Cabin Fever
en.wikipedia.orgBlaise Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
https://thecatholicspirit.com/commentary/wordonfire/the-coro...
An awesome resource for long term effects of quarantine is this paper from The Lancet: The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
I personally try to set little goals every day. Routine is really important. Maybe study a new subject and/or work on a side-project. Also exercise (basic cardio) - some sunlight (open a window if nothing else is an option), and/or smoke weed to reduce anxiety. Smoking weed and drinking coffee is a combination that keeps me productive for tasks that require deep thinking. (weed alone just makes me complacent and lazy).
If anyone needs help working on a fun foss project I have time to spare :)
edit: also timebox both your work and your fun activities. (timeboxing one alone isn't enough IMO)
Are you not concerned about smoking making covid19 symptoms more extreme?
You don't smoke weed like cigarettes.
That’s correct. Weed is worse.
>Beyond just what's in the smoke alone, marijuana is typically smoked differently than tobacco. Marijuana smokers tend to inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer than cigarette smokers, which leads to a greater exposure per breath to tar.
https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/marijuana-an...
Cigarette smoke isn’t magically bad because it’s cigarettes. ANY smoke tends to be bad. Smoking anything is like voluntarily exposing yourself to extreme air pollution.
Marijuana lovers go to a lot of lengths to rationalize this, but smoking it is not good for lungs.
Can confirm. Smoked weed regularly for 2-3 years, and now I have chronic bronchitis. Hopefully my lungs heal and grow non-scar tissue, but I have heard that does not happen. If anything it will get worse.
Edibles only for me these days.
Weed is worse per breath, you mean. That's the only thing you can say here.
Nobody is smoking 10-20 joints per day. People who smoke cigarettes are burning through a pack every few days. A pack is 20 cigarettes. Some people smoke 1-2 packs of cigarettes per day. It's not atypical to hear about people smoking a couple packs per week.
If you tried to smoke that much weed, you're going to be useless and have lots of other problems too. The lung problems will be the least of your worries.
Good point. I assumed they meant the method of smoking. If they meant quantity then yes it’s true you don’t smoke nearly so much marijuana as tobacco.
maybe I should be. but having stopped cigarettes 25 years ago, and my weed consumption not being regular (often have breaks of several months) I'm not too worried. Maybe baking cookies in these times would be better but it's not the same :-/
I read something on Reddit that said marijuana is an ACE2-inhibitor, but I can't find any research on it or anything about it. No idea where the guy got his information but I keep looking around. Does anyone else know if this is just completely false information?
Cannabis is definitely anti inflammatory. Not sure about that specific activity site though.
I would not worry too much about it. What matters is, if your lungs are allright. If feel pain or pressure in your lungs ... then yes, better make cookies.
People talking about going "stir crazy" is just bewildering to me. Working from home has been a dream come true. I am happier, less stressed, and easily 2x more efficient and productive. The ability to sit quietly in my apartment alone for extended periods of time is literally the only thing in the world I have ever wanted.
The gap between the extremes of introversion and extraversion is wide. Most people, of course, sit somewhere in the middle. Though there seems to be another axis at play here—what if you were forced to stay at home but not alone? For many people the office is a more peaceful place to work than home. And even people who like solitude do not often like being forced to stay inside, without being able to go for a walk, without access to nature and so on.
The dichotomy is oversimplified sometimes. What I see is a need to control my level of social interaction. Having lots of people around while I’m trying to code is distressing. Having no people around (or no meaningful connection with the people I’m around) during meals, evenings, and weekends is even worse.
>And even people who like solitude do not often like being forced to stay inside, without being able to go for a walk, without access to nature and so on.
Is that actually happening anywhere outside of China?
Well, it is for those who are ill and/or quarantined. Or disabled, or incarcerated… I was not only referring to this current situation. Plus the curfews in place in France and Italy are very close to being total lockdowns.
