Originally Posted by
firstymer 
Welcome, eliza. Many of us drink to help feel less anxious. For me the irony is that the drinking ultimately leads to me waking up in the middle of the night feeling even MORE anxious, or waking up the following morning feeling sick, guilty and embarrassed. I still rely on the occasional Xanax, under a doctor's watchful eye, but my anxiety is 1/10th what it was when I was drinking. While drinking, I had the dry heaves almost every morning as I drove to work. Anyway, good luck. I am glad you are here with us.
Thank you! And I totally agree with you on those feelings, it's crazy how many times I'd tell myself I'm just gonna drink and not embarrass myself but it never worked out that way, I remember driving to work in the morning after a night of horrible decisions and I couldn't even communicate with my customers because my brain felt like it was shutting down, I ended up having a full on panic attack and having to leave without permission, I was a manager so I got in a ton of trouble but I honestly felt like my heart was going to explode.
Thank you to all of you, I'm so glad I found this app and it's really surprising to me how many of you have and are going through the same exact thing as I am, I always thought everyone else was capable of drinking socially and being the cool collective person and I was just this insane person. I still cringe at the thought of some of the foolish nights in my past so my first goal after the overall sobriety is to learn to move on from those mistakes and finally try to forgive myself. Any thoughts on how to go about that?