Would like the board's opinion on my current situation...

[radon]

6's point about a professional therapist is crucial. No one other than a qualified professional is in a position to really figure out the causes of one's depressed state (if there is one). These may well happen to be for a totally non-obvious reasons like a physical or environmental condition, and clearly forum is not a place to identify them.

One other thing - people generally like being asked for giving advice. When giving it out, they are often naturally tempted to go patronizing. I have seen your previous posts, they are intelligent, so you would perhaps be able to filter out and trash the patronizing overtones while taking the useful ideas (of which there are quite a few here) with you. I also understand from your first post that you were fully aware that by starting the OP you were opening yourself up to such patronizing and even trolling.

With regard to the job searches - it is useful to identify where you stand in the market and whether you can stretch yourself. Applying for jobs and going to interviews is a very useful process in itself, because this is an excellent (and totally free) opportunity to learn and be trained on how to sell yourself. It can also be quite interesting and entertaining. You can view it actually as another job, even if unpaid. It is not really important which job you are applying for, what is important is that you learn and practice the skills that sell you - observe people's reactions, learn about how business works because they tell you, learn how to ask the right questions that bait them, learn to cope with ups and downs and so on. Having said that, this process can be quite unsettling as you might have weeks going quiet without any responses to your applications, especially in the current economic environment - this is perfectly normal and should be taken calmly. It is useful to have a side engagement like hobby or online job to fill up those gaps between the interviews.

Also, it is important to identify the competitive advantages that you have, and that you actually mentioned previously:
- unlike your immediate peers, you got to the master's degrees.
- you went at greater lengths to get these degrees than other graduates as you started from a lower base.
- while the environment that you are in is apparently conducive to alcohol abuse you are not into this form of the "avoidance behavior", and prefer to enjoy life as it is.

These point out that you are naturally resilient and goal-oriented, and while it might not be something to discuss at lengths at the interviews, it is worth keeping these in mind as these indicate that you are likely to be stronger contender than most of your competition.

With regard to the education and degrees - they are always useful. Always. May be not in the way and to the degree (in terms of the pay off) that one expected, but nevertheless. People are generally attracted to, and respect educated persons. On the other hand, as Seagypsy has pointed out, these degrees is not something to advance in the CV or interviews if they are outside the scope of the job specification. The educational training will anyway play in your favor when you go through the application and interviews. But you have to be practical here.