It sounds like you are using alcohol to run away from problems, things you are not addressing in your life. I don’t think the alcohol is the problem itself, only your way to cover it up. If you keep running away you will never fix it and it will keep coming back. If you don’t address it and you quit the alcohol you will use something else to run away, maybe something more subtle. The only way to deal with your problems is to face them head on, you can’t weasel around it and hope for a miracle outside of yourself.

Dear June:

The anxiety, guilt, second guessing, this kind of distress means there are things to pay attention to, things to be SEEN, heard, acknowledged, attended to. Until then, those… things will keep trying to get your attention. For as long as you do not attend to what needs to be attended to, the anxiety, guilt, second guessing, distress will continue AND your brain will take the breaks from that distress by having “happy days” and then back to the same old, same old.

When did this begin? Go back to when it started, however back it takes, and share here if you will. I will read attentively and respond.

anita

Dear June:

I don’t pay much attention to psychiatric diagnoses. Those are about clusters of symptoms and not about root causes. And then those diagnoses are marketed for financial reasons, for selling psychiatric drugs that fit certain diagnoses. There are more and more diagnoses all the time and some are “hot” at a particular time, often diagnosed because they are heavily marketed. A few years ago it was bi polar for adults and ADHD for children, I think for kids the hot diagnosis changed from ADHD to what is it called… autism, that’s it. So, I wouldn’t pay much attention to those artificial, heavily marketed, financially motivated psychiatric diagnoses and the drugs sold for each diagnosis. Look for the root causes, my post above, it you would like.

anita