I also prefer to work from home, I tend to be less stressed and more productive as well. However, I also tend to benefit from some time out of the house in the world. I typically take at least one meal break out. It's a social experience, and a break from my day that helps my brain reset after a long stretch of work. I'm currently self-quarantined so even trips out for essentials are not happening, and it is definitely starting to wear on me.
Different people require different levels of social activity for their mental wellbeing. I think now is a good time for everyone to be aware of that. As a (mostly) introvert, we often feel overlooked in this regard. Now is a good time for us to show compassion for our extroverted friends and colleagues who are struggling with social isolation.
This is true, but there is a huge difference psychologically between choosing not to go out and not being allowed to go out.
I am not alone. My ability to sit quietly and undisturbed went down.
I just assumed people who say this have kids. I have a 2 year old and the past two weeks have been hell.
I agree with both you and parent. I have been working from home 2-3 days a week for the last year and its amazing how productive and refreshing it is to work in my home in silence.
Since schools, daycares and our offices have been shutdown last Friday, both my wife and I have been struggling to get any work done at home with a 3 & 6 year old around the house. The best we can do is have them play outside for an hour or two (if we're lucky) but they get tired of each other real quick. We're all a bit clueless about how to juggle this new situation. Keeping the kids occupied is key.
Working from home is great for me too. But I'm sure glad I don't have kids or roommates.
I imagine under a tight lockdown, this is way more pronounced for apartment dwellers. Being able to just sit in your backyard seems like a big difference.
I absolutely agree. I have a 5 year old at home due to closed kindergarten. Both my wife and I are supposed to be working from home for the next few weeks and without our garden I think we'd be off the wall by now.
Sending the lad outside to play in the sunny weather, while I can watch him from the window next to my workspace, is making a huge difference.
We were in the process of finding a house to rent before this all went down. Now we're stuck in an apartment with our stir-crazy toddler and are both supposed to be working full hours from home. It's.. difficult, to say the least.
It’s been a great opportunity for me to finish several half completed gardening projects. Don’t know if any studies have been done on this, but for me personally, digging in dirt for an hour every day has the same mood improvement benefits as exercise.
Yeah, it's not great. I've been stuck in my flat with some symptoms for the past ... week or so now?
I've still been working from home, and video calls with co-workers + conversations with friends/family help; but it's not been the highlight of my year. No real idea when it will end, either.
I managed to get out and try to go for a walk at what I thought was a reasonably unsociable time, but it was still busy enough and I was passing people enough that it seemed irresponsible to repeat.
I have a house and our neighborhood has nice walking areas including a pond. Going outside and looking at nature helps a lot.
Business as usual for shut-ins, hikikomori, cellar-dwellers, 24/7 gamers etc
some re-energize themselves by going out and sharing with others what their day was like, others need isolation in order to recover from a busy day. Most aren't on either extreme of that spectrum but somewhere in between.
I think you don't need to be a shut-in or 24/7 gamer for this to not have much of an effect on you. I used to be on the far end of this spectrum of needing to share and have others around me in my first 30-40 years and as I got older I changed within a time-span of 5 years that I'd rather stay home. I can still wear my party-hat when I need to and do enjoy it but if given the choice now I rather spend time with my own thoughts.
I've been having to deal with this lately; I've never really been someone who likes working from home. Typically when I've told coworkers that I'm "working from home", I'm actually "working from McDonalds" or something, and I just don't feel like taking an hour-long subway ride for whatever reason.
Now that everything in NYC is closed or on restricted hours or whatever, I have been getting a little stir-crazy, especially since my already-too-low amount of exercise that I got from my commute to work has now been reduced to "me walking downstairs to my basement", which has made it very difficult for me to sleep.
To combat this, I ordered an exercise machine last night, to at least allow me to get an approximation of what I'd be doing at the gym, and hopefully ameliorate the sleep issues, but I have no idea how I'm going to deal with 3+ more weeks of this quarantine.
