Do You Suck Or Are You Just Thirsty?

Feeling worthless? You might not be spiraling, you might’ve just skipped a meal. Plus, 11 other quick mood enhancers to try.

I’m a real bitch when I’m hungover. For me, the day(s) after an epic bender is a relentless cacophony of catastrophizing.

• “I’ll never live up to my potential and still don’t know what I want to do with my life”
• “I’m lonely and a garbage son/brother/boyfriend/friend”
• “I’m 40 and I’ve never owned a home, walked down the aisle, made an NBA roster, or moved to Europe”
• “I get winded walking up the stairs; it must be respiratory failure”
• “I’ll never be anything but the kid who threw up on the bus during the fifth-grade school trip to Washington DC”

You’re not you when you’re hungry, or when you’re hungover. When our capacity for joy, clarity, or diligence has been compromised, we often don’t ascribe negative emotions to our circumstances, we ascribe them to our character all too quickly.

If I can make a bold assumption, I’m going to guess you’re not an irredeemable prick. In my eight years on this platform, I’ve been graciously afforded a pretty warm reader base; I only get sideswiped by assholes when I roast America or Elon. This ain’t one of them columns.

So, because you’re probably a decent human just trying your best, I’m here to run down 12 quick alternate explanations for why you feel so down or like it’s never, ever going to get any better. No, you’re not lazy, bad, mean, or hours away from impending doom. You might just need some fresh air.

№1 — You’re Dehydrated

Feeling sluggish? Feeling a little down? Chug a glass of water — the original miracle elixir.

Dehydration has been shown to have a negative impact on short-term memory and attention, mood, cognitive, and motor skills.

How much should you drink? Probably more than you currently are. Estimates range between 43% — 75% of Americans don’t drink enough of it.

I aim for about three liters a day, but you do you, boo.

№2 — You’re Overstimulated

Does your desk look like an Office Depot stock room?

Does your place look like it’s been hit by an F4 Tornado?

Does your car look like you’ve been on tour with a jam band for the summer?

Guess what: It’s probably stressing you out.

Clutter overwhelms us with visual stimuli, distracts us, causes us feelings of guilt and shame, makes it difficult to relax, and makes it hard for us to find what we need to satisfy our needs at any given point. (You know this if you’ve ever tried in vain to find your keys or remote.)

Tidy up what you can see; I hear it’s life-changing.

№3 — You’ve Been Cooped Up Far Too Long

Humans are solar-powered. Seasonal Affective Disorder is real, and it’s in the DSM-5. The sun provides valuable vitamin D that prevents it.

Natural light increases serotonin and melatonin, which helps aid your circadian rhythm and increases the quality and quantity of your sleep.

You don’t need a ton of natural light, either. 10–15 consecutive minutes will do just fine. Walk your dog, cat, or llama.

№4 — You Haven’t Broken A Sweat

When you’re stressed and anxious and miserable, the last thing you want to do is walk into a room full of beautiful people, hit the rowing machine, and wheeze through 30 minutes on an elliptical while the Advocare crew lovingly cheers each other on at the TRX.

I get it.

Still, exercise has been shown to improve (deep breath here): memory, mood, inflammation, structural brain health, sleep, anxiety, stress, brain size, cognition, learning ability.

You don’t have to train for a triathlon … a walk in the woods is fine.

№5 — You Miss People

Social isolation is the express lane to things like agoraphobia, depression and alcoholism, pain, chronic fatigue, and poor health.

Also, always keeping yourself on the straight and narrow causes ego depletion — the fancy term for sapping up all your willpower and discipline — which causes you to eventually toss self-control to the wind.

And, finally, looking forward to something has been shown to improve mood and impulse control.

All of these things can be treated with regularly scheduled, metered doses of what the scientists like to call “fun.”

Things like lunches, dates, concerts, vacations, or whatever the hell the kids are up to these days.

№6 — You’re Not Eating Enough Plants

Look, your mom’s been telling you “eat your vegetables” since long before Erewhon turned plant-based meals into a luxury good.

In addition to living longer and healthier lives, herbivores tend to suffer from less depression, anxiety, and fatigue. They’re less sluggish, too, because they’re not consuming big-ass sugar-bomb, carb-bomb meals that divert energy to the GI tract, and away from your brain — where you could be using it to be productive for once in your goddamned life.

You don’t have to give up meat or fish or pizza or pasta.

You don’t have to go bland-atarian.

Just … vitamins, y’all. You need ’em. (In a pinch, if your blood sugar’s cratering and you’re just hangry … fuck it, just eat anything.)

№7 — Your Phone Is Trying to Kill You

Our phones are making us miserable. All that time you spend scrolling your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds.

