Eeks Speakeasy: Seasonal Blues, Melancholy, and the Winter Splinter

Seasonal Blues, Melancholy, and the Winter Splinter...

Do you only get the Winter Blues?

Lucky you.

In this episode of Eeks Speakeasy, Dr. Eeks confesses to suffering from the entire seasonal collection—from the Autumn Bottom and Spring Sting to the Summer Bummer and the newly diagnosed Winter Splinter.

Along the way, she explores why our moods seem to shift throughout the year, why spring doesn't bring optimism for everyone, why daylight saving time continues to confuse humans and dogs alike, and why melancholy might deserve a little more respect than it gets.

This isn't an episode about diagnosing depression or treating Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It's a short, lighthearted take on the many ways seasons shape our emotions, complete with bad puns, Greek medicine, philosophical detours, Jack and his "Winter Jollies," and her dog Barnaby's unwavering belief that breakfast should never be a political decision.

If you missed the first episode of Eeks Speakeasy, it's here: The Long Whatever.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Causes or Cures Podcast, your gateway to understanding health and groundbreaking medical research in a fun and easy to understand way. With Dr. Eaks as your host, join us as we sit down with the world's leading doctors and scientists to unravel the mysteries of health. From practical tips on well-being to the latest breakthroughs in medical research, we cover it all. Don't forget to subscribe. Now, let's ignite our curiosity and together dive into today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello, hello everybody, and welcome back to Cause Azore Cures. This is Eeks Speak Easy, and I'm Dr. Eeks, your host. And today, I'm gonna talk about the blues. Yeah. Not the sexy kind, not the New Orleans kind, the seasonal kind. Those moody mood swings that seem to have better PR than most diseases. Cause every winter we get headlines. You've all seen them. The winter blues are back. Beat seasonal affective disorder with light. Your brain hates December. Here's why. Or they have lists like those Your brain hates the winter. Here's five reasons why. Or here's seven things you can do to beat the winter blues. I hate those. Like like there's like a list that you can actually use to make your life better if you follow the list. Like seven things. Hey, I hate them. Uh such bullshit. Anyhow, I always feel slightly left out when I read those headlines and I see all that because I don't just get the winter blues. No, no, I get the all season blues. Yeah. Winter blues? Sure. But also the fall blues, the spring blues. The thing is, I like to make them rhyme. So they pop a little more. Paint a picture. Give me something fun to do. So I get the autumn bottom. The spring sting and the summer bummer. Yeah. And if it were up to me, I'd rename the winter blues and I'd call it the winter splinter. Cause that paints a picture, right? You could see that one. Eeks can't come out tonight. She's at home with a bad case of the winter splinter. Ah, ouch! Oh feel that one. Goes right up your middle, right? Yeah. The winter splinter. And to be clear, y'all, I'm not talking about sad seasonal effective disorder. I'm talking about the seasonal blues, the blues. Now with sad, they tell you to sit in front of a bright light, right? Which supposedly works good if you're a human. Less great if you're a magwa. Catastrophic if you're a gremlin. I don't know if there's any gremlin fans here. I like them. I just bought a hat with a gremlin on it. Uh there's sirens behind me, sorry guys. But you know, the seasonal blues, they happen for different reasons, right? Let's think about it. Let's use our brains. The winter. Shorter days, less sunlight, changes in melatonin, the vampire hormone, and serotonin, and suddenly your brain becomes a moody beat yay, a biotch. In spring. Surprisingly, there's high rates of agitation and even a bump in suicide rates, which is a reminder that not everybody is into flowers and birds, guys. But seriously, people assume that suicide spike in the winter, but actually it's the spring. The summer. What's going on there? Okay, heat-related irritability. Hot people are cranky. Hot, miserable people with swamp crotch are extra cranky. I'm definitely cranky in the heat. I hate it. I don't get swamp crotch though. And if I did, I certainly wouldn't admit to it on a podcast listened to by a lot of people. I don't know, maybe like ten people are listening to this, who knows? But humidity blows, y'all. Like, I actually don't know how people live in Florida. And I guess I guess you're just always on a boat or in a pool or being killed by an alligator. The fall. What's going on in the fall? I guess it's the existential crispiness, right? Like your brain senses the world winding down and thinks, oh yeah, it's time to reflect on every choice you've ever made. Uh, you know, the leaves are blowing and people are reciting bad high school poetry. Egnar Allan Poe mode. And then you have to read those memes every year on Instagram about when leaves are at their most vibrant and most colorful. That just means that they are actively shutting down and entering their final life stages, and it seems counterintuitive. And somehow it's supposed to be inspiring in some like eat pray love kind of way, but I don't see it. To me, it just sounds like a big tease. A tree tease. So yeah, the blues come in many flavors. A baskin robins of emotional dysregulation. And I thought it was basket robins until about two days ago. Now I know people with signature seasonal moods. I have friends who get the February doom, the May malaise, the Labor Day slide into despair. Then there's the holiday blues. Like I can count on my mom to cancel Christmas every year, which I love. Because I hate holiday get-togethers. I do guys. I don't like any get-togethers. Like, like, not like we have to like sit in a room together with a group of people and like you're stuck. Like, no, no, no, that's not for me. And the good part about this is I can buy my family gifts after the holidays with the discounts, right?

unknown 6:27

Woo-hoo!

