How one New Jersey-based musician is using songwriting to process sobriety, pain, fatherhood, and the moments that keep us alive.
There are recovery songs that tell you what to do.
And then there are recovery songs that tell the truth.
Oskar, the artist behind the music project DEPTOS, is much more interested in the second category. His work is not trying to hand anyone a pamphlet, fix anyone’s life, or turn sobriety into a motivational poster with a suspiciously clean sunrise on it.
Instead, his music sits in the uncomfortable middle. The part where you know something has to change, but you are not exactly thrilled about it. The part where you have technically stopped drinking or using, but your feelings have rudely decided to remain very much alive. The part where recovery is not a glow-up montage, but a long, strange, sometimes brutal process of figuring out what to do with yourself now.
Oskar is based in New Jersey, just outside New York City, and has been involved in music for most of his life. He describes himself as a lifelong “bedroom DJ,” someone who played around with music at parties and private events before finally taking the leap into releasing his own work.
His project, DEPTOS, is producer-led and deeply personal. It grew out of the kind of writing that comes from sitting in recovery rooms, hearing people share, and realizing there are things you want to say but maybe cannot always say with your hand raised.
“I started writing about how I felt,” Oskar said. “Not in a preachy way, not like, ‘Don’t drink,’ but about certain stages I feel like I maybe hadn’t dealt with before.”
His latest song, Charming In Catastrophe, centers around one line that stopped me in my tracks:
“You don’t have to die to stop living this way.”
That is the kind of lyric that sounds simple until you have lived long enough to know exactly how much is inside it.
Writing the Part of Recovery That Is Hard to Explain
When Oskar talks about the song, he describes it as coming from the fog of early recovery. That strange, disorienting time when you have made it into the rooms, but you do not yet know if you belong there. You know something has gone deeply wrong, but admitting it still feels like swallowing glass.
“It’s that late-stage drinking, just coming in, and being so lost,” he said. “You don’t really know what’s there, what’s happening. You know you’re kind of destined to go there, but you don’t really want to admit it. And once you’re in it, it’s still that kind of, ‘Okay, I’m here, but what now?’”
For Oskar, songwriting became a way to process the pieces of recovery that did not fit neatly into a share.
“I feel like there are some things I would like to say,” he said. “But not necessarily raising my hand and going, ‘I did this, I did that.’ Maybe it’s myself processing everything.”
That processing includes some of the darkest emotional territory recovery can bring up. Oskar is open about having experienced suicidal thoughts before and during early sobriety. He also lost his niece to suicide, which shaped the way he thinks about despair, mental health, and the pain people may be carrying beneath the surface.
“When you are in that state, you’re not thinking clearly,” he said. “You’re in a different state. Nobody can relate unless they’re there.”
That honesty is part of what makes the music land. It is not performative darkness. It is not recovery content dressed up for applause. It feels like someone trying to tell the truth from the other side of a very close call.
The Lyric That Holds the Song Together
The central line — “You don’t have to die to stop living this way” — came from the kind of moment that many people in recovery understand, even if they cannot fully explain it.
Oskar remembers sitting in a meeting in early recovery and hearing an older man say something that cut through the noise.
“I can’t explain it,” he said. “But it was like that. I knew that was not the way. I’m not going to do it. That’s not the way out.”
It was not a cinematic moment. No choir. No rainbows. No inspirational soundtrack conveniently swelling in the background.
Just a shift.
A quiet knowing.
A moment of grace, maybe.
And sometimes, in recovery, that is enough to keep going.
Long-Term Sobriety Is Still Life on Life’s Terms
Oskar has been in the rooms for more than eight years and is coming up on seven years sober in June. And like many people in long-term sobriety, he is clear that time does not magically make life easy.
It just makes life possible.
Over the last 18 months, he went through an intensely painful family situation involving separation from his teenage son. The grief of that experience brought isolation, depression, and the old familiar danger of pulling away from the very things that help.
“I had periods of isolating,” he said. “Just sitting and watching TV, trying to write, but it’s so dangerous. Then trying to snap out of it, go back to meetings, get more involved, get busy with my sponsees, get into the program. Because otherwise it doesn’t work.”
Recently, he saw his son again for the first time in 18 months.
“If I’m sitting here smiling, it’s a little boy,” he said.
