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I think it's been several years since I made a thread. Mostly I just make one-off selfish replies to people's threads that are more advice to myself than they are the person I'm supposedly trying to help.

I know there must be people like me, who have very little trust in others, who feel abandoned, who don't have a support network and in general aren't excited by the usual social activities. With those characteristics, it's hard for us to meet each other and find people with whom we relate. But there's probably lots of people like this.

I find when I search for advice, or I reach out, I always get it from someone on the other side of the fence, who has just never experienced that kind of isolation for long. There's a kind of irritation to reading lists of things to do when x where most of the options seem unavailable to me, or were written for someone with a different personality.

So I wonder how people like me end up dealing with it. Quick learners, logical thinkers who just aren't getting anything out of the culture they're trapped in, and cannot find people they connect with. Is it just a matter of eventually gaining a kind of self-acceptance, and not worrying so much about the disadvantages of being alone? Or is it really a human need to bond and connect, and until we do we're doomed to keep trying to solve our problems in the wrong way?

I guess you might want to know what any of this has to do with alcohol. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Alcohol was just one of those wrong ways to solve the problem. I don't need to tell you why, or ask you to imagine how sick it made me. All I can say is if the core problem is self-esteem, it didn't do an ounce of good for me. Once I could see that, it wasn't that hard to give up. But I'm still waiting on the philosophers in my head to figure out what the actual answer is, and although I am continuing to try, I'd rather not spend the next 5 years or few decades floundering.

It's so easy for me to give a positive sounding reply to someone else, but when it comes to my own frustrations, I feel like nothing I try has a lasting effect. It's really one of the hateful things about painting myself as logical or quick learning, but all I want to say is I think a lot, I study a lot, and I can't lie to myself, not to say that I'm especially intelligent. I check this forum to remind myself how dangerous alcohol is. Since it's not just an ineffective solution, but an addicting one. But still I don't know what to do about my core problems as a human being.

This is just self-reflection really. But I've replied here on and off over a few years, some people may recognise my handle, and I figure a tmi share session might help some other people on this forum who are like me, whoever they may be.