Ponderings on sobriety, neurodivergence, mental health & wellbeing

Welcome to my blog where I share reflections, hacks, some psychoeducation and tools for you to tap into.

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Anxiety, Alcohol (Grey Area Drinking) Faye Lawrence Anxiety, Alcohol (Grey Area Drinking) Faye Lawrence

Social anxiety + alcohol. Partners in crime.

Social anxiety. It's the absolute pits. Despite being an extrovert, natural born show off and a people person I suffered with social anxiety for a looooonnnnggggg time. A paradox, right? Alcohol helped me take the edge off before (and during) socialising. I would always feel extremely anxious about meeting new people or being in big groups. Here’s what I did.

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Alcohol (Grey Area Drinking), Anxiety Faye Lawrence Alcohol (Grey Area Drinking), Anxiety Faye Lawrence

The fear of socialising without booze.

My next challenge when I got sober was, or so I thought at the time, reinventing myself or at least discovering who I was. I mean, who the hell was I without booze? I had no clue. I’d been a big boozer for three decades, my whole adult life. I didn’t know how to operate in the world without it. It was terrifying.

And, what was I going to do now, socially? Would I be a social pariah? I didn’t want to ditch my old friends as they were my mates, with or without booze. Would they ditch me though, now I could no longer come and party? If I’m honest I avoided non-drinkers like the plague, assumed they were beyond tedious and would never in a million years dream of dating one. And here I was, one of them. Ugh, these were massive concerns of mine.

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