Mardi Gras is the time of year when Tulane University students and New Orleanians party for days on end, until the grand finale of Fat Tuesday. It’s an exuberant, lively and wild week for some Tulane students, where drinking and partying can go on until sunrise. But what happens after the beads are swept from the streets and the city quiets on Ash Wednesday?
Some students report feeling a post-Mardi Gras slump, and what Camille Barnett describes as “post-Mardi Gras blues” in Where Y’at Magazine. But maybe the post-Mardi Gras depression is not something to dread, and rather a necessary psychological transition from the extreme high of Mardi Gras week.
The historical roots of the Mardi Gras holiday support this theory. The holiday traces back to medieval Europe as a Catholic holiday, marking the final day before Lent. Mardi Gras season was the last chance to drink, eat copious amounts of food, party publicly and break social norms before a 40-day period of fasting and reflection leading up to Easter. The literal translation of “Mardi Gras” is “Fat Tuesday,” a day for excess and debauchery before the instant shift to restraint.
Now, where does Tulane fit into this picture? Tulane students are familiar with a Mardi Gras full of partying and drinking. Even though not all students are observers of Lent, students must reckon with returning to classes, exams and a quieter New Orleans after the break. Midterms start ramping up again, internship applications are due, the party is over and we all must return to normalcy.
“After Mardi, I definitely need a reset. I usually crash sometime Monday and spend Tuesday getting organized for class – it keeps my workload manageable,” senior Will Baksht said.
This post-Mardi depression may have some neurochemical basis. After a period of heavy drinking, the brain lowers dopamine and serotonin levels, which are linked to mood drops and anxiety spikes. Dopamine levels may also severely drop after high social engagement, such as back-to-back partying. Now, imagine the brain’s response following nearly a week’s worth of partying during Mardi Gras.
And while this sounds like a depressing, dreary recovery period, it is a necessary awakening for students. It forces students’ brains to reset after a week of high stimulation. If the brain experiences no emotional drop, students would keep chasing a festival-level stimulation year-round, and then where would Tulane be? Probably dethroning University of California, Santa Barbara from the top party school in America.
Tulane does not need students to feel severe depression after Mardi Gras. It does, however, need balance. The human cycle of peak, drop and reset mirrors the very design of Carnival season.
While the Mardi Gras highs don’t last forever, neither do the lows. Spring returns, Jazz Fest arrives in April and the city fills with music again. The lesson is not to avoid the slump but to understand it.