I drank to escape my negative feelings of not being good enough, of being lonely, although ironically the drinking only exacerbated that, to escape the pain of PTSD, and most of all because I didn't like myself. Drinking for a while allowed me to be just comfortably numb - didn't have to feel. but in the end it was a vicious cycle, I kept drinking because I was so physically addicted to it, that I couldn't stop without medical intervention, and I hated myself for what I had become, so I drank some more to numb that feeling - rinse repeat.

Since I've been on my sober journey, I've done a lot of therapy and have gotten to a place where I can honestly say I like myself. Still working on learning to deal with negative emotions but I'm finding that AA and a DBT program I'm doing are helping a lot with that.

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