Depression or withdrawal? I used to get these awful hangovers that would last several days. They may have been withdrawals, it doesn't really matter now. I was physically in a bad way.
I was also mentally in a bad way. Full of guilt, shame and remorse for all I had done. I used to sit in the rooms of AA with other newcomers and we would talk about how depessed we were.
Then I met someone with real depression. Mine was never that black. The way he described it, depression was several orders of magnitude worse than what I was suffering.
Then I realised it wasn't depression I was sufffering from, it was self pity. Poor me. Poor me. My chaotic life of self will, the life devoted to satisfying my base instincts at the expense of everyone around me was over. Poor me. I could no longer drink. Poor me. I could no longer do as I pleased. Poor me. I would have to get honest, poor me. I would have to take responsibilty, poor me. I would have to face the consequences, poor me. I would have to learn a new way of life with some discipline in it. Poor me.
The only way out was action, pretty much as Brenda suggested earlier. Get off my lazy #$s and get some recovery going. It only took a few days for the self pity to leave when I did that, and it was replaced with a better feeling and a growing condidence that I was on the right track.
Old BillW wrote this, and it has proved just as valid for me. "I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day."