The Truth Behind the Perfect Pictures of Sobriety | Sober and Unashamed

I spent way too much time on social media during the week between the holidays. I usually post about my writing and podcast, then turn it off, so anything more than a few minutes a week makes me feel gross. I probably only scrolled fb and IG for a grand total of an hour, but I still needed to take a hot shower, scrub my eyes with bleach and submerge my phone in Windex.

In case I’ve been unclear, I don’t enjoy social media. I think my dislike stems from my borderline-perverted curiosity about your messy, dysfunctional lives. I don’t want to see your family’s strained smiles wearing itchy sweaters in front of a dead evergreen adorned with LEDs and third-grade craft projects. Great — someone held Preston down long enough to comb his hair, and Bill really did a nice job sucking in his gut for the ten seconds until the timer on the phone camera ran down to zero. Precious. Send it to grandma. I want the truth, damn you!

I don’t know if the raw and ugly truth is allowed on social media. You can either scream into the digital wind about your perceived injustices, or you can tell us about the rainbows and cotton candy you have shooting out of your ass. Most of the accounts I follow are part of the addiction recovery community, so there is plenty of both wind screaming and unicorn farting.