Glenns...I think I am the closest you will find to having social anxiety disorder...only in that I have anxiety over everything and before AA would just about freak over any given situation without alcohol.  Over time, I reverted back to my old self to a degree because at one time I was extraverted.  Sharing in meetings and speaking up were uncomfortable at first, but now it has become second nature.  I can tell you that a large part of breaking the obsession to alcohol is doing things you don't feel comfortable with.  Glenns...I know you have been diagnosed with a debilitating mental disorder.  I have been diagnosed with 2 okay?  I cannot let myself be ruled by those conditions any more than alcoholism.  You have to fight both with the same willingness.  Essentially, you have taken away the crutch of alcohol and now it literally feels like you need more crutches to stay standing.  I know the SAD is real, but don't fall into the trap of using it as a crutch and a hindrance to your recovery.  I don't know if I will always have lingering clinical depression and anxiety, but I do know that the program and doing things in it that I never thought I could do has alleviated some of this.  Reach out just like you did here.  Find that sponsor and build a support network.  I am not judging you at all, I really feel for you and I just want you to know that I do know what it feels like to have panic attacks...to feel walls closing in...to want to rush home to the only safe place.  I have to fight that hard.  If you really attend more meetings you will hear many stories about people who came into the rooms and could not look others in the face for a year.  Some of your SAD is mixed up into alcoholism just like my issues.  I do feel you need to work the program for all of it to get better.  I swear that if you put the work in, in a year you will not be the same person who is ruled by anxiety.  Please don't take any of this offensively, only that I am identifying with you and you really aren't alone.  It does not help you to try and think of ways that you are different from your fellows in AA.  I have heard many many people share the same type of experience regarding social anxiety and how it did let up as they became open to the idea of change and hope and did some things that didn't feel good at the time, but made them better.  There is hope Glenns.  It will all get better.  Just don't drink.  As it was said to me...If you don't believe it, just believe that I do.  In support and caring,

Mark

Hmmm, I didnt think I had SAD, but when I look back, there were many, many times I was overcome with fear, frustration, intimidation and the like in social type settings when I was drinking.
So, I think I qualify to share my esh .....

What helped me to deal with this disorder ( whether Doctor diagnosed or not ) along with the depression and blues that come with alocholism is I stopped drinking and stayed open minded enough to listen to others who had overcome their problems.

As long as I kept telling myself that I wasnt good enough, or didnt have the skills , or the ability to get myself healthy, then I stayed sick.
My excuses to not do this or that, were just that, invalid excuses and I had been using them all my life to run from what I really needed . And what I really needed was change , one day at a time. Striving for progress, headed in the right direction. Telling myself I could do it, staying positive and asking God to help me change my atititude.

Attitude is everything for me. I gotta remember that CANT never did anything.

Jerry F wrote:

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Aloha Glenns. You can be
SAD and SOBER at the same time.  Make it your reality so that you can share it
with those coming up behind you.

(((((hugs)))))

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I at times have a strong sense that this is why Providence put me here on earth and made me this way: to overcome the drink problem thru the Spirit, then go on to help those like me. To share the Spirit--to the suffering alcoholic with SAD.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just crazy.

 

StPeteDean wrote:

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Hello Glenns,
and welcome to the board. I probably had S.A.D. although that term didn't exist 20 years ago when I got sober. I was definitely depressed, lacked social skills, and had been relying on alcohol from age 8, and drugs from age 10 to cope with trying to grow up with alcoholic parents and a mentally challenged brother. When I got clean and sober (also quit smoking at the same time while going through a divorce) at age 29, I had a horrible time adjusting to going to meetings. I just sat in the corner (like I did in school all those years), trembling with fear and sweating profusely hoping that the leader of the meeting didn't call on me.

The only thing that worked for me was making myself do the things that I was most afraid of, like continuing meetings (daily for the first 3.5 years), getting and using a sponsor (once again daily), introducing myself to at least 2 new people at meetings (daily), and calling at least 2 people daily. After awhile, as people in the meetings got to know me, my fears moved on. After all they were baseless and there power was deflated by proving them incorrect.

It would take a month for me to tell you about the benefits, gifts, and all around wonderful life that breaking through all of that fear has afforded me (besides my sobriety). But Just to name a few, having my own business for 19 years, which has afforded me ultimate freedom, and being very happily married for 12 years in a 16 year relationship to a wonderful woman is enough.

What I'm suggesting can't hurt you, and can do you a world of good. I've gotta ask what part of San Diego do you live in that meetings are a hour away? 

