Hi Harry
I know what you mean about having to learn how to deal with life. But let me tell you, now that I am not drinking I learned that it is WAY better to actually get to the source of my problems than it is to just drink and try to forget them. And I'm SO much less anxious and stressed about everything now than I was when I was drinking. If I have a problem, I can't just have a couple drinks anymore... I have to actually solve the problem! And once it's solved, I feel so, so much better than I used to after just having a whole bunch of drinks over the course of an evening to try to drown the problem (and secretly still having it nagging at me.)
The book The Easy Way to Stop Drinking, by Allen Carr talks about this... I'm paraphrasing, but there is a chapter on using alcohol to relax and basically he says that in order for alcohol to relax you, you first have to be unrelaxed. Why don't you feel relaxed? You have to examine the reason for that and decide: are you hungry, tired, lonely, etc. And the truth is that alcohol solves NONE of those problems! It just numbs you so you forget about them. It's so much better to eat when you're hungry, rest when you're tired, call a friend if you're lonely, etc. If you're worried about something you deal with it head on instead of drinking and trying to forget about it.
I'm going on and on I know, but this has really been a revelation for me. I was a pent-up ball of stress for years, and now all of a sudden I'm not. I thought giving up alcohol would stress me out but it's actually been the opposite, in that it actually forced me to deal with my life. Give it a chance for a little while longer and you might find the same.