To paraphrase Tolstoy, all unhappy people are unhappy in different ways, be it a holiday, a death, a breakup or a bad case of the clinicals. In other words, it's hard to generalize. I came down with a case of clinical doldrums, clearly descended from the logubrious matrilineal willow, when I was 20, and in the years since have learned the things that can unfailingly perk me up - or at least, keep me grounded. Sure, meds aren't incidental to my peace of mind, but managing everyday sadnesses is at least as important, to me as to most others. Valentine's Day has never been my trigger, so to speak - I'm too fascinated by the holiday's people-watching, and my mom is very good about sending me my only Valentine, anyway - but I can see how it could be, since the annual Bastille Day celebration in my neighborhood sends me into a deep funk. We all have something, as my grandmother might have said. So, I have an arsenal, at the ready, of the arbitrary, personal things that for one reason or another remind me of my happiest self.

What my mom calls "comfort reads" are central to a cheer-up, not least because a sad person often finds herself in bed. With this in mind, there are a few books I always keep handy. These vary for every person; my mother swears by the escapism of Georgette Heyer's The Grand Sophy. My grandfather read physics texts. For my part, I tend to want non-fiction in my bluest periods. Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking has a permanent spot on my bedside table: although I can recite the essays by heart, reading the familiar, funny, words about food and life is tremendously comforting. "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" is a special panacea. Under the Colwin is a little paperback called Castles in the Air, which I ordered on a whim from a British catalogue when I worked in publishing and didn't pick up until a few years later. It's the memoir of young couple restoring a crumbling Welsh castle on a shoestring, and something about the everyday challenges of their gentle crusade is affirming in a low moment. Misery loving company, I've been returning to the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell a lot...they both suffered from depression, and it's good to not feel alone in these moments, and to see things said so much better than you ever could. You never know what will bring solace: recently a friend sent me a YA series called Poseur by Rachel Maude. She knew I'd like that the characters' wardrobes are illustrated and exhaustively described at the beginning of each scene, since this was always a hilight of the few Babysitter's Club novels I snuck behind my mom's back. Well, these books proved to be exactly what I needed in a low moment: their manageable dramas, excellent clothes, and sweetly funny prose soothed and invigorated me in a way I couldn't have expected. As you see, the sad soul requires a very different soup from the everyday one.

In terms of multimedia, well, there are a few movies in heavy rotation during my low points. Chief amongst these is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - namely, the barn-raising dance, which I have been known to watch on a loop. Working Girl is, of course, endlessly uplifting and entertaining. In the right kind of mood, the Werner Herzog documentary The White Diamond can engage me with the world; other times, it must be avoided at all costs. Here's another peculiarity: while normally I avoid procedurals, a box set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has proven a reliable godsend in moments of near-despair.

I can't listen to a lot of music when I am low, but there are a couple of exceptions: "Grazing in the Grass" by Hugh Masekela, select Bert Jansch, Morrissey's "Suedehead" and Joe Dassin's "Champs Elysees" are a few of the carefully-selected tracks that, for whatever obscure reason, fall under the playlist heading "Emergency" on my computer.

That these measures are personal goes without saying: they are a few things that, with trial and error, have managed to help me fight off something which needs to be kept carefully at bay through careful strategizing. I became consciously aware of this stuff when my problems took a medical turn, but it's useful to face even the most quotidian of doldrums and challenges with a tried and true arsenal of what works for you. It's not always the most impressive or intellectually stimulating; it is just what, for one reason or another, says "comfort" to you and reminds you a little of your innate joy in living.

When one gets yeast infections easily — at the first whiff of an antibiotic or the slightest weakening of the immunities — you know the early warning signs, a slight burning itch that predates the proverbial "cottage-cheese-like discharge" (ew) by a few days. When I felt it the other night, I cursed my bad luck: I didn't feel like the hassle of calling the doctor and dreaded the chemical burn of the Monistat egg. (I like the little egg.) In any event, the pharmacy was closed for the night.

I took to the internet, hoping to find a useful home remedy. And, as is generally the case with homeopathic remedies, the answer was garlic — which, if you believe some of these sites, is prevented from conquering penicillin only due to sinister medical conspiracies involving drug companies. Having, on the internet's advice, attempted placing a garlic clove in my ear (ear infection) and eating raw cloves (a cold) in the past with no great rate of success, I was dubious. But I was eager to stop the infection in its tracks, and lord knows I had a full braid of garlic in the kitchen. What did I have to lose? Besides, I liked the idea of brewing my own cures and outwitting the medical industry with ancient female know-how.

According to the various sites I consulted, the treatment was no more complicated than slipping in a peeled clove and going to bed. Said Midwifery Today, with authority, "the reason that the treatment is done at bedtime is that there is a connection between the mouth and the vagina. The moment the garlic is placed in the vagina, the taste of the garlic travels up to the mouth. Most people will find this strong flavor annoying during the day, so the treatment is recommended for nighttime. " As someone who's never fully understood why lead can't be turned into gold, this explanation made complete sense to me. Although a few sites recommended wrapping the garlic in a bit of cheesecloth, I deemed this a frill. Besides, I didn't have any cheesecloth handy and was sick of bringing cheese into the conversation.

Luckily my boyfriend was working a night shift; I can think of few things less erotic than slipping into bed with intimate love on your mind and coming into contact with a garlic clove in someone's vaginal canal, like a secret vampire deterrent or something. I tossed and turned. I fancied I could feel the garlic moving through my body to my mouth. I could smell it. I had a garlic clove up my vagina.

At three a.m. I leapt up, furious. The garlic was not working! I decided to up the dosage, which apparently meant chopping a clove in half so the antioxidant juices could better make contact. First I had to get the old one out, which was no easy matter; the garlic clove had migrated. I had a moment of panic when I was convinced I'd never be able to retrieve it. I managed to do so only by means of complicated muscle exercises which do not bear getting into but will doubtless come in handy should I ever need to birth a baby, After this narrow escape, I decided to wrap the new, higher dosage in — well, I didn't have any cheesecloth, so I used a clean scrap of vintage handkerchief. I went back to bed. And, then, the garlic hit. It was agony — far, far worse burning than anything I'd ever experienced from Monistat — which hurts. I stuck it out for three minutes or so, then could bear it no longer. Luckily the tail of cloth I had made facilitated things this time around.

The experiment was over; it had been an abject failure —or I had. The next day, two showers, a bath and a dose of Monistat later, I was on the mend. But when I went to my mom's house for dinner and she produced chicken with forty cloves of garlic...my appetite was diminished.