Seeing all your friends with beautiful kids and Nantucket vacations. Seething with jealousy.

While you’re binge-eating pizza, watching democracy die, and bemoaning your stupid-ass coach’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-9 from his own 12.

It’s lowering your life satisfaction.

Social comparison’s a mood killer, the world’s a grease fire right now, and engulfing yourself in negative news is making you mentally ill.

Plus, your smartphone emits that dreaded blue light that disrupts your sleep patterns.

Delete the apps. Take a break. Use your iPhone as a clay pigeon.

№8 — You’re Coming Off A Bender

Drinking is dope AF. I love it.

It’s a social lubricant, makes me give a shit about people and things I otherwise wouldn’t — and it makes me more friendly and confident.

It’s also fucking terrible for your brain if you do it too much.

In addition to the potentially embarrassing things you do while drunk, the day after drinking you might find yourself with an inability to concentrate, depressed mood, disinterest in basic upkeep, impaired mental performance, impaired memory, verbal deficits, and a shit-ton more.

You can’t fire on all cylinders after you floored the pedal on a handle of Fireball.

Go easy. Try to abstain for a while.

№9 — You’re Taking the Slow Train to Cancer-Town

I don’t think I need to tell you how bad smoking is for your lungs. But what about your mind?

Studies show smoking damages the brain, particularly in the areas of working memory and executive function.

If you can’t or don’t want to quit — and it’s really, really fucking hard — see if you can try nicotine lozenges instead. 72% of the satisfaction with 0% of the smoke.

Whatever, Judgey McJudgeface, it’s still better than lung cancer.

№10 — You’re Bored

Do you ever do something and lose track of time and your sense of self?

Like when you’re learning something, and that thing equally challenges and rewards you?

That’s called Flow State, and getting there is the key to both mastery and bliss. It decreases stress and increases satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-efficacy — and its effects don’t wear off until long after you stop doing whatever put you there.

If you can’t change careers right now, at least try to mold your role into something more representative of what you enjoy.

Or, you know, spend your breaks doing Duolingo, playing Tetris, or losing to the computer in Chess.

№11 — You’re Overwhelmed

We put gas in our cars. We change the oil. We flush the transmission. We change the tires. We take the engine in for tune-ups.

We treat our cars better than we treat our minds.

Often, we won’t seek to optimize our mental health until someone else tells us to, or until someone leaves us, or until the pain is too great to bear, or until our life becomes a fucking Joy Division B-side.

Don’t let it get to that point. An ounce of preventative maintenance is worth a pound of cure.

Delegate or delete what you don’t have time for. Take time for yourself. Maybe find a good therapist.

№12 — Your Social Circle Needs An Upgrade

Who you chill with affects your level of chill.

Research has shown that other people’s negative attitudes can also affect your intelligence and ability to think, plus, negativity compromises the effectiveness of the neurons in the hippocampus — an important area of the brain responsible for reasoning and memory.

In short: your negative, uncomfortable social circle is bringing your mood and cognition down.

If you find you’re surrounded by Colin Robinsons — maybe distance yourself from them if you can.

Then, be intentional about who you keep in touch with.

You’re the sum of your 15 closest people. Try to make them your favorites.

It’s easy to fall down the foxhole of thinking we’re the actual worst. It’s easy to think we’re more anxious and depressed than we actually are.

It’s easy to spend time wondering why we feel the way we feel, rather than developing healthy habits to feel better immediately and also over time. I do that shit often … just not as often as I used to.

The above list isn’t a panacea. It’s not a cure for clinical mood disorders. It doesn’t give you a raise, make your home and healthcare more affordable, stop climate change, end racism, or erase the abuse you endured.

Those are all very real, very frightening problems that a lot of us face. Problems that demand real solutions, quickly.

But because we live in a society that subsidizes risk and privatizes reward, that means it’s on us to deal with dystopia the best way we know how. So we can make it through a workday without napping or skipping a meeting, so we can make it through a week without coming home to a pile of Doordash boxes, so we can head to the function and engage in conversations that don’t sound like the Nihilist Arby’s Twitter.

Sometimes that’s all we’re looking for —small victories that help us feel a little happier, a little more stable, and a little less likely to rage at the next motherfucker who brings their checkbook to a supermarket express cash-out.

Life’s bad, but it’s better than you think it is, and you’re definitely better than you think you are.

If you can gain mastery over your mind, you’ll be able to more fully appreciate the full scope of its beauty, possibility, and grand cosmic meaninglessness of being just specks of space dust on a space rock that’s too small for the universe to notice.

We’re all gonna die. Pursue your dreams, anyway. Eat Arby’s.

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