Post-travel depression.
 

Airports and plane rides. They're tolerable when you're on your way to a great part of the world. I've tolerated 14 hour and 8 hour flights to Tokyo and Paris, respectively. But, when the time comes to fly home, they are just a pain in the ass. You're not going to a place you love. You're going HOME - the place you DON'T WANT TO BE.

Whenever I arrive back to my hometown of Charlotte, NC, I become depressed for about a month. After experiencing greener pastures, Charlotte seems so...boring, lame, and just plain underdeveloped. I feel as if I've been cheated for living here. I feel as though I've been using a top of the line Alienware computer, it breaking, and having to use a shitty E-machine. That metaphor pretty much sums up my feelings of returning to Charlotte.

God, I want to live abroad forever.

Familiarity breeds contempt, could it be that your not in these places long enough to get bored with them.
I've just got back from the west coast, (see my post)and all I think about is how beautiful Yosemite is and how buzzing Las Vegas is, but I know if I lived in Yosemite I'd get bored, and in Vegas I'd become jaded.
Its a bit like looking at porn, its great to start with, but then it all starts to look the same.

When I got back from Hawaii vacation this Summer, being very pampered there, I couldn't stand being at work. I hated all my coworkers for bothering me with this work thing, dumbasses. I didn't mind coming home though, to my lovely wife and 2 dogs.

Maybe if you go to very sucky places for your travels, like doing volunteer work in Africa or Afghanistan, then perhaps the home will look great. Maybe I'll do that. Probably not.

Word

I always travel to the west coast for the summer. However, the last 3 or so years, I've done everything in my power to stay there later.

A few years ago, I even wanted to completely uproot my life and switch to a boarding school, just so I could be somewhere other than home. I don't HATE home, but .. its just not the same as being on vacation.

I guess it also has to do with I was 'vacationing' at the time, and not doing work or anything.

I know the feeling.

Re: Post-travel depression.
 

The Austin Lounge Lizards used to sing a song about the kind of feelings you've got:


"That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home"

When life calls me to travel far and wide
Thoughts of home are with me as down the road I ride
Up on the highest mountain or out on the deep blue sea
I can't forget my friends and family
There's no place on the planet quite the same
No matter how far out I go to play this worldly game
Breezes may smell sweeter the farther afield they blow
But back to where I came from I must go
To that Godforsaken hellhole I call home
Always calls me back again
wherever I may roam
as squalid as Calcutta; decadent as Rome
That Godforsaken hellhole I call home

When I see that Welcome sign I shed a tear
Why have I come back again; what am I doing here?
But like a life-long prison without hope for parole
I can't escape these shackles on my soul
That Godforsaken hellhole I call home
Always calls me back again
wherever I may roam
Farther out than Fargo; lonelier than Nome
That Godforsaken hellhole I call home

The stranger came to town and asked me why
Instead of pulling in again I don't just pass it by?
But all my friends are buried here and some of them are dead
So home is where I'll always hang my head
That Godforsaken hellhole I call home
Always calls me back again wherever I may roam
Squalid as Calcutta; decadent as Rome
That Godforsaken hellhole I call home

This summer I felt the same way. The High Desert just sucks after 8 days in paradise (Maui, Hawaii). :(

However, the summer of 2001 I spent three weeks in rural Kenya sleeping under nets, showering from buckets, and using a hole in the ground as a toilet and I still didn't like going home.

I love to travel and I want to do more than I get fit into any trip; but I don't mind coming home. My dogs are always beside themselves with joy. I think that helps. I also need to work for my sense of self worth. I have lived a number of places from one coast to the other, and several in between. I have like living in each and every one. Wouldn't trade any of them.

However, the first time I went to Maui, I spent the entire trip trying to figure out a way I could move there.

so true...i someimes feel the same way after coming back from trips

It's easier if you have someone to come back to- I know my dog is my baby, and just hearing how he barely ate and didn't do anything the whole time I was gone was enough to make me want to stay home a while and make it up to him.

I am usually so tired by the time I am headed home that I am glad I am leaving. Home, for some true peace and quite. Not to say I won't be ready to go again in a month. Probably just the difference in personality.

there is a decent chance that many around the world would feel the same about their homes after visiting your town for a week. While I can't be certain, there is a good chance that you would feel that way about any place you live. I get the wanderlust from the feelings of "here" often as well, but I have to keep in mind that what I see anywhere else is just a slice of what is actually there. In fact, it is often only what I choose to see there... unlike home, where I am often forced to see/do/feel things that are far more mundane and depressing. It is part of life, and there are billions who envy ours. Make the best of it. Let's all toast to happiness at home and the means to go abroad when the itch to travel hits.

Shit, Charlotte IS boring and depressing. Im also from Charlotte.

And yeah, I know what you are talking about. I dont travel as much as I would like to (being a student tends to curtail things like that), but when I do, I definitely dont want to go home.

i have pre travel depression.. i wanna get the fuck out of here :(

Its been one and half years since I came back from a month long trip to Europe and I'm still depressed.

IMHO I think that you have to be WANTING to come back to where you originated your trip.

I love living in NYC. I love to travel to new places, I love the adventrue, but after a few weeks I'm ready to be back home in NYC.

I think it's more related to the fact when you're travelling you do all the exciting and fun stuff at a place, but when you get home you do all the boring, annoying stuff like work and get stress and stuff. Think if you were actually having a holiday in your town, it wouldn't be that bad, there's stuff to go and do when you think about it :)

obviously alkaloid has never been to africa, because that's where I go home to when I'm on break to school (so it like im going there for a vacation) and it really is one. The laid back atmosphere and incredibly rich environments of places like Zambia and Uganda are not something you'd want to leave. Also they have a decent night life. As to post travel depression, its all in the travel time... Ive been flying roundtrip to east africa from the NE US about 2-3 times a year for four years now, (a trip of about 30-50 hours depending on how things go), and what you need to do is get depressed about spending time in the plane so that you actually start to look forward to things you do when you get back. Believe me it works, otherwise 50 hours in a plane when you're going back to get an engineering degree would be a perfect recipie for suicide. Tis a time tested art, but I always manage to feel good by the time I land back at school.... now whether that good feeling lasts through the term is different

newspaper article
 

I am writing a newspaper article on post travel depression. Does anyone have experience in dealing with this and would like to be in my article? I would love to know how you dealt with your depression, what your symptoms were and more questions along those lines. If any just has some quirky tips they would like to share I would welcome those as well. Feel free to email me at anjwilson9@hotmail.com.

The irony is that if you live abroad, then it's no longer abroad anymore.

I had a few of days of "post travel letdown" after returning from California last week. I'm never happy to come home, but for some reason this past vacation it was significant. Weird.