Here's a meeting schedule for San Diego County, which I know well.  lol

http://www.aasandiego.org/


-- Edited by StPeteDean on Monday 12th of October 2009 01:58:56 PM

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If you have spent years at Donovan, slammed 'dope' and have tattoos all over your body, I want nothing to do with you.

On the other hand, thanks for the meeting schedule, but I already have one that I always keep in my back pocket (not that I really need it, as I have most meetings in it memorisedd by now).

Many people at meetings I just can't talk to. They're ex-cons with a sociable disease: drug addiction. This is the disease where there is a strong network of 'friends' (so-called), used to lie, steal and cheat from the innocent public at-large.
Together, these pathetic souls brag about their guns, tatoos, women (usually with missing teeth) and conspire on their next crime. They usually share crystal meth recipies. They blame "the Man" for their problems. Not outright, of course (they'd get excorcised from the meeting right away), but inwardly, this distorted thinking always lurks. There is an utter absense of rigorous honesty with them in this regard.
You usually see them discreetly handing their court slips to the meeting Leader, which is the tell-tale sign.

The alcoholic is the philosophical and moral opposite. He respects. He gives (unless it's a liquid that contains alcohol), is glad to see the police take an unknown individual into custody (even if it's a fellow drunk caught for DUI!).
He had a profession, wife, children.

The above is just a rant, and nothing more. It is in no way directed at you. It is not intended to discredit anyone here (unless he is an anti-social drug-slamming convict, of course!). It's just that there are too many meetings with this kind of filth, and I'm frankly getting tired--if not exhausted--by them.

 

Yes, thank you Dean for your straightforward and simple honesty.  You said in your last post what I would have liked to say, but agonized over.

StPeteDean wrote:

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Glenn, I haven't the foggiest ideal what you're talking about. I've merely vacationed in San Diego a few times, outside of spending part of a summer living in Balboa part, and the better part of a year living in Hermosa Beach. I assure you that I don't have any tattoos, missing teeth, and never "slammed dope". Sounds like you went to a couple of NA meetings in a bad neighborhood. One things for sure, you've got your share of hangups. I hope that they don't keep you from getting sober. Your first post was a poster child for "Terminal uniqueness" and you've painted yourself quite nicely into a corner that you may not know how to get out of. This is very typical to "compare out" so that the alcoholic doesn't have to do the work to get sober.


-- Edited by StPeteDean on Monday 12th of October 2009 11:30:55 PM

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I don't know SPDean, from the time I have spent on this board, I think Glenn may have verbalized the mental image I had of you. 

 

I could have used more guns and women, but I guess that will work.

More cowbell.

StPeteDean wrote:

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turninggrey wrote:

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I don't know SPDean, from the time I have spent on this board, I think Glenn may have verbalized the mental image I had of you.

 

 

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yep that's me 

 

-- Edited by StPeteDean on Tuesday 13th of October 2009 06:11:06 PM

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Sorry bro but when I typed that reply I came back from one of those meetings with dude in that pic you showed and was a little despondent. It'd be nice if "closed" meetings really were "closed" meetings! All too often, the 'closed meeting' isn't observed, so we end up with the flotsam and jetsom floating in (with court slip in hand).

And no, StPeteDan, I was in no way referring to you in that previous post of mine (remember, I was just ranting), so I apologise if there was that misunderstanding.

 

Well, I have a litany of mental health problems, I went to county jails on misdemeanors time and time again, I have a few tattoos, I have "slammed dope" because trying it in the first place was a consequence I had as a direct result of alcoholism.

And I am now a college graduate, a nurse (surgical assistant), and a couple of years sober this November, after 10 years of falling down in the program. But I never gave up. I have found the stories of convicts who have gotten sober, some of my favorite, because the really had to humble themselves and often did really hard time in order to eventually be relieved of this horrible illness called alcoholism. Some of them help huge numbers of people to stay sober and ultimately ALIVE.

At AA Founder's Day every year, a bunch or Harley riders (with tattoos, piercings, some with a prison number) ride their bikes out to Dr. Bob's gravesight and cry while holding hands and singing "Amazing Grace". These are some of the finest people I have ever met, some with 20 and 30 years sobriety.

You should read some of the stories in the back of the Big Book. One is about a Doctor, who drank and "slammed dope". It has been in the Big Book for decades.

In order to stay sober, I needed to open my mind and stop worrying about everone else, and concentrate on me. Who I am I to judge another?

Joni