2025 Depression Gift Guide

This Too Shall Pass The Time It Takes For Your Meds To Kick In

The holidays can be challenging for the depressed. Even with years of therapy and multiple medications in my system, the number one most chronic symptom of my depression, being annoying, always seems to flare up this time of year.

See exhibit A, a recent text exchange between myself and a close friend:

Exhibit A

I wrote this gift guide not just for my mentally ill peers, but for everyone squelching and crunching through the eggshells in our orbit, for those who have offered a kind silver lining and received a version of “I have n money and he is a millionaire” in return. I think we could all use a little guidance this time of year.

My Definitive 2025 Depression Gift Guide:

1. PRIVACY

This holiday season, consider leaving your depressed loved one the f*ck alone!

According to the DSM-5 handbook for professionals in the field of mental health, “appearing tearful” to others is a symptom of Major Depressive Disorder.

According to my lived experience as a depressed person, yeah that tracks.

If your depressed loved one is, unfortunately, like me, they could burst into tears at any moment and once the waterworks start, there’s no predicting when they’ll stop. Their tears may seem unprompted but you have no idea what terrifying, suffocating, existential thought may have just crossed your loved one’s mind or what content the algorithm may have thrust into their doomscrolling path, i.e. a video of Robert Irwin winning Dancing with the Stars intercut with footage of his late father Steve Irwin set, for some reason, to “Someone Like You” by Adele.

If your depressed loved one appears tearful in response to a video, photo, song, bite of food, the simple passage of time, or a question like “what’s new?” it’s best to leave them alone, leave the room if possible, or just turn around and face the wall. Scientific evidence shows that any attempt to cheer the depressed person up this time of year will be futile at best and provoke an onslaught of self-pity at worst.

See exhibit A:

#andheisamillionaire (allegedly)

This year, deck the halls with boughs of holly and let your loved one cry without question or comment.

2. A SHAPELESS GARMENT

It’s important to keep in mind that any physical gift you give your depressed loved one could be weaponized against you.

What is a “home good” if not a reminder that one’s home is rented, and not owned, and probably never will be owned, and even if it was owned, one would probably still be depressed but feel even guiltier about being depressed because so many others are homeless…

Sure, a fancy new Moleskine journal may seem harmless to you, delightful even, but in the eyes of the depressed, it’s a harsh reminder that they still haven’t gotten around to trying The Artist’s Way, even after buying a second copy of the book thinking they lost the original copy but it turns out they leant the original copy to a friend who returned it after fully completing The Artist’s Way and honestly that friend seems a lot happier now and guess what, they met with a publisher who wants to read their manuscript which is AMAZING, SO AMAZING FOR THAT FRIEND!!! YAY!!!!!!

There is one material product that I can guarantee is a safe zone in the minefield of shopping for the depressed and that is a giant garment, ideally something that protects 75% - 99% of the human form against the pain of being perceived.

During my 2020 depressive episode, I invested in “The Comfy”, which is basically a blanket you can wear. I’ve never looked back. It offers an incredibly soft, blissfully shapeless experience. 10/10 five stars.

3. A NON-WEARABLE BLANKET

My favorite non-wearable blanket currently in rotation is The Sophie Faux Fur Throw from Anthropologie

4. A PREGNANCY PILLOW BUT DON’T CALL IT THAT

I am living proof that you don’t have to be pregnant (or even remotely close to responsible/stable enough to consider caring for another human being) to enjoy a giant pillow that surrounds and supports your whole body! Here are some top recs that you can purchase, and then remove from any “pregnancy"-specific packaging, and gift to your depressed loved one, calling it something like a “perfectly adequate person who is not lacking anything meaningful in their adult life” pillow

5. A FRAMED LIST OF PEOPLE WHO GOT SUCCESSFUL LATER IN LIFE

When I was 14, the movie Lords of Dogtown made me depressed. When those Lords were in junior high they were already famous for being really good at an extremely cool sport. And what was I doing? Playing a desktop PC game called Howrse where you design, raise and breed virtual horses.