There is something quietly powerful about that. Not everything gets fixed. Not everything gets wrapped up with a bow. But sometimes there is a door that opens after a long time of being shut.
And in sobriety, you get to be present when it does.
Recovery Music Without the Recovery Commercial
What makes Oskar’s music compelling is that he is not trying to sell recovery like a slogan. He is writing from inside the experience.
He has more songs planned for release throughout the summer and fall, including one that explores themes connected to making amends and another that captures the desperation of active addiction.
“One of them is more like a ninth-step thing,” he said. “And one is about that general first coming into the rooms, and even before you’re coming in. Like, I would take whatever is in front of me. Whatever I can do to ease the pain.”
His hope is simple: that the music reaches people who need to hear it.
“I know it helps me,” he said. “And I can only say what works for me and what helps me. More attraction rather than promotion. If people feel it, good.”
That line — attraction rather than promotion — fits the whole project. DEPTOS is not making music that grabs you by the collar and tells you to get sober. It is making music that sits next to you and says, “I know this room. I have been here too.”
Why Music Hits Different in Recovery
At The Sober Curator, our music coverage is still a relatively small section of the site, but it has become some of the most engaging content we publish. That does not surprise me.
Music gets in through the side door.
For people in recovery, a song can become a timestamp. A relapse prevention tool. A prayer. A punchline. A warning label. A reminder of who we used to be and who we are trying very hard not to become again.
Sometimes it is not even the whole song. Sometimes it is one lyric.
For Oskar, that lyric is:
“You don’t have to die to stop living this way.”
And for someone out there, that might be the line that gets them through one more night.
Pop Culture, Recovery, and Representation
Because The Sober Curator is constitutionally incapable of having a conversation without bringing up pop culture, I asked Oskar about recovery representation on screen.
Some depictions hit too close to home. He mentioned Leaving Las Vegas as difficult to watch because of how viscerally it portrays addiction. He also brought up The Wolf of Wall Street and HBO’s Industry, especially because he previously worked in finance and lived in London.
“The drugs and the booze and everything,” he said. “It’s too close to home. Almost like I can’t take it.”
On the lighter side, he pointed out how recovery sometimes sneaks into unexpected places, like the support-group-style scene in Wreck-It Ralph. He also appreciates when writers with lived experience bring more nuance to addiction and recovery stories, mentioning Stephen King as someone who can write that interior experience with real weight.
What Oskar is drawn to, and what many of us want more of, is recovery representation beyond rock bottom.
Yes, the bottom matters.
But what about the person with seven years?
Fifteen years?
Twenty years?
What about the person who is sober, still complicated, still funny, still making mistakes, still repairing relationships, still creating art, still learning how to live?
That is where the better stories are.
What Comes Next for DEPTOS
Oskar is continuing to release music under DEPTOS, with more songs planned for the coming months. The work is personal, but the intention is communal.
It is music for people who know what it feels like to sit in the back of a meeting and wonder if they belong.
Music for people who have survived things they do not always know how to talk about.
Music for people who are sober but still human, which is rude, honestly, but here we are.
The best recovery art does not make the pain pretty. It makes it usable.
And that is what DEPTOS is doing.
Listen to Charming In Catastrophe by DEPTOS below.
WRECK-IT RALPH – Video Game Villains Meeting Scene (2012) Movie Clip
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Who is Oskar of DEPTOS?
Oskar is the artist behind DEPTOS, a producer-led music project based in New Jersey. His music explores recovery, addiction, mental health, and the emotional complexity of long-term sobriety.
What is DEPTOS music about?
DEPTOS creates music inspired by recovery and lived experience. Rather than preaching about sobriety, Oskar writes about the emotional reality of addiction, early recovery, isolation, repair, and finding a way forward.
What does “You don’t have to die to stop living this way” mean?
The lyric speaks to the moment when someone realizes there may be another way out besides self-destruction. For Oskar, it reflects the pain of early recovery and the possibility of choosing life before it is too late.
Why does music matter in recovery?
Music can help people in recovery feel seen, understood, and less alone. A single lyric or song can become a reminder of where someone has been, what they have survived, and why they keep going.
Where can I listen to DEPTOS?
You can listen to DEPTOS through the embedded track in this article and follow Oskar’s upcoming releases as he continues sharing music inspired by sobriety and recovery.
