Steven your fears are very common, I felt the same way.
1)I don't want anyone in my town to see or recognize me going because I feel like a slug even though I know I have nothing to be embarassed about
Have you or any one you know that is not in AA hang around outside of AA meetings checking to see who is going?
If you saw some one in a meeting you know would you go running around telling people "I saw John at an AA meeting last night"? Of course not, because if you did the first thing people would ask you is "Why were you there?". This is the very reason John will not go around telling people he saw you! I found an immediate bond with every person in my first meeting, we were all alcoholics working on recovery.
2)Seeing people a good deal older than me who messed up their lives with alcohol and now A.A. is the most important thing in their life will depress me greatly (I'm sorry if this sounds crass, stupid, boorish, or ignorant.. I'm just being honest)
LOL you have the same misconception I had about AA before I went, a bunch of old men drinking coffee and crying because they could not drink any more! Your conception of people in AA is so far from the truth if I had not felt the same way I would say you were being a bit daff.
In AA you will find the rich, the poor, & the middle class, you will find people who laugh easily, people with a twinkle in thier eyes. You will find people as young as 15 and as old as 95 and every thing inbetween.
You will find doctors, teachers, lawyers, judges, preachers, business people and business owners. You will find construction workers as well as skilled artisans.
In a nut shell if you walk through a crowded mall you could not tell an AA member from any one else. The vast majority of alcoholics are not the homeless unemployed. Alcoholism has no boundaries, if one is a human being they could be alcoholic.
I just noticed you are 35, there are some meetings in my area where you would be in the upper age range.
3)I get social phobia around groups of people
This will lessen and may totally dissappear if you start off going to small meetings and sitting in the back. I spent 5 years drinking every day alone in my garage, so going to meetings was not all that easy at first.
4)I worry they'll think I'm different because I never enjoyed the feeling of alcohol, I just wanted to not feel anything.
"I just wanted to not feel anything" is how I and many others wanted and got out of drinking. Yes there were some good times in the early years of my drinking, but in the end I like many others drank not to party or feel good, but to simply slip away from life.