[zz20220810]

Yes!! I haven't had struggles with substance addiction, but I see SO much overlap in what you described as how much extra work and problem solving and self-leadership addicts have to foster and constantly practice to survive, let alone thrive, in what I've had to do to try to heal my depression and other maladies. It's like, I can't even begin to describe how much work it's been to someone who hasn't had to deal with that kind of a problem.

I was given an irrevocable 100 hour a week job called "try to survive while depressed" when I was 17, and thrown in the deep end with no guide, no mentors, and no reasons why. Every day of my life is a battle to keep my head above water. For years I barely managed and somehow am still here, but it is relentlessly difficult. Some days you think you're starting to get things figured out, on a roll, and then your positive wellbeing evaporates into thin air from the time it takes you to walk from your car to your apartment door. What is this life? You start to lose all hope of even figuring out any rhyme or reason or pattern in your depression, and just try to get through the day.

When it gets to be like that, I have found MUCH solace in the mantra of the substance abuse recovery world, "One day at a time." It's like an alien tongue to someone who's never dealt with the kind of waking death spirit companion depression comes to be. How could anything be so bad that you can only focus on a single day at a time, or that doing so would help in any kind of way? Thank your everything that that phrase gives you no feeling or hope. It's the last refuge of the damned.