What do you have in your tool box?

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In the winter I sleep a lot. I have I can remember when I was in my teen years. This was before I had any depression diagnosis. I was still depressed, I just hadn't been diagnosed and didn't know what was going on. I could sleep for 12 to 14 hours, get up for two or three and go back to bed again. I am finding out now that 9 hours of sleep is what teens should get.( I doubt many of them do get that much). But I was using sleep as an escape. Anxiety, panic attacks and all that had already become a part of my life and I used sleep to escape these horrors. Now I go through several sleep cycles. Right now I am sleeping anywhere from 4 to 6 hours and then I am up for that amount of time and then I sleep for that amount of time again. This will go on for several weeks. Then I will stay up later and later and sleep for longer periods. I usually will take something to help me go to sleep earlier if I know that I have to get up the next day. Or, I will just not go to sleep for that second time in the day and just stay awake. In the winter I am more depressed than in the summertime. I have SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which has to do with the light and lack of it at this time of year. No, lights don't work. This added to the severe depression causes my mood to go down, way down, I become agitated easier and I get upset easier. I had DNA testing done in the spring of 2014 to find out what type of anti-depressant I should be taking because nothing was working except one I take for anxiety. The medications that the testing showing would be best for me didn't seem to help. To be honest, I have gotten to a point where I wonder how I would know if it helped or didn't. Really. I have been depressed for so long how would I know if I was living though a normal mood or not. The depression has become so normal for me. But, I didn't feel anything different or uplifting so I felt the meds didn't help after the weeks and weeks that I was on them. Nothing changed. Sorry this was so long but I felt a need to explain a lot that some who know me probably already know. I am not asking for sympathy or anything of the sort. I am writing this wondering how many others feel less with it , less energy, lower mood, less enthusiasm, etc. in the winter months. I feel it coming on and fight it, feel anxiety because I know what is coming. I know that I have to battle it myself, that meds don't help that much and I just enter the black hole for about six months. Biofeedback, meditation, sleep, vitamins and good food, the wish to scream, family interaction, crying, movies and TV distraction, and more sleep seem to be all I have in my tool box.