Hi @oakjay, I can relate (I think) to what you described, that feeling of emptiness. I'm sorry I actually have no advice to fix it, but I have felt it too and have also turned to substance to dull it, the unbearable feeling. For me, it's kind of like a feeling of abandonment. I had a real problem with this as a child, I would be overcome with sheer terror about being left behind, left alone. It comes to me still as a middle aged man, like a shudder of horror. One thing that has always helped me, ever since high school, is to go on long walks alone. In a way, I think I was communing with that loneliness, and that was better than trying to make new friends because the friend I needed to make was myself.