I groaned as I slowly opened my eyes and bought my fingers to my face. I groggily rubbed the grit from my eyes. My head felt like an avalanche had assaulted my frontal lobe and every time I moved it made loose rocks bump around painfully in my skull.

“It’s happened again. Why do I do this to myself?” I thought through the red wine fog.

My wife stood in front of the mattress that I sleep on in the living room because my snoring keeps her awake at night. She surveyed the damage from the night before. Two empty red wine bottles and scattered packets of biscuits, chocolate and nuts that were eaten in a drunken buffet.

“Are you at the point where you realise something needs to change yet?” She asked.

I farted and groaned.

It was the weekend of my oldest daughter's 11th birthday and I’ve started it in a hungover haze of wine breath, sneaky treat crumbs and fart. Wonderful!

This is when I realised that something needed to change.

My Story

I suffer from depression and even though I try to not let it define me, it sometimes creeps into my life when I’m not looking. I reckon I’ve been suffering from it for about the last 10 years. I started treatment for it about 5 years ago by taking medication and now use a range of tactics to try and keep it at bay. I’m a web developer by trade, live in sunny QLD and have a beautiful wife and two amazing daughters.

I have everything I need in life, nice house with a pool, beautiful kids, I run a mostly successful business with my wife etc - so why am I suffering from depression you might ask? Well that’s the kicker isn’t it? Depression isn’t picky about who it chooses.

Anyway, back to my drunken shenanigans from last night.

A month ago I went to the doctor because I felt my medication wasn’t working for my depression. I felt flat, withdrawn and like a zombie with no emotion or feelings. Everything felt, looked and tasted beige. The only thing that made me feel anything at all was blisteringly hot showers, sex, excesses in food or alcohol and videos of porn, car crashes or war and other violent and shocking acts.

Depression isn’t picky about who it chooses.

I think I was seeking these things to satiate the appetite of the black dog that numbs me and dilutes the things that normal people enjoy. This made me seek more and more shocking and excessive ways to actually “feel” something. Hence the 12-13 drinks, block of chocolate, biscuits, sweets and cashews lying around me that are the scattered remains of last night.

After a shower, 2 coffees and the sensation of rising bile in my throat multiple times, my wife and I were sitting down talking. “Did you happen to read those articles I sent you the other day?” She asked. “The ones about the link between excessive mobile device usage and depression” I said sipping my coffee and nursing my headache. “Yes, I did read them.” “And?“ She said lifting an eyebrow. “I think there’s something in it” I said taking another sip of hot coffee.

As we talked about the links of excessive mobile usage and depression I started to see where some of my problems were coming from.

My Realisation

By constantly checking my phone for new messages, emails and notifications I was feeding an addiction. An addiction that I didn’t even realise I had. It was the first thing I did when I woke up and the last thing I did before I went to bed. I was on my mobile on the toilet, waiting in line or in the ad breaks when watching tele. I realised I was filling all the spare moments of my life with likes, shares and funny cat videos. Suddenly my mind snapped back to my wife. My beautiful wife. I’ve missed out on so many opportunities to look into her loving eyes because I’ve been looking at a screen. And for what???

Most of the stuff that crosses my path on social media is pretty much mindless crap. I thought about it - If I didn’t check Facebook , Twitter or Google+ for a month, would the world end? F4CK NO

In fact I doubt that most of my ‘friends’ would even notice my absence as they’re so focused on their own mindless drivel that I call the “Facebook Facade”. It made me think, if the sheeple keep going like this, perhaps it will get to the stage where they won't know a real connection with someone unless it's spat out by an algorithm?

My Plan

With this in mind I’ve sat down today and planned “A Month Without My Mobile” to rid myself of other people's “Facebook lives” and give some time back to myself, my family and to focus on managing my depression the best that I can over the next month.

I’ve given myself four simple rules and four simple goals. Today I’ve uninstalled all the social media apps and games from my phone and stripped it back to pretty much three functions

• Phone
• Text and
• Email (I need email to run my business)

So I’ve essentially turned my Samsung Note 3 into a Nokia 6210... with email.

Let’s see what happens over the next month!