Anxiety and depression. I don't recall if anxiety was a much discussed issue when I got sober, but depression certainly was. For a while in early sobriety I thought I suffered from depression, most of us did, but then I met someone with real depression and that was a game changer for me. What I was really suffering from was self pity and fear.
On an earleir attempt at getting sober, these bcame so crippling that I couldn't get out of bed or take care of myself. I had just turned 21 BTW. I returned to my old solution, alcohol, which gave immediate relief, before resuming the progressive down hill slide.
I think the main difference between self pity and fear, against anxiety and depression, was that there were no pills available for the former. When I realised my symptoms were the result of classic chronic alcoholism, and I took action by way of a program of recovery, the fear and anxiety left me. I learned a new way to live. I think my old way of relating to the world, the attitudes and ideas I had, were just about guaranteed to bring me a miserable existence, which is what they did.