That article links to another called "Piblokto"—a cultural-specific hysterical reaction.
I'm suspicious it's a real thing and the article mentions there is heavy skepticism around it, but it's a strange article to read nonetheless.
Yesterday evening I needed to get out of the house for a while. I've been a remote worker for two years so working from home is nothing new but most days I'd end up outside of the house for errands or just going down the street to say hi to neighbors. Instead I went out and drove around. Even twenty minutes of a change in scenery helped out quite a bit. Back when I lived in a midrise condo in the central business district of a large metro, it would have been much more difficult to achieve this small bit of scenery change without passing through spaces shared by a couple hundred neighbors. Cabin fever is going to be distributed unevenly throughout this event.
How does it differ from excruciating boredom?
So, aside from irritability and perhaps paranoia, are there any more symptoms?
It’s fun that you can’t be diagnosed with it as it’s not a defined medical definition but how can you know if you’re on the slope to experiencing something like this?
speaking only from my personal experience it can trigger depression, loss of motivation, and a feeling of an "empty head". e.g. place me in front of a window I'd stare out of it for several hours and if you would ask me what I'm thinking about I wouldn't know. Also increased anxiety when the quarantine is over.
You mention smoking weed in another comment. Do you think there may be a connection?
The times I had this experience with depression and feeling empty headed etc was when I was working off-shore. We were isolated at sea for 8-10 months per year and it was 2-3 months stretches in one go (with only 1-2 days in between). I wasn't able to smoke weed back then and there was no Internet out there. I didn't know about cabin fever back then but only learned later that this must have been what it was.
But I strongly agree that smoking for many weeks/months every day could sure trigger a lot of side effects.
Isolation/quarantine right now is very different (I got Internet, and the problem is there is actually too much choice of what I could read, watch or study).
edit: N.N. Taleb talks about his concept of "balancing extremes", I'm very much a believer of this life style.
> place me in front of a window I'd stare out of it for several hours and if you would ask me what I'm thinking about I wouldn't know
Isn't that called meditation?
Meditation is an intentional pursuit; it's about focus rather than daydreaming.
hehe, it sure sounds like that. my explanation is that because it follows several hours of severe depression it is more of a state of exhaustion. a state in which I couldn't sleep but also not really alert. Literally empty, no day dreaming either but also no negative thoughts. Nothing.
As always, the inuit word for this is best
I would use a product called 'Piblokto' almost no matter what it did
I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, and spent at least some time in seclusion in each one. And I have experienced the “cabin fever” feeling before... but not everywhere I’ve lived. In some environments, it happened easily and immediately; in others, it never did. I’ve tried to think about my environment at each juncture to figure out if the situations where I did experience “cabin fever” had anything in common.
Every time I experienced the symptoms described in the article (restlessness, lightheadedness, insomnia, irritability, etc.) I was living in a modern, rather-well-sealed apartment building; or was on a long road-trip in a modern, rather-well-sealed car; or was on a long plane flight; or was staying in a modern hotel room in a high-rise; or I was camping in a tent or camper-trailer.
Meanwhile, I’ve never experienced these symptoms while living in an old, drafty brick building (repurposed office building); or while living in a Victorian-era farmhouse; or while staying in a low-rent motel; or while camping under the stars.
My conclusion is that “cabin fever” is a feeling you get when your living space is not well-ventilated. Specifically, when there’s no way to create a through-draft of air, so even opening windows won’t force out the air deeper in the home—leading to that air becoming stale, creating a built-up “cloud” of CO2, other gaseous bodily wastes, and exhaled aerosolized water droplets (you know, those things that viruses travel on.) It happens faster when more people are cooped up together in a small space, because this cloud of stale air gets denser, faster; and because there’s less time when everyone is gone at once, where the air can “recharge” by slow through-insulation-barrier gas exchange.
