My first month of 'socialbriety'

A whim to take a break from Facebook has changed everything.... including me.

Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash

A month ago today, I logged out of Facebook, and declared that I was embarking on a Facebook ‘Dry January’. At over 9 years sober, I don’t need to cut booze out of my life, but I was very aware that my use of the ubiquitous social media site was sometimes not unlike my use of alcohol.

Had I known that the net result of my month off would be this, I might have thought twice. I’m glad I didn’t know!

Far from the month of creative and mental freedom I was expecting, a flurry of writing and networking on other, more productive websites, a rapid growth in my online visibility as a recovery coach and sobriety advocate, I have retreated. Withdrawn into a world made suddenly colder by the discovery of unacknowledged depression, exhaustion, overwhelm, and desperate need for rest, healing and time away not just from Facebook, but from the online world.

Away from my favourite numbing tool, I started to feel. And it showed me with icy clarity, just how much I have been numbing out. How maybe there is still work to do on my recovery. And that I need to completely rethink my online life entirely.

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When I stopped drinking, I did it joyfully. Armed with a wealth of newly learned relaxation, stress relieving, and mindfulness practices from my yoga teacher training, I had the tools to manage the swirling emotions.

I focused on the delights of sobriety, the clear memories, the increased energy, the joy of waking up hangover free, the growing sense of contentment I was feeling as I learned to see myself with compassion instead of self loathing.

Each new day was a new adventure. Uncovering things in my psyche cleared the path to greater recovery, greater self connection, greater happiness. It wasn’t always easy, and there were some difficult truth to face, and some tangled emotions to work through, but I felt myself becoming stronger each day. I was developing the resilience that would allow me to cope with whatever life threw at me..

And boy, has life thrown a lot at me. 

When my mother was ill, in her final year, people were forever telling me that I was strong enough to get through it all. 

Most of the time I agreed with them, but sometimes I would wail ‘But I’m sick of having to be strong. I just want life to be easy for a while.’

People who know me would agree that my life does seem, with annoying consistency, sned me ‘opportunities for growth’, a more positive way to view ‘rain a tonne of shit down on me’. But those who know me best would probably think ‘yeah, but if life got easy, you’d find a way to make it hard, wouldn’t you?’.

And I’d probably have to agree with them. I do get bored when I’m not stimulated enough. The ADHD brain won’t allow me to be still for long.

But eventually, even the strongest have their limits.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

The depression that made its presence known within days of me logging out of Facebook for the month has hit me like a tornado, picking me up, throwing me around a bit, and dropping me broken on the floor.

I feel like the shell of my former self. The women who filled her days with activity, projects, music, laughter, plans and excitement has been replaced by someone who wants to sleep, read, walk, write and meditate, and very little else. Mostly sleep.

I’ve slowed down to a crawl, a real shock to the 90 miles an hour person I’ve been. Both physically and mentally. I sometimes even wonder if my brain is working, it seems so quiet in there sometimes. 

Walking my son to school in the morning can send me back to bed to sleep the morning away.

Plans I was excited to make a few months ago are now filing me with dread as they come closer. I haven’t listened to music in ages, and don’t want to. A stark change of character for the music obsessed rock fan I usually am.

I’ve realised, with a real shock, how much of the things I do are, to a large attempt, an attempt to ‘keep busy’, and not look too deeply at life.

I know I’ll enjoy gigs, music, and other fun things again. I know right now I’m in recovery mode and need to allow myself to rest, and do the things I need to do right now. I know that if I allow this recovery, and learn from it, I’ll come back stronger and wiser than I was before. 

Maybe this summer, I won’t fill our school holiday so much that we barely have any time at home  at all. Maybe I’ll remember that a lazy Sunday is ok, and I don’t need to be doing ‘something fun’ every weekend.

So while I know that I’ll find my way back to happiness and pleasure again, I know one thing I have no intention of doing right now.

I will not be returning to Facebook. Or Instagram, LinkedIn or any of those other places I can retreat to in place of properly living. 

We know that social media harms mental health. We know that it has all been created to harness the same neural pathways that get hijacked by addiction. We know that they bleed us dry, forcing us to spend ever more time creating, engaging, learning new skills to keep up with an endlessly changing array of ways to create content, and that their algorithms use our energy to feed their endless desire for more advertising dollars.

We mean nothing to them besides potential ad revenue, and I for one am sick of giving my time and attention to a company that has built their model around exploiting my basic human desire to connect, and the ways my brain functions.

I thought about going into my account and opting to download all my data then deactivate it, but my brother pointed out that if I do that, there’s a good chance I’ll end up getting sucked back in. 

And he’s right. I might. And it’s not a risk I want to take. It’s all there when I need or want it, and in the meantime, I’m enjoying my new social media sobriety…. My “socialbriety” if you will!