How I left social media as a successful artist (and nearly snapped my mind on the way out)

Hello,
I'm Low Entropy, Hardcore Techno producer and author for a few decades now.
I didn't want to, but I became overly addicted to social media over the last years, and it took a huge toll on my mental health (which was not so good to begin with anyway - and that's a huge understatement).
I was especially heavy on the use of Facebook and Instagram - constantly posting stuff, trying to chat with people there, and to "promote" my music, or talk about politics - well, you probably know that crap.

So, I made the decision - I need to get out, and leave all of that behind.
I tried to leave before, but often had a relapse, and went back to the heavy use of social media again.

Because of that, this time I tried to make a plan.
I 'analyzed' there were a few reasons why I could not break free from social media.
There were minor things such as: social media provides easy distractions, a feed of seemingly interesting stuff, and so on.

But also a very major thing: I had close to zero social contacts, or even social life, in the real world. Almost all my "friends" and acquaintances were on social media, and especially on FB and "Insta". These were mostly other DJs, producers, promoters, and so on.
I deduced that this was a *real* problem. It was not something imaginary, a problem that I "made up in my head"; without social media I would slip into social isolation. And this would pummel my mental health again (which was not so good to begin with, as I said before). Because lack of social contacts can mess up a lot of people; me being no different to that.

Therefore my plan was this: I would tell my friendly DJs and artists and everyone else, that I would leave, and tell them how they could contact me in other ways (I guess you know already know how this will end).
For example by E-Mail, or WhatsApp, or other non-social media ways.

They told me they would keep in touch this way, and they did.
It was all sunshine then, I was off social media, my mental state improved, I had more time and clarity and focus and energy to focus on producing music and writing my e-books.
And talking to my friends on E-mail or on a non-media messenger felt better, the convos were more in-depth and personal than "leaving a comment" on insta.

And then the thing happened which I should have expected in the first place:
My friends stopped talking to me, one after another. Within a few weeks, after a few months off social media, the communication completely dried up.
I'm not entirely sure why, but I should have anticipated it.
I messaged some of them, in the way of "hey, what's up, how are you doing" etc., or talking about projects and music releases, and I got some "friendly" replies and they said they would get back to me and of course they never did.

So yeah, I felt like I was thrown into a social vacuum, and this took a huge toll on me.
My mental state was worsening rapidly, as I literally had no-one to talk to, no-one to exchange ideas, music, thoughts with, I felt like my mind was locked up in a solitary cell and someone had thrown away my key.

I realized I needed to act or I would go batshit insane.

As my oh-so-clever plan to be able to stay "social" on the internet without social media failed, I saw there was only one route left. I needed to go into the offline world, instead of the online world.

I didn't expect anything exciting to happen on a social level in my urban surroundings, but I knew I needed to get out either way.

So I checked the internet for all kinds of stuff that was happening in the vicinity, concerts, festivals, art exhibits. I took up sports and bicycling and spend hours (and kilometers) pedaling around, in the nearby forests, to the nearby lakes, out into nature.

While I did not really make friends this way, going into the real world felt much better than I expected.
And I was surprised how friendly and nice the people that I met were, on average. A thousands times more friendly than the "online folk"!

But this was of course no replacement for "real" connections with other humans. And I was still an artist who was used to network and collaborate with other people on projects in order to "get shit done"...
And I was not getting ahead there.
I eventually deduced that the reason my social media friends discarded me was, well, because they were on social media. And I was not. They were in that social media world, and I was an "alien" to that now.

So the thought came to me to reach out to people who were not on social media too, or who I at least shared a connection with outside of it.
Including people that I did not contact for years after I got sucked into that whole social media thing (what goes around comes around, right?).

So I sent out a lot of e-mails and messages, and not everyone replied, but it was good to be in touch with some great old friends again.

Then everything went step by step. The crisis became a thing of the past, I'm part of a community of people again, I'm doing more music and projects than ever, I made lots of new acquaintances, labels, scouts, organizations reach out to me, things are nice and bright now. (I don't say that as an "ego-boost", I just want to be honest to show that life as an artist is indeed more saccharine without artificial social media sweeteners).

I guess just like with quitting other heavy addictions, I needed to full into this "black hole" and misery, before things could become better.

Going on with honesty, I'm not "totally social media" free right now.
I still use:

YouTube (a lot)
Reddit (but I curb it a lot)
Discord (same)

Ideally I would be free of all of these, but I was able to stop 95% of my daily social media activities, and I'm planning to stop the remaining 5% too, one day.
That's actually another main advice I would give to people who have a very hard time quitting social media: do it continuously, but do it in slices, and not all at once.

Now, who knows, maybe I can't keep it up, and will relapse again, or something like that, in the future.
But I feel that I was able to reach the point I am at - right here, right now, is a powerful success for me.
And again I don't want to ego-boost myself by saying this: because the message I want to put across is that *you could do it to* and succeed at it!