My first sober New Year’s Eve was in 2015. After almost two months in a Florida rehab, I finally returned to my Brooklyn apartment in early December. It was no longer an apartment, though — it was a museum of failure: every room had full ashtrays and thousands of dollars of dead plants. The outdoor deck had a rusty grill and a propane tank I had never filled. The expensive grill cover I bought for it was upside down a few feet away, filled with more cigarette butts. It was a big wet mess.

Under my filthy couch was the top-of-the-line foot massager I’d purchased because I thought it would feel great with poppers and Xanax. (It did.)

But the saddest item was a six-person inflatable hot tub, still in the box. Retail price: $1,259.

I don’t know what it was about that hot tub that sent me into a tailspin, but it did a real number on me. I think it was primarily due to the realization that I was no longer interesting or cool enough to have an inflatable hot tub on my roof. Now I was just this uncool, uninteresting sober person.

I navigated the first couple of weeks decently enough, opting out of many of the holiday parties I used to attend. I also didn’t go home to Philadelphia for Christmas that year. I spent a lot of time alone in my apartment, scrolling the internet for relief from my loneliness and agitation. I typed, “I’m 50 days sober, and I want to run into traffic,” into Google, hoping for an essay or an article that would connect me to some stranger or writer who had felt exactly as I had in this terrible moment. But the results were the suicide hotline and more ads for rehabs, many like the one I had just returned from. Oh, and there were a couple of tabloid stories about the singer Demi Lovato, who was also trying to stay sober. I tried to go to regular AA meetings, but the program wasn’t the solution I was seeking just yet.

And now it was New Year’s Eve and all I wanted was drugs.

I didn’t care what kind — something to sand down the edges or, better yet, just put me to sleep until March. I wanted to be medicated into a state of guilt-free, dull-hearted bliss.