This post is brought to you by depression.

Happy Saturday to all of you. This week has been the most difficult so far in my recovery journey. I don’t have any profound thoughts to share, but I think it’s important to share the good and bad, so I’m writing this to hopefully gain some clarity. I don’t think I’m any sort of sober anomaly, so I’m sure if you’re also in recovery reading this, that you have felt the same or at least similar. Sometimes it’s nice to know there is someone going through the same things.

Thursday was the 4th of July. Fun fact for you guys, Americans spend an estimated $4.02 billion on alcohol for July 4th. They also spend over $2 billion on explosives wrapped in plastic and cardboard to ignite on their front lawns after drinking said alcohol, but that’s neither here nor there. #Murica

I spent the holiday working all day. Hospitals don’t believe in holidays off, which I only discovered after I got the job, so that’s fun. After work I had about an hour and a half to myself before I had to attend group therapy. I have group scheduled 3 nights a week, 3 hours each time. Do the math with me; that’s 9 hours of therapy a week. Not to mention my weekly individual therapy and psychiatry appointments. I sat on my Zoom meeting listening to the fireworks cracking outside my window, even though it was still daylight outside at the time. I could even hear the music and conversation coming from my neighbor’s backyard. When we took our 10-minute break from group. I sat in my backyard and noticed that most of my neighbors were out in groups of friends listening to music, laughing, chatting, and seemingly having a great time.

I got angry. I had already been struggling through some depression and feelings of isolation over the past few weeks, and this was just the icing on the sobriety cake. I spiraled into a crying episode, and began to get frustrated at all of my friends and family who were celebrating together. They had no idea what I was going through. They didn’t care. No one reached out to check on me on this major drinking holiday. Everyone went about their lives not having the constant internal monologue of “don’t drink, don’t drink, don’t drink.” I was exhausted. I wanted so badly to feel normal for just one second. I needed a brain break. I needed a break from myself.

I realized that addiction is a liar, and recovery does nothing to heal those lies I had been taught. Recovery or detox was my chance to delete the alcohol from my life, but now I had to learn how to deal with these emotions and thoughts on my own, without the crutch I had used for 10+ years. A part of me thought that I would leave detox a completely different person, but I’m not. I’m the same exact person I was, and the thought disappointed me slightly. All of the negative thoughts were still there, and as someone diagnosed with depression and anxiety, this was exhausting to me. I don’t know if this is me coming down off of the “pink cloud” everyone talks about, or if this is just a normal bout of depression, but it hit me right smack dab in the face this week. I felt isolated by my sobriety, and sad that no one would be able to understand what I was going through. I was angry at myself for getting to this point in my life. I was angry at addiction for taking so much from me. I was unmotivated to continue, not that I wanted to drink, but I was so tired of constantly thinking about sobriety. I kept saying to myself “I need a brain break.” Since these emotions are bound to arise, whether you’re in recovery or not, what can we do? Though I’m not fully out of my slump, here are some things that I am trying or plan to try in order to progress on my journey.

1. Find a community

The day after I came home from detox, I went to an AA meeting. I have attended 2 so far, and to be honest I didn’t really jive with the ones I went to. That’s another post for another time. When the group discovered this was my first meeting, they passed around a small piece of paper for all the women to write their names and phone numbers on. At the conclusion of the meeting, they gave it to me and all encouraged me to come to more meetings and reach out for help. I came home and put the list on my fridge with a magnet and haven’t looked at it since. In my depressive stupor, I never once thought to reach out to someone who had been through what I was going through now or a similar situation. Instead, I got angry because my friends and family who had no idea what recovery could entail weren’t reaching out to me, even though they were. They just weren’t doing it as often or in the way that I expected them to. That’s really not fair to them, or myself. In recovery, everyone emphasizes finding your community. They do this because it has proven time and time again to help sober people stay sober. However, I think even if you aren’t going through recovery or dealing with sobriety, it’s important to find a community of like-minded people that you can call to talk to. Whether you are seeking a listening ear, validation for feelings, or advice from someone in a similar situation, it’s important to find your group and be loyal to them. Addiction leads to depression (or vice versa), and both lead to feeling isolated. You have to actively fight against this, or ultimately you will isolate yourself and wind up somewhere you don’t want to be, in a puddle of negative thoughts and emotions.

2. Be realistic with yourself

The first step to easing the feelings of depression, loneliness, or unworthiness is to identify that you are having these feelings. For 2 weeks prior to my independence day breakdown, I convinced myself that I was just tired. I felt fatigued constantly. Work was becoming a struggle because I yawned all day and felt my body sagging like gravity was pulling on me extra hard. Almost these exact feelings were what lead to my diagnosis of depression when I was 15. I convinced myself that it was just fatigue and blamed it on all the hours I had to spend in therapy each week. If I didn’t have to sit in group for 9+ hours a week, I wouldn’t be so tired. I ultimately do not think this is true. I think this is the natural progression of a major life change, and had I identified it earlier, maybe I could have chosen to help myself instead of stew in my negative emotions. Which is something I have always struggled with.

3. Give yourself a break

I think it’s easy to get frustrated at yourself for things not going how you’d envisioned. I thought that I was doing everything right in my recovery, and I was on a high for a few weeks. My therapist praised me for starting a blog, making a sober friends Facebook group, and reading countless books on sobriety and recovery. I really wasn’t having cravings like many of my peers. So when the negative thoughts came, I pushed them away. I was doing everything right, I couldn’t be depressed. This isn’t true. Whether you are in recovery are not, life has its ups and downs. I know this is probably the first time you’ve heard this ground breaking statement, but it really really is true. For some reason, addiction falsely taught me that I didn’t have to feel the downs because I had alcohol to help mask them. Which is the ultimately lie. Facing your emotions head on is important, but sometimes we just need a break. We need to check out for a bit and take time to not feel anything. We don’t have to constantly be processing emotion or working on bettering ourselves. How could we possibly do that 24/7? We would die of mental exhaustion, surely. For me, I found it really important to find moments of peace. Lay in bed and watch TV. Take a nap. Read a book and get lost in someone else’s story. Listen to music. Sit in silence. Do whatever you need in order to just not think about things for a minute. I’m not saying don’t deal with your emotions. That’s what I did for a decade and look where it got me. I think it’s a good idea to identify your emotions, feel them, process them, but every so often take time to just not feel. Give yourself that brain break, in whatever form that works for you.

Like I said, I’m not the Master Yoda of feelings by any means, nor am I some specialist on recovery. But, this week has been rough, and I wish someone had given me some ideas to help ease my discomfort. I’m hoping this provides some to you.

Recovery isn’t linear. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all hat that we all don when choosing sobriety. It is more like a rollercoaster where you can’t see the tracks up ahead of you. Is it about to give an exhilarating drop or turn, or is it about to turn me on my head in a terrifying loop-de-loop? We don’t know, but we do know that we can’t see it or predict it half the time. We can do things to be proactive and prepare ourselves, but sometimes those drops and turns come out of nowhere and we have to adjust our posture so we aren’t catapulted from our seat. What a ride.

My hope is that this week brings more self-love for you and me. Because like I always say, we deserve it. Identify what you’re feeling and don’t be afraid to feel it, or take a break from it for a minute or two. Reach out to your community if you have one, and if you don’t maybe take some time to find one. The beauty in life is that the human experience can be so similar for some people. We are never truly alone, even when it feels so real.