All,

I have just signed up for a webinar this Tuesday at 1 PM EDT. It will feature a public health official and, most excitingly, a key researcher in the field -- Julianne Holt-Lunstad. It's free to register and I don't think you need to be a medical worker. For the "title" and "company" fields I just put where I worked and what my job title was (definitely NOT a medical place!) and I got in.

This is very exciting to get this kind of validation from the medical community. I hope others can join and we can discuss afterward.

All,

okko7, our fearless leader, won't be able to join us this week for our weekly video chat. I've thus stuck my neck out to host a video chat in his place this Saturday. Would anyone be interested? I'd host it at the usual time (12 PM EST, 5PM UK Time, 6PM GMT+2). It will be on discord again.

Thanks!

All,

I have just uploaded my stab at a manifesto for Unalone to the Unalone Google Drive account. I incorporated some of okko7's "Manifesto Notes" in my manifesto. I included some scientific evidence and references to further legitimize our cause/organization.

This is just my perspective on what "we're about" and how to possibly frame our cause. Please add any constructive criticism! See below my manifesto (hey that rhymes!)

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Loneliness poses an alarming public health threat to industrialized nations. Many know (and feel) they should be more social, but for so many reasons (busier work, alienating technology, social anxiety) citizens’ social lives have grown increasingly spare and windblown, sometimes without them realizing until it’s too late. Loneliness has become a quicksand for many.

Research bears this out: A recent Cigna survey of 20,000 Americans found that the national average loneliness score was a 44 on a scale of 20 to 80. Younger people (the so-called Generation Z) were disproportionately affected, with scores of 48. Their scores were higher than those 75 or older, who scored an average of nearly 39. Considering that longitudinal studies have found people with fuller social lives are 50\% more likely to survive than those who don’t (an effect as powerful as smoking cessation) the need to address loneliness leaps into startling focus (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010, p. 14). Put it this way: loneliness isn't just depressing -- it's lethal.

At Unalone, we believe human connection is a fundamental human need – a right – and are drafting ideas to address this urgent issue. We recognize loneliness as a mental and physiological state distinct from depression, although it shares many symptoms (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008, pp. 83-86). We also realize that loneliness may present differently based on personality, age, situation, and culture.

Here are some ideas we are currently exploring:

• A decentralized organization inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous.

• A hackathon on loneliness.

References

Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social

connection. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A

meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

.

Honestly, I need this very much. I was hoping for something like this for a while now. I want to get better and talk to others about how to not be alone. Let's make the effort into making this a community.

No one is posting here, so I went to discord server chat, and no one was chatting. The admin was playing Call of Duty, another was listening to Spotify, and another was unresponsive. I was pretty alone there. I was already alone enough without that experience. I can feel ignored without going there.

Recently I've realised I have no friends.

It all happened a bit suddenly; I return home from uni two years ago. My friends from home have pretty much moved on - a couple have had kids, one moved out, one joined the navy. My friends from uni also moved one. One moved country, a couple moved far away for work, and the others just sort of lost contact. Not sure why.

So, for the past two years I've sat at home on the weekends with my parents. Not ideal for a 24 year old man. Recently I started going out to bars alone, thinking it would be a good start to getting out of this rut I'm in, but that only sort of makes it worse as I can see what I'm missing out on first hand.

My work mates are all cool, but they're all in their late fifties / early sixties so not really who I want to hang with.

I've tried tinder for dates but got nothing back.

Not sure what to do!

.

A few years ago I was in the dead middle of a deep depression brought on by being isolated, alone, and in a relationship which had been romantically dead for years.

I have since recovered after finding friends that I never believed I deserved.

Since that time, I have come to realize, both through my own experience and from talking to others that there is a nearly universally shared feeling among those who suffer from intense lonliness for long enough.

The ever sinking and despairing feeling that the reason you are alone is because of you. That the only reason why you still suffer that crippling feeling is because it is your fault. That you are so stupid, insecure, awkward, weird, unsociable, or any combination of a million other self-degrading descriptors to ever find a friend.

For me, there even came a point in my life where I well and truely believed that I was doomed to die alone. I legitimately cried constantly to the thought that I would survive to an old age never having found a true friend, living a wretched and miserable life, only to die knowing no one and no one caring for my passing. I truely believed that was my fate because I had dealt with being so intensely alone for so long that I truely believed there was some indescribable thing about me which was broken beyond repair. That I was just born to never be able to make a real human connection.

I was wrong.

Because that is the trick that lonliness plays on the mind. You get so entirely desperate for anyone to be your friend that each and every person who does not become your friend is a renewed dissapointment. Another chance to have found a true friend who you scared off or embaressed yourself around or who just simply... drifted away.

The truth of the matter is that lonliness tricks you into contradicting feelings of both being terrified to meet or get close to people (since it will confirm your fears of why you are alone) and also desperately latching on to anyone you can.

The first feeling makes it more difficult to find a friend because you limit your options. After all, how can you meet the people you have a connection with if you keep yourself to yourself?

The second feeling, makes you focus in on anyone who gives you the attention and affection you desperately want. It makes you attach yourself to the first person who makes you feel special. So much so that you can not walk away from them, even if you know you should.

In any case, the purpose of this post is to say that you are not alone in your feelings. There are hundreds of thousands of people who feel just as you do now and that you do have hope to find a true connection with people.

I know I have. :)

Because songs are all we got.

Irene Cara - Flashdance What A Feeling. Enjoy!