This piece is part of the regular Ask Katie* advice column series at The Fix.

Dear Katie,

I have been sober for about six months and I have been feeling increasingly depressed. I don’t have health insurance, though I will be able to go on an ACA exchange in my state come January. I am about to start my last semester of college, but this past semester it was really hard to get all the work done. I am usually a good student but it’s been hard to keep up with the work while going to meetings, meeting with my sponsor, and honestly, just kind of being overwhelmed and depressed. I feel like everything is really exhausting—even small things. I also feel like I need to go to more meetings than I did before, which seems weird because it seems like the most meetings are usually needed at the beginning of sobriety. Do you have any thoughts about this? Is it just a phase that everyone getting sober goes through, or is there something more going on?

I have been sober for about six months and I have been feeling increasingly depressed. I don’t have health insurance, though I will be able to go on an ACA exchange in my state come January. I am about to start my last semester of college, but this past semester it was really hard to get all the work done. I am usually a good student but it’s been hard to keep up with the work while going to meetings, meeting with my sponsor, and honestly, just kind of being overwhelmed and depressed. I feel like everything is really exhausting—even small things. I also feel like I need to go to more meetings than I did before, which seems weird because it seems like the most meetings are usually needed at the beginning of sobriety. Do you have any thoughts about this? Is it just a phase that everyone getting sober goes through, or is there something more going on?

Congratulations on six months. For me, the milestone that felt the most significant was nine months. Not one month, not one year. There’s nothing inherently significant about nine months—it’s just that between six and nine months were challenging for me and I was proud of hitting that milestone. While it’s hard to generalize about the experience of getting sober—everyone is going to have a slightly different experience—there’s no doubt that things can get pretty freaking weird in the first year of sobriety (continued)

*I am not an expert or a mental health or medical professional; I’m a sober person offering my experiences and advice about sobriety. Every other Tuesday I will one recovery-related question posed by Fix readers, based on my experience. Send your general advice questions to me at editor@thefix.com with the subject “Ask Katie.” 

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