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Blue-collar chair there. And okay, stop. You're like, oh my god, like she's so cheap. That's terrible. I shouldn't say that. But guys, they say the same thing about me because I know they do, because we're a family tree that's practical. Yeah. We go for the good price. I also hate New Years, mainly because uh I don't really believe in the concept of time. It's a human construct, and if you want proof, ask your dog what year it is. Do it right now. He has no idea. He only knows whether it's playtime, chow time, walk time, or nap time. Speaking of dogs, my neighbor's dog hates the Fourth of July. He gets the Fourth of July blues, or the Fourth of July psychos, I guess, or the Fourth of July batshit craziness. It's a seasonal nuclear bomb for him. Meanwhile, my dog loves it, because he's weird. He is a weirdo. I've got him sitting on the windowsill watching firework displays. He's an absolute psycho. Related to the seasonal blues, there's daylight saving time. Yeah. Virtually everyone in America seems to hate changing the clocks, and many people swear it wrecks their mood, their sleep, or ability to function as a human. Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you're thinking right now, oh yeah, I hate that, I hate that. And social media explodes with these posts how much we hate this time of year. But the funny part is that nobody can agree on what should replace it. There's some sleep experts who prefer permanent standard time because it aligns better with our natural body clocks. Other people want permanent daylight saving time because they like the extra evening light. Ah, evening light. So here we are, still changing the clocks twice a year. And every dog hates it because feeding time is not a social construct. My dog doesn't care what Congress decides. Breakfast time is always breakfast time. But isn't that funny, guys? Everybody hates it. All the dogs hate it. And yet we're still doing it. Oh, then there's the Monday blues. You see headlines about the Monday blues because people don't like to go back to school or work, mainly because they suck. I solve that issue by dancing. I wake up and I dance every Monday morning. Yeah. But actually I do that every morning, not just on Mondays, so I don't really get the Monday blues. I get the all day blues. And I do this after I sing my good morning song to my dog. Because if I don't sing him his good morning song, he'll get depressed. Yeah, he'll get the all day blues. You don't have a good morning song for your dog? Um, I do. Um where am I going? Lost my train of thought. Do you ever notice how there's never any headlines about the person who gets extremely happy in the cold winter weather? Like you never hear those stories, you never see those headlines about Jack, for example. Let's let's say there's a guy, Jack, out there. Jack gets the winter jollies. Jack comes alive in the cold. He smiles more, he hugs more, he shovels snow like it's foreplay. He throws snowballs at people, which makes him laugh. Good old Jack in the cold. Jack Frost. I jest, digest, but seriously, no one is highlighting Jack. But someone should. Maybe we need a new uh disorder category. Seasonal effective delight. Diagnostic code pending. Or not covered by insurance. That's probably more realistic, at least in America. And then there's melancholy, guys. Melancholy, love that word. The term comes from the ancient Greeks. It literally means black bile. Black bile. Because they thought people were melancholic when they had too much black bile in their bodies. I think melancholy has evolved into kind of an umbrella term. I don't know what you think, but when I hear melancholy, I don't think of major depression. I think of someone contemplating their navel, wondering what the meaning of life is, whether any of this matters, whether we're all just ants, with pride. And then there's some people who associate melancholy with genius. Like they're joined at the hip. The tortured genius, the melancholic genius. You never hear about the chipper genius, no. Or the happy go lucky genius. You don't, right? Like the guy skipping through a meadow, solving differential equations. No, you never see a happy genius. Honestly, I often feel melancholy. I'm not a genius, only to my dog. And it's not depression, because I've had that before. It's melancholy. Seasonal melancholy. Melancholy is such a strange emotion for me, because you're not exactly sad, you're not exactly happy, you're just you're just sitting there thinking, this apple is delicious. But someday we will all die. What exactly am I supposed to do for melancholy? Anything? What do you guys think? And before anyone writes me, I've already tried apple cider vinegar and probiotics and ivermectin. Just kidding. I'm kidding for the most part. I was just naming off things that people use for everything. You know they do. By the way, what do you call a collie that's sad? A melancholy, yeah. Yeah, I'll see myself out. Okay, back to me. So yes, I have the all-season blues, but I also have the all-season jollies. And like the all-season blues, I like to make those rhyme too. So I got the winter glimmer, the spring zing, the summer funner, and the fall curl. Some seasons lean blue, some lean jolly, some are the confusing teal color in between. The trick, and here's the deep part, is to keep rolling with all of it, just to keep rolling along. Like a set of all season tires with questionable tread, navigating a road full of potholes. Can you tell I'm from Trucksville? Yeah. A lot of potholes there. It's where we judge a man by the size of his tires. Oh, how big are his tires? Oh, did you see his tires? Yeah, they're huge. Man has huge tires. But for real, if you can stay in motion, even a little even a little, you'll be okay. You'll be okay. So whether you get the winter splinter, the summer bummer, or you're like Jack out there with the winter glimmer, you're not alone. You're human. You're very, very human, with a brain wired to react to sunlight, heat, memories, hormones, silly human constructs, memes, assholes. Yeah, yeah, I said it. And good stuff too, right? Like we're just always responding and reacting. Anyways, just as long as you have your all-season tires, you'll be okay. Thank you for listening to this Eek Speak Easy. I hope you check out the other Eek Speakeasy. There's one posted now called The Long Whatever. The Long Whatever. Get your minds out of the gutter. Alright. Uh feel free to share. Sorry, I just have to laugh. Feel free to share this with anyone who might need an all-season pep talk. That's cute, right? And I'm gonna close with a quote like I always do. And this one is from Victor Hugo. Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. Oh, that's a good one. I'll let you guys sit with that one. Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. Alright, thanks for joining in. I hope to see you here next time. And goodbye for now.