It's a Real Thing!

I've always wondered what you call people who had the opposite of SAD, because that's me. And then, voila, there I am reading The Morville Year (sequel to the lovely The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift, about a British woman who restores a garden at a beautiful country home) and this pops up:

"I sometimes think that, like the peacock butterflies, I undergo a period of diapause in late summer—defined by my Collins Field Guide to Butterflies as 'a period of suspension of activity or development.' The more familiar form of diapause is hibernation (from the Latin word for winter). Midsummer diapause is called aestivation (from the Latin 'aestas,' meaning summer), and is defined as 'a state of torpor in summer heat or drought.' That's me, all right. People who suffer from SAD syndrome (Seasonal Affective Disorder) have the opposite problem: they experience a waning of vitality and lowered mood at the onset of winter, a condition linked by some doctors to an atavistic need to hibernate. Where as at the first nip of frost my spirits start to soar."

Aestivation. That's me, all right, too! So when I'm miserable in summer, it's a real thing. I'm aestivating.