[What follows is one of the many merry articles in the Mercury's Winter Guide 2025. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you're feeling generous this holiday season, support us here.—eds.]

Every fall, it happens.

The first moment you can feel hot air escaping through your air ducts, the smell of warmed-over spring and summer dust filling the room. That’s when you know it’s coming: winter in Oregon.

According to weatherspark.com, in Oregon, “the cloudiest part of the year begins around October 7 and lasts for 8.1 months.”

The website says it so casually. EIGHT MONTHS OF GRAY, OREGON. DEAL WITH IT. 

Not to brag, but it doesn’t bother me. Which isn’t to say I don’t get depressed—I am one dysthymic bitch. It’s just not because of the rain. In fact, I’m more depressed in the summer because of all the under-boob and back-of-knee sweat. But I realize I’m an outlier.

Almost anyone you talk to in Oregon mentions winter as something you must survive, and research backs that up. According to Oregon State University, 25 percent of Pacific Northwest dwellers self-report a lower mood in the winter, with 10 percent experiencing seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—twice the US average. We Oregonians are a SAD people.

SAD is depression that generally occurs during the fall and winter months. Why it happens is not fully understood, but it appears to be related to lower production of serotonin and melatonin in response to reduced daylight hours. Symptoms include decreased energy and motivation, weight gain due to increased appetite, social withdrawal, anxiety, and generally riding a serious bummer. (Women who have experienced these symptoms during perimenopause or menopause understand the hellish havoc a lack of certain hormones in the body can wreak. Respectful hat tip to serotonin and melatonin.)

If you’re a person who struggles with SAD, or just a persistent low mood during these months, most ways to fight it involve going against your instincts to lolligag and socially withdraw. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but this is tough love, Oregon. (Not, like, “federalize the National Guard without the governor’s consent” tough love, but tough nonetheless.) Here are a few tips for beating down the SAD beast:

Schedule more social time during winter months, not less. To elevate your mood and combat feelings of hopelessness and loneliness, you must try to stay connected to your chosen people—those folks who remind you that you’re loved and cared for.

After my last relationship ended, I was deeply depressed. The single most powerful choice I made was to go against my instinct to hibernate and proactively schedule more time than ever with my friends. I had a magnetic dry-erase calendar on my fridge that I filled with multiple play dates every week of the month, and it made all the difference. Yes, there was one girls’ night when I started crying over a beautiful selection of charcuterie while a very resourceful friend surreptitiously ordered two bottles of bubbly from GrubHub, but that was the only time shit got really dark. (Another respectful hat tip to resourceful friends who stick around during the hard stuff.)

Note: If you have social anxiety, notice whether you’re draining your social battery or getting “social hangovers”—you might leave a hangout feeling fatigued, irritated, or disconnected, instead of healed by the power of love and friendship. If this is true for you, lower the number of social connections you’re scheduling.  

Crawl out of that cozy-ass bed and exercise more. Again, I know this goes against your instincts, but remember how SAD’s hallmark downturn in mood may be associated with decreased levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine? I’m sorry to say that exercise increases both of those fuckers.

The good news is that exercise doesn’t have to mean a high-energy Zumba class or climbing the steps at Mt. Tabor in the pouring rain. It can mean those things, but it can also be as simple as walking on a treadmill while listening to a podcast about a particularly grisly murder. Walking is exercise. So is doing bed-curls with your lightest dumbbells while watching the Love is Blind finale. Doing even the smallest amount of exercise can make a huge difference in your mind- and body-set. The key is to do ANYTHING that’s not bed-rotting. (Full disclosure: I am typing this from my couch. Because it’s cozy. Don’t @ me.)

Go into the light—with mindfulness. Light therapy works. Even sitting near windows can help, but getting a light therapy lamp can make all the difference when natural light is hard to come by. Mayo Clinic advises purchasing a lamp that emits 10,000 lux of light, which is 20 times brighter than an average indoor light. They range from $16 to $149 online, so you should be able to find one in your price range.

You can also leave the house for your light therapy—there are infrared saunas in Portland (known to help with pain relief, enhancing circulation, stress reduction, and improved sleep, among other things), and PSU students have access to a “mind spa.”

“But Courtenay,” you might be thinking. “Sitting for twenty minutes staring at a therapy lamp with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company in the middle of a dark winter sounds seventh-circle-of-hellish. Why would I do that?”

You make a good point. Being alone with one’s thoughts in the midst of winter’s discontent isn’t the best idea. What I would suggest is either the aforementioned grisly podcast (or—hear me out—something lighter) or killing two mental health birds with one stone and meditating during your lamp therapy. Paid apps like Happier Meditation, Calm, and Headspace offer guided meditations from your phone, but you can also find free ones on YouTube. 

I know it’s hard to hear that boring things are beneficial to your brain chemistry, but millennia of practice and research show that meditation can balance neurotransmitters, reduce stress and rumination, and offer a strong counter punch to the low moods that SAD can bring.

If you’ve never meditated before, don’t start with 30 minutes. You’ll never make it. Even starting with a couple minutes of guided breathwork in the morning can make a surprising difference. Two minutes! You can do anything for two minutes. Yes you can. Shut up. JUST FREAKING MEDITATE WHY ARE YOU BEING DIFFICULT ABOUT THIS?

Apologies. I may have overstepped. But this is serious. Talking about SAD is often a punchline, but it can actually lead to long-term or even major depression if you’re not proactive about it.

Supplement for a lack of sun with pills and professionals. If you do nothing else, consider getting your Vitamin D levels checked and take supplements if they’re low. Eight months of cloud cover (read: lack of access to the sun’s UVB rays) can lead to a deficiency, and Vitamin D is a known mood regulator. Low levels of it have been linked to mood disorders like depression and anxiety, so it can be an easy fix in milder cases.

That being said, it’s also good to know when it’s time to turn it up to 11, solution-wise: Contact a therapist and sign on for some sweet, sweet cognitive behavioral therapy or mood elevators.

As a person with both generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, I have experienced the deep, echoing cave that is an anxious brain during the depths of winter. Therefore, I can say with some level of confidence that the majority of the stories you’re telling yourself this winter are total and complete bullshit.

Some of them are true, don’t get me wrong. We ARE circling the democratic drain and just beginning to plumb the depths of fascism, so we actually do have things we should be worried about. Taking some form of political action is the antidote to those spirals. Host a postcard-writing evening with friends wherein you drink something called a “Stolitov cocktail” just to get a little venom out of your system. Volunteer for an organization doing meaningful work. Find the closest abyss to scream into.

There are things we should be both worrying and doing something about. That said, the stuff about that thing you said at the thing with all the people that you’re sure everyone immediately called each other about right afterwards? That didn’t happen. Or, it did happen, but no one called anyone and/or broke into discussion groups about it.

This is why a therapist can be a useful winter tool: They’re an objective, kind, educated voice that can counter almost all the seasonal neurotic garbage bouncing around  your brain right now. There’s no shame in getting help before things get really dark.

Well, they’re already really dark, but you know what I mean.

Here’s hoping you can find a way to enjoy these glorious, cozy, holiday-filled and under-boob-sweat-free days.