I spent 30 days in an in-patient recovery facility. 30 days of going to group therapy, 30 days of listening to other patients who had problems exactly like mine, 30 days of lying to my therapist, because if I were to disclose my true thoughts I would've been deemed a risk to myself or others. 30 days of waking up at 5:00 and going to the gym twice daily, 30 days with four different roommates, all of whom had wildly differing opinions on the temperature the room should be kept at, 30 days of hoarding milk in the lounge mini-fridge because snacks in between meals were hard to come by. 30 days of only consuming mainstream media. 30 days that were actually pretty pleasant all around. But I have been home since Thanksgiving, and I do not find my sobriety to be comforting at all. I have attended AA meetings since I left. I have raised my hand, and I have talked, and I have shared, and I have drank some of the shittiest coffee I have ever had. I have had a schizophrenic man break down in tears, insisting he recognized me from a place that I could not have been. I say the prayers and I try my hardest to mean them, but they feel like hollow formalities that God chooses not to listen to every time I say them. I feel completely disconnected from everything and find little joy in anything. Every single thing I do feels like a designed distraction to keep me from noticing the extremely obvious malevolent nature of Consciousness. It feels like there is a constant shroud of evil around everything, like something is just waiting to break through. Human interaction is polite and cursory. It feels like very few people have anything interesting to say. My roommate asked me if I felt better and had stopped hating myself when I within the first 15 minutes of returning home. I lied to him and said yes. Many people in my life told me that not drinking would make my life better. I think that is excellent advice for most people. I am just old enough and know myself well enough to say that I am extremely abnormal in my way of thinking. I am not convinced that this sobriety thing will work out for me. Worst of all, I feel like I cannot write the same way I used to. The words don't flow anymore and seem stuck in my head. Maybe this is just a temporary problem I have to work through, maybe not. If it stays like this, I will go back to drinking. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, Regards, -Theo