Since quitting caffeine and alcohol, I rarely get lonely. In fact, quitting those drugs seems to have helped reduce the time I spend in any negative emotion. I still have acute bouts of [whatever negative emotion here], but I rarely get mired in them. This seems to have less to do with any change in my living situation since the switch (I often hermit away, as I did before) and more to do with being in a more resourceful state more often (which neither drug helped with).
I suspect that alcohol and caffeine-induced negative emotion is widespread. Even a glass or two of alcohol can affect your sleep, and less REM sleep means less emotional regulation. I know basically everyone's on caffeine, but ingesting that can accentuate the peaks and valleys of one's emotional experience. The alcohol and caffeine-induced troughs may be sub-clinical, but they're probably real for a lot of people.
My baseline "sober" -- no caffeine, no anything -- is crippling, paralyzing depression. Hiking is my drug of choice, but I need to be hiking all day, nearly every day, for months for it to take action, and that is not compatible with existing in society.
Without hiking, and without any other support, then I revert to existing as a pool of dark sludge on a bed all day. I spent years this way before I decided to set aside my pride and accept that having a little help -- caffeine at a minimum -- to be functional is better for my health than any perceived ideas around addiction or "purity".
Coffee / caffeine can take me from a non-functional, paralyzing mental disability to being able to move around and have momentum.
And yes, there are circumstances that can change where this wouldn't happen and I wouldn't need a support like that: a world-wide revolution resulting in the liberation of all mankind from the dystopian hellscape we are in / plunging ourselves further into would do it.
Short of that, I'll stick with a couple cups of coffee a day, thanks.
Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. I relate to this because I've dealt with depression too, which I also medicated in various ways.
Other than quitting the two aforementioned drugs, what helped a lot for me was living in a more evolutionarily consistent way. Especially around nutrition, sunlight, and sleep. I made this the focus of my life for about a year because the alternative was, well, you know about that.
In the grand symphony of life, navigating its dissonant notes—our societal complexities—calls for a harmonious tune within ourselves, finding resilience in our daily rituals, shared experiences, and self-discovery, while cherishing the understanding that seeking help is not a discord but a beautiful part of our shared composition.
I'm glad you found something that worked with you. This type of experiment (consume less self administered psychoactives and access emotional changes) is something I would encourage everyone to do. However, it's a common mistake to take an experiment with a small sample size and assume it's results will generalize well over the population. For that we can look to the scientific literature. Inside we find it's well supported that increasing dose of alcohol is associated with increased depression. We do not find the same amount of support for caffeine/coffee, where it's more plausible there is a negative correlation between caffeine and depression.
Your experiment is great because now you know what works best for you. The way you talk about it seems to indicate that you use the experiment as a basis for knowing what is best for the population at large. A scientific study is a much stronger piece of evidence for shaping our views on how alcohol/caffeine effect the population.
I suspect that alcohol and caffeine-induced negative emotion is widespread. Even a glass or two of alcohol can affect your sleep, and less REM sleep means less emotional regulation. I know basically everyone's on caffeine, but ingesting that can accentuate the peaks and valleys of one's emotional experience. The alcohol and caffeine-induced troughs may be sub-clinical, but they're probably real for a lot of people.