:(

I don’t know if it’s a symptom of depression, narcissism or both but I often find myself googling the ages of celebrities who have nothing to do with me or my life just to check how old they were when they became rich and famous. As the browser loads the results, I brace myself for an answer that will either crush my spirits or make me feel a little better about my current life circumstances, like hey Jon Hamm was 36 when he got his big break! That means I still have 2 years left to become Jon Hamm!!!

6. DRY SHAMPOO

Another unimpeachable gift option for your depressed pal is dry shampoo, aka stuff that makes dirty hair look clean!

If your favorite depressed person, like me, has co-occurring OCD, I recommend a powdered dry shampoo since I vaguely remember hearing aerosols linked to cancer and anything that could vaguely be linked to anything has the potential to ruin an OCD person’s day or week or month or year(s).

My hair stylist told me The Crown Affair Dry Shampoo is the gold standard in luxury powdered dry shampoos and it comes with a little brush that you can use to really shellack that powder deep into the greasiest, most bed-worn of roots.

I also love The Crown Affair Texturizing Air Dry Mousse because it magically gives my hair some volume on days when the sound and weight of a hair dryer feel impossibly oppressive.

7. A READING LIGHT / NOISE CANCELING HEADPHONES

Insomnia-related items! For those depressed whose ruminating kicks in the moment their head hits the pillow, consider a Bookmark Style Reading Light or noise canceling headphones! If you have the burden of sharing a bed with a depressed person, you might want to gift the noise canceling headphones to yourself, to block out all the audible sighs and deliberate rustling your partner is sure to stir up, hoping to highlight how unfair it is that sleep seems to come sooo easily for you.

8. SOMETHING TO READ

I recommend Margot’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe for a fun, well-written escape and The Gilded Razor by Sam Lansky for my depressed/addict combo comrades and honestly All Fours by Miranda July was worth the hype IMO. I also really enjoy Miranda July’s substack. She wrote this week, of her younger years: “I was twenty-nine and completely under the hoof of all the things I wanted and would somehow have to make happen within the next ten years.” Dispatch from under the hoof: IT SUCKS DOWN HERE!

My new friend Alberto writes great book reviews over on Well-Read and Overfed. Check it out!

9. A GLUCOSE MONITOR AND NINJA CREAMI SWIRL

According to my recent google search history (see Exhibit B)…

Exhibit B

…A depressed person was at one point interested in these two contradictory, or perhaps complementary items - an ice cream maker and a blood sugar monitor. Science says there’s a non-zero chance the depressed person in your life will be interested in them as well.

10. SOMETHING PREVIOUSLY OWNED BY A DEAD PERSON

Returning to the DSM-5, another symptom of depression is:

“Inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick).”

I appreciate the DSM-5’s implication here that a moderate amount of self-reproach is appropriate and that us depressed folk should feel at least a little bit guilty about being depressed.

As previously mentioned, being annoying is my most chronic depression symptom and part of how I live with that symptom is by constantly apologizing for it, to the extent that my apologies for being annoying become more annoying than the annoying behaviors themselves.

My depression tells me I don’t deserve anything good, and that anything good I do receive will be taken away from me immediately, so there’s really no point in celebrating it anyway. (Invite me to your parties!!! I’m a blast.)

You might think purchasing something extra special and shiny and expensive for your depressed loved one will boost them out of their rut, which - hey, maybe! But it’s more likely they will look up the price of the item, measure that number against the endless blob of worthlessness they see in the mirror, and fall deep into a spiral of “inappropriate guilt”.

If your ego insists on getting your beloved sad sack something big, I recommend purchasing it from an estate sale. That way, when the “You shouldn’t have, I don’t deserve this, I deserve nothing more than rat-regurgitated sewer trash” spiral starts, you can put a stop to it with a firm statement that this item used to belong to a dead person and was therefore purchased well below market value.

I’m a huge fan of AuctionNinja.Com , an online estate sale marketplace where I’ve purchased a chaise lounge for $1, a headboard for $60, and four sewing machines for $43. My apartment feels a little extra haunted and a bit cluttered by all the sewing machines, but my mind can rest knowing I can’t and won’t have nice things unless they came cheap because they used to belong to a dead person.

