My mind is mushy and I’m exhausted. I just went through two hours of testing to determine whether or not I suffer from ADD in addition to depression and anxiety. It was miserable.

It’s cocktail season. And that means millions will drink too much, including people who suffer from depression. While having a drink can relieve anxiety—at least temporarily—abuse of alcohol can make us even more depressed. And though pop culture paints a decidedly different picture, alcohol is actually a depressant. It’s not a stimulant.

We get lots of Top 10 lists this time of year. So I’ve made up a list of my own. It’s the Top 10 Things I Know I Should Do to Battle Depression.

'Tis the season to suffer from depression, but get moving and you'll survive.

Depression caregivers need our support, too.

Anxiety can motivate us to move faster, but left unchecked it can paralyze us.

So I found some tips to counter holiday depression in a WebMD article. Clearly, the article’s author is not depressed and does not have anxiety issues. If you are like me, events with large crowds make you anxious. During the holidays, they can be especially daunting if you are the only one there not drinking. That’s why the first tip, “do socialize” is almost funny. When I am depressed, I’d rather have bamboo shoved under my toenails than “socialize.”

Driving through rural Alabama to a funeral recently, I saw a rare and really cool sight. A cropduster was plunging down toward a cotton field, spraying it with what I can only guess was some sort of herbicide. The deft pilot would swoop down just above the power lines, buzz the field and spray the crops, and then lift high into the air to avoid the tree line at the other end of the field. It got me to thinking. That’s what psychiatrists must feel like. They don’t fly planes to treat their patients, but they must play a precarious game with the fragile mental health of patients like me who suffer from depression. It takes just the right balance and adjustments to keep our medications right.

You can’t put a price on good mental health. I might go broke, but that’s better than the misery of full-blown depression.

Depression is an illness. It is not a sin. Some well-meaning Christians who have never experienced depression might tell us otherwise. They might tell us we’ll feel better if we just have more faith. They might even tell us that God has the power to heal our depression, so antidepressants aren’t necessary. That is a dangerous and shallow view of mental illness.