Cures for the Winter Blues

Posted: February 13, 2019

While seasonal affected disorder is a real, diagnosable form of cold weather sad (or SAD), some of us are just a little down in the dumps this time of year with the winter blues. Going stir crazy inside. Frustrated with subzero temperatures and shoveling snow. Feeling melancholy from gazing at a perpetually gray sky.

What I'm prescribing here as cures for the winter blues don't come in pill form (though a couple of them are edible) and they're not professional recommendations for anyone out there with real, debilitating seasonal depression. You need to see your doc for those.

OK, first watch the video I suggest in the first cure that follows, and then go see your doc if that doesn't help. But I'm pretty sure Alan Thicke & Friends are batting close to a thousand so far.

Enjoy my collection of cures for the winter blues.

Watch the 1988 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship

Alan Thicke - may he rest in peace - hosts the 1988 National Aerobic Championship not only as the dreamboat dad from Growing Pains, but as an Honorary Chairperson of the National Fitness Foundation and an avid aerobics fan.

If your winter blues have you toying with the idea of taking drugs, stop right now. The cardio cats in this competition have taken more than enough Ritalin and cocaine to get you blissfully pumped too. You'll never see a group of men and women kick so high and smile so hard as they do when they try to earn the title of Crystal Light National Aerobic Champion.

Free Happiness! ➠ Youtube

Immerse Yourself in Summer Movies & Videos with the Royole Moon

Whether you're in the mood for Endless Summer, Baywatch reruns, or a slideshow of your own trip to Hawaii, Moon endeavors to pilot you to the core of the experience you seek. Creator Royole is a human-machine interface tech firm founded by a group of Stanford engineering grads in 2012. Their goal with Moon was to "to create a brand new 3D mobile theater from the ground up," one with enhanced hi-res displays, noise-cancelling headphones, a more compact design, and a specially designed operating system for connecting users to unlimited movies and music.

$549.99 ➠ Amazon

Chill Yourself Happy with the MagicalButter Cannabis Cooker

Chill Yourself Happy with with MagicalButter Cannabis Cooker

MagicalButter, or MB2, is a kettle-sized device that extracts the THC from cannabis (plus botanicals from other herbs if you're into that sort of thing) and incorporates it into base ingredients for elaborate feel-good drinks, entrees, and desserts. Or just a nice piece of feel-good buttered toast. In a few simple steps and the literal push of a button, the cooker's micro-processor controls will draw out the herbs' botanicals and fold them into butter, oils, and alcohols. It can produce both food and skincare products in as little as 2 hours.

$174.95 ➠ Amazon

Fake Sunnier Days with a HappyLight

A sun-simulating light box from Verilux the HappyLight Liberty taps in to brain chemistry to improve SAD and bluesy moods. Brain chemistry and body clocks respond to light - in good ways and in bad. The HappyLight Liberty stimulates hormones and neurotransmitters that help kick up our sense of well-being and goodness of mood.

$39.95 ➠ Amazon

Feed Your Sorrows with a 10-Pound Toblerone Bar

Toblerone has built 45, 100-gram servings into their 10-pound mountain range of chocolate, honey, and almond nougat. That's:

The largest Toblerone in production.
23,625 calories of smooth Swiss chocolate goodness.
Enough servings to get you through all the rest of the days of winter. (Well, depending on when you're reading this.)

$59.75 ➠ Amazon

Have Some Indoor Fun with Cards Against Humanity

In November 2018, Cards Against Humanity released the Absurd Box, their newest in addition in...however many years since their last one. It's a 300-card expansion pack for Cards Against Humanity that promises to be "pretty weird" on account of the face the CAH kids came up with the cards after taking peyote and traipsing through the desert.

$20 ➠ Amazon

Have Some More Indoor Fun with a Pop-A-Shot Basketball Game

Pop-A-Shot, OG creators of the basketball game I used to play at Happy Joe's Pizza, now taunts me with their Home Dual Shot version of the shooting challenge. My friend Cornelius used to smoke me in the 30-second 1-on-1, but today. Today I believe I could outscore him by at least 6 buckets.

Because all I've been doing since January is sitting in my living room tossing empty sodie cans and Ruffles bags into the trash can 15' away. My accuracy is Balls. On.

$279 ➠ Amazon

Divert & Relax Yourself with Lovely-Assisted Sexy Time

Divert Yourself & Relax with Lovely-Assisted Sexy Time

Regarding physical, tactile use, I'll leave you to determine what the Lovely benefits of this couples' sex toy would be. From a smart tech perspective, the Lovely's schtick is to learn your lovemaking style, and send the information to the Lovely app. Each time you finish a session, you can review it on the app, where Lovely will make suggestions for new positions, stimulation techniques and sex-related ideas you might also enjoy.

And, OK, Lovely does make a foray into the tracking business with an in-app estimation of the calories you burned during sex.

$139 ➠ Lovely

Plan Your Next Vacation with Atlas Obscura

If Atlas Obscura does its job as intended, readers of this quirky non-tourist attraction guidebook are going to walk away (hopefully to the nearest plane) with a much longer Bucket List than they started out with. Possibly over 700 line items longer, if you dig every one of Atlas Obscura's picks for the "strangest and most curious places in the world."

$21.60 ➠ Amazon

Achieve Utter Exhaustion with an Assault Fitness AirRunner

Exercise won't necessarily cure your winter blues, but it will make it a lot more manageable, Especially at the peak of your workout, when you think you're going to vomit and pass out and have a heart attack all at once - you can't possibly waste any more energy wallowing in your sadness when you have all of those things to tend with.

The endorphin rush helps too.

From Assault Fitness, who also make the CrossFit-loved AirBike, the AirRunner runs on human power. Your movement gets the belt revolving, and your body's input determines its speed, both at the upper end when you want to sprint, and right back down to a walk when you need a break. Enabling the user to change speeds at will make the AirRunner a swell companion for high intensity interval training (HIIT) and Tabata-style workouts that a motorized treadmill cannot respond fast enough to serve very well.

$4,999 ➠ Amazon

Dream of the Beach with a Palm Island Hammock Stand

Sure, you can bury these faux palms in the sand, but you can also install the Palm Island Hammock Stand inside, under a heat lamp, if you want.

The palm trees are self-supporting via a steel bar running between them, and if you want to set up your hammock on the back deck, in the grass, or in your living room) you can get a fake grass mat to cover the rod and make the illusion more real.

$2,194.95 ➠ Amazon

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