11. FLEXIBILITY

Loving a depressed person means letting go of the results. Be flexible in your standards and try not to hold your depressed person accountable to any declarative statements like, “I’m going to get really into sewing this year!” They might do as they say, or they might bring home four sewing machines to your small one bedroom apartment and leave them stacked, collecting dust in a corner for weeks, even months on end and THAT’S OKAY! The fleeting belief in a new version of themselves, a fantastical version that hand-crafts funky halloween costumes and elegant table dressings, helped get your depressed person through an entire weekend - and that’s priceless.

Trust me, there’s nothing to be gained from following up on the purpose of the hypothetical sewing machines and don’t you dare try to move them. It’s imperative that the hypothetical machines are left stacked where the hypothetical depressed person left them, just in case the hypothetical depressed person randomly decides to pick up that dusty old hobby one day. One of the best gifts you can give a depressed person is the illusion of order.

12. SUBSCRIPTIONS

Just as the depressed cannot be held responsible for the hobbies they invest in on a chaotic whim, no depressed person should ever put themselves in the position of being responsible for a subscription.

The energy required to subscribe to something is fueled by dopamine, the instant satisfaction of getting to READ FURTHER or LISTEN SOONER or WATCH NOW WITHOUT ADS! The energy required to unsubscribe is weighed down by shameful facts - the depressed brain is much too fragile to take a good, hard look at the reality of what it agreed to pay $2.99 or $4.99 or $9.99 to consume.

If left to navigate the modern subscription landscape alone, the depressed person risks paying to get beyond the paywall of a podcast their ex boyfriend was on as a guest, then forgetting their Patreon login and continuing to fund said “comedy” podcast for years, with no end in sight, and no way to justify the expenditure besides telling themselves they are a “benefactor” of the “arts” and a “supporter” of “small businesses.”

This holiday season, I beg you to consider paying for a subscription for your depressed loved one, so they don’t have to!!!

You’re going to want to steer clear of any food-related “cheese of the month” subscription options, because food expires, evoking the absurd brevity of life on earth and the foolishness of our pitiful human attempts to make meaning of it.

May I suggest instead gifting your loved one a paid subscription to a substack!?!?!

I highly recommend Experimental History by Adam Mastroianni - he writes insightful and hilarious studies on human behavior that almost always make me feel better about being human. Two of my recent faves of his are The drug that taught me how much I should suffer and The Decline of Deviance. Experimental history was recommended to me by Hallie Haglund of That Hurt My Feelings, recent fave: Who Watched It Better?

Shout out to Antonia Cereijido’s wonderful new substack for breaking the news of Dick Cheney’s death to me in her birth announcement.

I enjoy the takes of Sema Karaman, particularly this one on Elizabeth Gilbert and, like thousands of my peers, I was Recently Radicalized By father_karine!

Listening to the podcasts of Casey & Danielle’s Garbage World has truly, chemically improved my mood on several occasions since I first started listening to them in 2015 and their Bravo takes are, in my opinion, unparalleled. A paid subscription is beyond worth it!

For podcasts I also love Maintenance Phase, a friend of mine whose taste I deeply trust recently recommended JENNAWORLD and I think I am going to start listening to Posting Through It because my Lexapro has kicked in enough that I can take on a bit of political commentary.

The NUMBER ONE subscription I recommend gifting a depressed person for the holidays is PEACOCK PREMIUM, BABY!!!!!!!

Peacock has everything. It lacks nothing. It handled a true crime show with tact, it airs the best awards show our culture has to offer, and for a small premium fee, it’ll give your depressed loved one the entire Bravo library commercial free.

Recommended depression watch: the latest season of Married At First Sight (which is basically the original, better Love is Blind).

While Netflix seems to cast Love Is Blind with the sole intent of giving the most cancellable hair stylists in the country a platform, Married At First Sight maintains a layer of legitimacy by employing a team of “experts” to match couples together. The result is still a dumpster fire, but one that at least doesn’t let you smell the burning trash until the latter half of the season.

Married At First Sight Season 19 features one couple in their sixties, three couples in their 20s-30s and even a mother daughter pair. I won’t spoil anything else, but there is a grown adult man in the cast who actively cries when his new wife admits she may never want to attend Burning Man with him:

That’s all I have to suggest! This is sure to be a tough stretch for us serotonin-challenged but I promise these holidays, too, shall pass!