Hi bud, I hope you’re doing okay. Again firstly congratulations on one month without drinking that’s huge.
Now I’m no expert or professional but I’ve suffered with addiction for many years and have spent alot of time researching the science behind it and trying better to understand my and others actions so hopefully what I’m about to say will make some sort of sense….
Now reading your post, to me I don’t feel alcohol is the real problem.
When you was at uni and drinking you was young, when we are young we are easily impressionable. What I mean is, at the start you believed you enjoyed the drinking and partying because that’s what everyone else was doing. Towards the end when you started to feel like you didn’t enjoy that maybe was because you was maturing and you realised that you, within yourself do not get pleasure from going out on large groups drinking all night partying and that’s absolutely fine alot of people don’t enjoy that.
Then at a guess, you maybe didn’t find your enjoyment. Some people may find enjoyment from reading, or sports or what ever it may be. You knew you didn’t enjoy going out partying but unfortunately you hadn’t found that thing that brought fun / enjoyment into your life.
As a default, you remembered that you used to enjoy yourself drinking but not partying, so you began to drink, but without the social aspect of it.
Again nothing truly wrong with this.
What I feel you are lacking is enjoyment. Addiction is very closely linked to dopamine, the chemical that the brain releases to tell us we enjoy something. Alcohol and drugs trick our brain into releasing this chemical so we believe we are having a good time which is why addicts return to their substance.
I don’t know much about your life in terms of family partner etc but to me the friends you find exhausting to engage with may just be not the right friends, the topics they talk about may not be what you find interesting which is contributing to why you’re not so keen to engage with them.
I’d say it may be worth while thinking to yourself, “what are my actual interests?” What ever they may be, how silly that they might sound or how out of character they may be for you and take the plunge and explore them. It may be dancing, painting, chess absolutely anything but as a human being there will be something that you can find that you enjoy and when you pursue that thing your body will maybe for the first time in a long time produce natural dopamine.
Give yourself praise for the small things, the fact you was able to identify you wanted to stop drinking and have been able to do so is something you should be so proud of and that alone takes so much self control and strength. Use that strength to find what makes you “you” and hopefully the low opinion of yourself will with the right people around you start to change.
I’m a fan of you bro and I’ve never even met you just based on your post.
Come back to me if you want to chat bro and I hope that what I said isn’t offensive or anything just trying to help.
Have a good one bro and keep strong
James x