Your last paragraph is so true. It's not like you're the first person I've heard from that said quitting the drinking and smoking and stuff would eventually solve my problems. "Eventually," is the key word there. I've never successfully quit long enough to see it happen. I'll quit for awhile, still be hating life, and then go back to it and I feel like it's a great escape. Then bad things start happening and I'm thinking I need to quit, and I do for what I think is a lot of time, and nothing gets better, and I go back to it.

I've got issues past alcohol and smoking, that I use the two to combat. My profile thing says a lot about it, but I'll say it here in case you didn't go read that. I have a lot of superficial things going for me, I'm smart, and I'm good looking enough that modeling companies have recruited me before. But all that's done is make me socially awkward. I feel like being a smart guy, I've had to dumb myself down to a lot of people because I don't want to be an elitist and act like people of lesser intelligence aren't worth my time. They are worth my time for the other things they have. Yet it makes me feel socially awkward sometimes to have to hold back from telling someone they're wrong. Or back in school when people would be complaining about a difficult test, it was an awkward situation for me because I knew I had pulled off an A as usual. As for the looks, that makes it easy to attract the wrong type of girl and I've actually only had two nice, stable relationships. The rest have been one night stands. I have less trouble getting sex than most people i know, but getting love is the hardest thing ever.

Wow, I'm writing an essay for you guys, thanks so much for listening. As for my weaknesses, I'm a bit shy at first, and kind of paranoid. So the sum of my strengths and weaknesses is social awkwardness. I can go a lot of places acting fake, but I've forgotten how to just calm down and be myself. Alcohol, smoking, marijuana, those things keep me calmed down, and make me more approachable as well as making me see other people as more approachable.

So, I'm depressed, I'm paranoid, and I'm lost. A lot of deep thoughts are involved in those three situations. Deep, terrible thoughts I go through every day. But when I go out and get trashed, I can't think that deeply. I can't even explain with words how terrible I feel on a day to day basis, nor can I explain how great I felt last night.