If the problem is stale air, then just “going outside” is only a temporary fix, because the air will usually be just as stuffy when you return (unless you leave for hours and leave your windows open and fans on.) On the other hand, you can be fine while inside indefinitely, if you open a window and then sit right beside it, where the outside air can reach you. But this will only work if there’s enough wind to push the air into the house a small bit; and it seemingly has no effect—possibly for purely-psychological reasons?—if the air outside is humid, as it is in e.g. Hong Kong. (But going outside in humid places still works for temporary relief. Weird.)
And that last realization leads me to the secondary conclusion that the (or my, at least) human physiology is responding mainly to aerosolized-moisture-content in the air (in some way that’s distinct from responding to the evaporated humidity) as a proxy metric for the other, harder-to-sense air-quality measures. So, in theory, you might be able to reduce the qualitative of “cabin fever” just by buying a dehumidifier.
But really, I wouldn’t recommend it; there’s pretty good documentation about the subtler, less-self-apparent effects that a high CO2 concentration in a room can have on people, and on how much CO2 does tend to build up in closed or not-well-ventilated rooms—especially people’s bedrooms at night.
Relevant links:
- Tom Scott’s This is Your Brain on Stale Air — https://youtu.be/1Nh_vxpycEA
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome (when this same thing happens in offices)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui (which, at its practical core, seems to be about arranging the contents of living spaces to avoid having objects act as baffles to the through-flow of air)
Both my current and previous landlord cheaped out on windows, which were badly sealed in both cases leading to these apartments being rather pleasant to be in for longer(think days).
Well, at least after we bought a Roomba which took care of all the dust generated by people and animals inside.
> Meanwhile, I’ve never experienced these symptoms while living in an old, drafty brick building (repurposed office building); or while living in a Victorian-era farmhouse; or while staying in a low-rent motel; or while camping under the stars.
But what about a cabin in the woods? That's the pressing question.
> My conclusion is that “cabin fever” is a feeling you get when your living space is not well-ventilated.
That makes too much sense. An old moldy cabin in the woods (and a contaminated water supply, as in the film) would be toxic no doubt. Frequent ventilation is recommended.
> If the problem is stale air, then just “going outside” is only a temporary fix, because the air will usually be just as stuffy when you return.
But at least you will notice the difference, instead of getting used to it.
> On the other hand, you can be fine while inside indefinitely, if you open a window and then sit right beside it, where the outside air can reach you.
Unless the outside air is worse. I tried filling my place up with plants, but don't have a green thumb, and just invited pests and stale soil.
> But this will only work if there’s enough wind to push the air into the house a small bit;
fans. ACs. Temperature differences. Doing busywork around the place, cooking, especially in a crowd.
> it seemingly has no effect—possibly for purely-psychological reasons?—if the air outside is humid, as it is in e.g. Hong Kong. (But going outside in humid places still works for temporary relief. Weird.)
Walking is a first step towards sport, good for circulation and for memory work.
> And that last realization leads me to the secondary conclusion that the (or my, at least) human physiology is responding mainly to aerosolized-moisture-content in the air (in some way that’s distinct from responding to the evaporated humidity) as a proxy metric for the other, harder-to-sense air-quality measures.
Ahaha, what? OK Doc! I mean, sure, maybe, but not mainly. Very inappropriate wording. Shallow breathing might be an affect of perceivably bad air, in general.
> So, in theory, you might be able to reduce the qualitative of “cabin fever” just by buying a dehumidifier.
Do you really think it's an involuntary reaction by the autonomous nervous system? That's too huge a claim--admitting that is a better reason not to recommend buying one, unless the humidity levels are extreme. Nevermind that ionizers, dehumidifiers, and other climate controlls are a hole category of accessories.
But sure, air quality is important. I got travel sick on long car rides frequently, as a child, attributed to the locomotion. In planes, with rather dry air, it was the pressure drop. I just don't think a small wonder tree dangling from the back mirror would have helped ;)