This page is tropical on purpose. I am a 43-year-old accountant in Anchorage, Alaska, and I have seasonal affective disorder, which is a clinical name for what happens to some of us when the sun goes away for the winter. I designed this page in March, in the dark, as a form of therapy. The palm trees are load-bearing.

Here is my story, what I've learned about SAD, what I do about it, and a table, because I am an accountant and I can't help it.

My story · What SAD is · What helps me · Shopping for a light box · Daylight table · The book

I grew up in San Francisco, where winter means you might need a sweater. In 1986, when I was 30, I took a job with a firm in Anchorage. My mother asked if I'd lost my mind. My first winter was fine. It was an adventure: the snow, the northern lights, moose in the parking lot. I wrote home about it.

Every winter after that was a little worse. By 1991 I was, as my wife Karen put it, "hibernating with a calculator." I was sleeping ten hours and still exhausted. I ate every cracker in the house. I stopped returning calls. I couldn't concentrate, which in my line of work is noticed. Everything felt heavy and gray and pointless, from about November to about March, and then in April I'd wake up one morning and feel like a person again, and forget the whole thing until next November.

For years I blamed tax season, which, for a CPA, runs from January to the middle of April. It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice that tax season and the dark season overlap almost perfectly, and that tax season in May (extensions) didn't bother me at all.

In the fall of 1992 Karen made me an appointment with our doctor, and drove me there, in case I was considering a tactical retreat. He asked me questions about my sleep, my mood, my appetite, and when it all happened, and then he said "seasonal affective disorder." I asked if that was a real thing or a polite way of telling me I was a grouch. It's a real thing.

Karen, I should mention, grew up in Fairbanks, which is farther north and darker still, and she considers Anchorage practically the tropics. She has never had a single day of this. I've stopped asking how.

Seasonal affective disorder is depression that comes on in the fall or winter and lifts in the spring, in the same pattern year after year. It was first described in 1984 by Dr. Norman Rosenthal and his colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health. It's more common the farther you live from the equator, which is why it is a popular topic of conversation in Anchorage, right after the Iditarod and the Permanent Fund check.

The signs, as my doctor explained them, and as I lived them:

• Feeling low, hopeless or flat, most days, in the dark months
• No energy; heavy arms and legs
• Oversleeping, and still being tired
• Craving starches and sweets
• Pulling away from friends and family
• Trouble concentrating
• Losing interest in things you usually enjoy

Plenty of people get a milder case of the winter blahs. The question is whether it is getting in the way of your life: your work, your family, your friendships. If it is, see your doctor. Depression is depression, whatever time of year it shows up, and it can be treated.

This is my program, refined over seven winters. It's what works for me. Yours may be different. Your doctor should help you design it.

1. The light box. Every morning from the first of October through the end of March, I sit in front of a 10,000-lux light box for thirty minutes, from 6:30 to 7:00, at the kitchen table, with coffee and the newspaper. You don't stare into it; you just sit near it with your eyes open and let the light reach your eyes while you read or eat. Within a week or two of starting each fall, I notice the difference. If I skip three or four days in a row, I notice that too.

The ledger, for those who like this sort of thing. Last winter, October 1 through March 31, was 182 days. Less seven on Maui (the light box does not travel) is 175 sessions, or 87½ hours. The box cost me $290 in 1992. Over seven winters that comes to less than a quarter a session. It has been fully depreciated for two years and is still in service. Like many of my clients' best assets, it's worth more than the books say.

2. A dawn simulator. This is a lamp on a timer that gets brighter gradually over half an hour before the alarm goes off, like a sunrise. In December in Anchorage the real sunrise isn't until after ten in the morning, so this is the only sunrise I see on a weekday. It makes getting out of bed in the dark much less like being exhumed.

3. Outside at midday. I take a walk downtown at lunch, every day, whatever the weather. In late December the sun gets only about five degrees above the horizon at noon, and on a cloudy day you might not see it at all. Go anyway. Daylight outdoors, even gray daylight, is brighter than any office.

4. Exercise. Cross-country skiing on the lighted trails after work, three nights a week if I can manage it. I am not good at it. That isn't the point.

5. Friends. SAD makes you want to hide. So I make my winter plans in September, while I'm still a person: Thursday night supper with the same four friends, rotating houses, from October to March. Once it's on the calendar, December me has to show up. December me is very obedient if September me does the paperwork.

6. Counseling, or medication. I saw a counselor for most of my first year after the diagnosis, and it helped me a great deal, especially with the habit of believing every dark thing my brain told me in January. Some people with SAD also do well with an antidepressant. Whether either is right for you is a conversation for you and your doctor.

7. Maui. Every February, Karen and I spend a week on Maui. I have run the numbers on this many times. It is the single best-value line item in our household budget. More than eleven hours of daylight in February, warm water, and a man at the hotel who brings you a drink with a paper umbrella in it. I come home with enough sun stored up to make it to the equinox. This year: 142 days to go. Not that I'm counting.

People write and ask which one to buy. I don't sell them and I won't recommend a brand. Some general things to look for:

• Talk to your doctor first. Especially if you have any eye problems, or if you've ever had highs as well as lows. Light therapy is powerful stuff and it isn't for everyone.
• Buy one made for this purpose. Not a tanning lamp, which is a different thing entirely, and not an ordinary lamp with a bright bulb.
• 10,000 lux at a distance you can actually sit. Brightness drops quickly as you move away. Check the distance the maker says it delivers 10,000 lux at, and make sure that's somewhere you'd be comfortable for half an hour.
• Screened for ultraviolet. You want the light without the UV.
• Big enough that you can move a little, turn a page, drink your coffee, and still be in the light.
• Ask about a return policy. They cost a couple of hundred dollars or more, and you want to be able to send it back if it isn't right.
• Call your insurance company. It's worth asking whether they'll help with the cost if your doctor prescribes one.

Mornings work best for most people, but ask your doctor about timing, and stick with it every day. The box only works if you sit in front of it.

Sunrise to sunset on or about the 21st of each month, in round numbers, for the record. Anchorage, as you can see, has the most efficient summer and least efficient winter of any city I've ever lived in.

For comparison, Maui at the winter solstice: nearly eleven hours. I looked it up. More than once.

If you read one thing besides this page, read Winter Blues, by Dr. Norman Rosenthal, the psychiatrist who first described SAD. It explains what's known about it, how light therapy works and how to use it, and the other treatments, in plain English. My doctor told me about it my first winter after the diagnosis. I bought a copy and have since bought three more to give away to people in my office who looked familiar to me in January.

If you're up north and reading this in the dark, write to me. I answer everything, more slowly in December. [email protected] Visitors since March 1998, most of them in January: Last updated Thursday, September 23, 1999, the equinox. Downhill from here, then uphill. I'm an accountant, not a doctor. Please see yours.