Sober sadness
 

I've been sober for a year now and I am struggling with persistent sadness. I do take anti depressants for depression....but this is a general sadness. Is this normal? I feel it slightly nudging me toward the drink again. Thanks

Hi FallingStarts, I think feeling sad is part of the human condition, especially in today's messed up world.

Have you tried finding activities to fill your sober time with? This may help. I am embarking on this myself as I find that I have more productive time on my hands.

I think you know that drinking is not the answer to feeling sad and will exacerbate those negative emotions further.

All the best and good luck.

My daughter used to suffer from seasonal depression every winter. Are you getting plenty of sunlight? Every morning when she woke I would have on every light in the house! She said it helped. But there are lights for specifically that purpose.

Check with your doctor to see how your vitamin d levels are. Hope you find some relief.

And congratulations on a year sober!!!!

:You_Rock_

Thank you..yes I think you are right. It's hard to fill up the time I would have otherwise used for drinking.

I know the drink will give you a temporary feeling of euphoria but that feeling is so fleeting. And it's nothing but a cruel illusion. Remember all those mornings you woke up hating yourself? Your sadness will only be much worsened if you drink. I know it's so easy and my heart goes out to you for being sad for such a spell.

Do you have an passions/hobbies?

Thank you ! I didn't think about Vitamin D. Good chance that could be an issue. And I do think Seasonal Affective Disorder could be in the mix as well.

Might be worth having a read of this article if you haven't yet done so...
https://digital-dharma.net/post-acut...r-immediately/

You say you stopped drinking a year ago. What have you added to your life since then? Have you been working a recovery program? It may be that you need to add some tools to your sobriety box to help deal with really Living sober. This thread of Dees has some great tips and links to help make a plan...
https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...ery-plans.html

Sobriety and Recovery are not the same thing. I tried the first six months of sobriety without working on my recovery, and although I was sober it didn't feel much like Living. Sobriety without Recovery can be pretty miserable as it just leaves us restless, irritable and discontent. I was also left full of shame, remorse and self-loathing, as well as a carrying a big fat sack of resentments against other people and life in general. Working on my recovery had turned all that around for me, and I know it did for others as well.

I hope you find something to add to your recovery in 2018 that will put the zing into sober living for you.

BB

Ditto on the sunlight, it makes a big difference in my brain chemistry to just be outside in the sun for 15 mins. I hear you on the ill-defined sadness, I'm having a bit of a protracted mental regret slideshow for one this holiday season and it is about as fun as enduring a slideshow of someone else's poorly photographed 2 week vacation somewhere you never want to go. But then again, no one does slideshows anymore do they? Argh, sadness...I've been coping with new exercise routines, painful ones. Something about the pain relaxes the mind a bit.

Nothing beats my depression like exercise. Feeling the sweat pouring off me as I push this aging body into fitness again.

Follow that up with some reading and/or learning and that nourishes my mind too.

If I put as much time into improving my overall health as I put into drinking, I will have a body like Arnie and a mind like Einstein.

Thanks everyone for the great input. I will try to implement some changes for the new year. Didn't know that sobriety and recovery were not the same thing. That is something I will read up on....

Nope. Didn't occur to me either at first. I just thought if I stopped drinking the rest would just follow on, like Dominos falling. Didn't occur to me that I needed to be the one to line the darned Dominos up first lol.

Goodness knows what would have happened if I hadn't found this place and AA and had all those others ahead of me in the game to learn from.

Hope we'll get to hear what you're trying and how it's changed things in 2018.

BB