Are you one of those who curl up and lie down in a darkened room shunning the best of friends when you are hit hard by a migraine? Ever puzzled how to handle the post-migraine depression? Aniruddhan Vasudevan says the best way to cope with it is to try the young wizard’s magic!

A popular Tamil proverb says that you know how terrible a headache is only when you suffer from it. It is true. But in the case of migraines, even if you happen to be living with someone who suffers from it, it is likely that you have some idea of know how horrible it can be. That is perhaps why many people who suffer from migraines say they feel guilty for ending up depending so much on their loved ones whenever the headache hits.

I was no different. To start with, I must confess it is not easy to be around me when I am at my healthiest best. Lesser said the better about my migraine days! I have not had a migraine for a while now, and as soon as I typed that I knocked on every piece of wood in my room. I even reflect back on those dreadful days, when migraine visited me regularly, only because I managed to dig deep into that endless, grey ocean and come up with a pearl of my own; something worth sharing; something that helped me a lot; something that has ended up inspiring many people I shared it with.

Some years ago, I was very famous for some dysfunctionalities (Now I am famous for some others!). And migraines contributed to a fair share of those. For instance, a migraine would make me curl up and lie down in a darkened room, shunning the best of company, unshaven in an extremely nonsexy way, missing classes at the University, unable to stare at the TV or computer screen, etc. Also, since not many people knew how debilitating migraines could be, when I did get back to work, I always had some people look at me as if I was a thoroughly spoilt brat, a hypochondriac. The worst part was I would sort of feel guilty too and wonder if it was all sheer drama on my part. But only until another migraine struck. However, what was more difficult than the headache itself was the pool of depression it left me in its wake. It was absolutely terrible, dark and lonely.

Then something wonderful happened. After sniggering at avid readers of Harry Potter books for reading juvenile nonsense, I picked one up to read. And got totally hooked! It was not long before it gave me something really precious and useful. A charm to use!

For this, you need to be familiar with J K Rowling’s description of dementor attacks. Dementors are dark, hooded creatures that eerily float around, hovering over people, sucking all happiness and positive energy out of them, making them incapable of any action, and at worst even sucking the soul out of them. When I first read this description, I was struck by a sense of recognition. I realized that it sounded exactly like the attacks of post-migraine depression that I found impossible to cope with: like all happiness had been sucked out from within me and for several miles around, like it was just one endless stretch of bleakness.

The depiction of the dementors themselves as dark, hooded creatures gliding soundlessly over their victims struck me as the best allegory to how these phases of depression crawled over to me. The wizards in the Harry Potter books conjure the Patronus charm to defend themselves from the dementors. What a wizard requires to do to conjure a strong Patronus is to first seek refuge in his or her memories of happiness and love and cast the charm – Expecto Patronum -- from there. For the dementors, in J K Rowling’s imagination, cannot withstand the power of even the remembrance of love and happiness.

It appeared to me that this could be a tool I could use to combat the onset of depression. As I generally found it hard to be verbally articulate about how I felt during these phases, it helped to have a visualization that someone else had taken the trouble to come up with. Also, even when a migraine did visit, I now felt more hopeful. The thought of being armed with some magic helped me in wonderful ways. Thankfully, I have not gone through a migraine for sometime now, but depression still sneaks upon me in various ways. To this day, the Patronus charm works for me. It is quite wonderful.

What I am most thankful for, however, is the bank of happy thoughts and memories I can draw from. And since I know what great ammunition happiness can be against depression and despair, I also do my bit to add to this bank of happiness!