I meant to write about this a while ago but never got around to it. One thing that worries me more than most about socialising with people is the fact that I don’t (and can’t at the moment) drink alcohol which makes me extremely unusual among people my age. I won’t go into too much detail why I don’t, but it involves several horrible experiences with someone very close to me which I never want to repeat again. I’ve never had a worse day in my life, it left me feeling depersonalised for a week afterwards and I never want to act the way they did. I also don’t want to become reliant on it if I find that it allows me to escape my anxiety around people.
Heading off to university usually involves getting seriously drunk for most people and I am worrying that I will be even more of an outcast because I really don’t want to do that. Partly because of the reasons above and partly because I’m afraid of losing control of myself, that is extremely scary to me. I’ve only been slightly drunk once before and I didn’t like it at all and have no desire to repeat that, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to because of my medication. I don’t know how to explain to people why I don’t drink, telling someone that usually results in the same reaction as saying that you like to torture kittens in your spare time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t look down on people for drinking and I’m not condescending about it at all, but people that have found out so far have had a lot of trouble with it.
I already feel very different from most people my age, I have hardly any life experience and most of the things that I like are considered “boring”. I can just imagine that I am going to be as shunned and made a figure of mockery by people again, just as I always have been.
The Social Phobic 