my fortnightly visits to the Job Centre, as despite being assigned to a Disabled Employment Advisor, this person is so unsuitable for their role (was not allowed to describe all my SAD symptoms; was not asked about work history; pushed towards indoor and unsocialable hours vacancies).
The stress and worry has a knock-on effect on my sleep pattern: Having to stay up until I'm completely exhausted so that I can get to sleep; waking randomly in the middle of the night (often means back on pc until shattered again); feeling "cabbaged" when the dawn simulator alarm goes off; fighting the urge to go back to bad for most of the day (and no energy or motivation to go and visit the outdoor world).

So, where are things heading? Well, the Brightspark has been on duty most days for the last month. There have been times when I have been tempted to plug in the Pharos Max, but I have resisted having a furniture juggle, so far.
I start a bi-weekly course in a month's time, ran by a local charity, who try to help people learn to cope with issues like depression and then find a suitable, enjoyable job.
I have an extended appointment with my GP this coming week, to ask them about: Help for the stress/anxiety > worse sleep then normal (on no meds for some years now); getting qualified medical diagnosis of SAD; the possibility of claiming Incapacity Benefit for at least the coming "winter" months (while I look for a job that I know I am capable of)

Sorry about the novel repsonse! If nothing else, its helped me vent some of my frustrations since the end of June.

I am finding this year very hard. I have stayed on medication all year. Glad I'm not alone. One day at a time that is all I can do to survive.

Hi PurpleIvy, im sorry things are not so good for you at the moment, im back to work on Thursday. Summer holidays are great but im not looking forward to school again. im ok ish but have taken my medication all year round.

Take care

Paul.

PurpleIvy, I've got to agree with Maggie. I wouldn't wait to go on the tablets. I'd get on them now, give yourself a start for the winter ahead. When you've depression everything else seems so hard to cope with as well. I so hear you - been having a really bad time too. It's good to know there are others here who understand, even if we can't do anything physically to help. Hang in there.

Hi there so glad I've loged on to this site again, it's like a light going ping, pardon the pun. I've had a Brightspark for 2 years now but was wondering what was up these last 3 weeks, with no energy on the chocolate bars and feeling down...I know it's the nights drawing in tonight it was 7.45 when I ahd to put the lights on! Can't complain too much on the weather as here in sunny dry Norfolk we have had it ok end July to now. so will be under the stairs tonight to ge the light out and buy one for my new son in law!

I don't want to take the tablets until 'winter' because I get a lot of side effects. In any case, the weather comes and goes and there was always the hope of a decent September. It's really not been too bad here for the last couple of weeks.

At the risk of being shouted down here, if it's year round, isn't it 'just' depression? Even if you lived even further north than I do, you would get summer.