SOCIAL ANXIETY ALCOHOL AND YOU

I have to accept that I shouldn't be drinking at all for a bunch of reasons. Its taking me awhile to get the resolve to stick to it but Im trying. Also helps that Im not in my 20s anymore and my social life doesnt revolve around getting shitfaced. =\

social anxiety + alcohol = disappearance of social anxiety, beginning of too-loud laughter and indiscriminately hitting on everyone. not sure that it's an improvement....

Haw, this is me to a T.

have not had a drink in about half a year (though i'll occasionally have a small sip or two in social situations to put drinkers at ease).

one of the main reasons i quit was that i've been drinking to ease MASSIVE, CRIPPLING social anxiety for basically my entire adult life. and i eventually just got tired of it. i find now that i'm surprisingly comfortable out and about without it - even at parties where i don't know many people.

other reason, of course, was that i was starting to regularly down at least 3 or 4 drinks a day - 8-10 (or more) when i was making a night of it. and i'm getting old, and my neurons are burning out fast enough as it is, and it costs a ton of money, and i'd like to just be me for a while, instead of me plus or me minus or whatever.

i recommend it.

So I've found that the (probably inadvisable) combination of Ativan and a minimum of two pints of beer makes it possible for me to be around people without wanting to scream and hide. Which is not a terribly helpful realization, since it's not like I could go spend all day every day completely hammered, and it comes distressingly late in life after the cycle of social anxiety/depression/failure/more anxiety managed to totally fuck up years 12-27, but it's a start. I have another book club meeting tomorrow night, and this time I think I'll try adjusting the ratio of pills to booze and see where that gets me.

...or not. Hooray for 12-hour workdays and flu-shot hangover!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317

that is an excellent article!

or at least, you know, it reaffirms something i kind of already think, but more authoritatively, which makes it seem excellent to me

yeah, definitely, and the same kind of goes for a lot of demonised things - football culture, recreational drugs etc. People often turn into football louts and wake'n'bake stoners because that's what they believe the culture expects of them etc. Whereas you can follow football/smoke pot every day if you treat it as just that, without beating people up or wearing clip-on-dreadlocks etc...

yeah, but that'd be missing the whole point......

the phrase 'functioning football hooligan' is now bouncing around in my head.

dont know if i agree with that article but its interesting nevertheless

pretty sure alcohol has some effects on me that are not culturally conditioned

in mediterranean countries when you drink alcohol you never have to pee

not having a fucking clue where you've been for several hours is part of the British mentality

it's almost as if Kate Fox of the Social Issues Research Centre has exaggerated and misinterpreted something with an element of truth in it in order to make an exciting story

nor, indeed, a clue who you've been fucking

It's almost as if Noodle Vague has exaggerated and misinterpreted this news story in order to make an exciting post

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules.

I AM DRINKING BEER BEFORE I SEE HIPPIE BABE
― MATH BLASTER MYSTERY! (ex machina), Thursday, September 9, 2004 8:13 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules.

"selectively"

I have broken specific social rules while on alcohol because my cognitive abilities do not react in time to catch me from doing/saying stupid-ass shit

"firing a machine gun into a crowd kills random strangers but it does not cause us selectively to shoot our boss"

That is true, social and cultural factors are what cause us to shoot our bosses. idg yr point tbh.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.

she is making "determined by" do a lot more work than it shd in this sentence is all i'm saying

there are social and cultural factors at play in the behaviour of people who've consumed alcohol. who has ever asserted that this isn't the case? when some Daily Mail hack gets all weepy about "Binge Britain" he quite deliberately isn't referring to MPs caning it into the small hours in House of Commons bars or senile old gits wacked out of their gourds on claret at Boodles or indeed pissed up hacks.

so she's saying that something most people have never claimed is false, is true. sterling work.

The drinkaware website, for example, warns young people that a mere three pints of beer (ie a perfectly normal evening out) "can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour"

is this blaming social and cultural factors, or the booze? where are campaigns to e.g. reduce happy hour promotions focussing their efforts?

max gladwell had a piece on this sort of thing a while ago

they are blaming alcohol because that is also a contributing cause to those behaviours.

Fox might well have a nuanced view about the either/or effects of social structures and biochemistry on human behaviour, but this article is an attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of social structure and i find it unconvincing.

clearly tho nobody from mediterranean Europe has been pissed and rowdy ever

The drinkaware website, for example, warns young people that a mere three pints of beer (ie a perfectly normal evening out) "can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour"

is this blaming social and cultural factors, or the booze? where are campaigns to e.g. reduce happy hour promotions focussing their efforts?

― antiautodefenestrationism (ledge), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 16:16 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

It's manifold really. Among the reasons stated by the anti-cheap booze brigade are:

a - campaigning to promote better health through drinks curbing
b - against people going apeshit and throwing up everywhere on a Saturday night
c - (slightly more obscure) - wish to promote the dying pub trade by acting against cheap booze from off licences and supermarkets. Good in theory, but they have to make pubs good again for it to work.

i shd stop expecting philosophical caution and temperate language in opinion pieces tbh

this reads like an onion article

you read like an onion article.

Fox might well have a nuanced view about the either/or effects of social structures and biochemistry on human behaviour, but this article is an attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of social structure and i find it unconvincing

I think this is a real straw-man reading of the article, she pretty clearly states she's not trying to explain "all" behaviour like that. If I have a complaint it's that her analysis of the social/cultural factors is too simplistic, and changing the perception of alcohol alone probably won't have the effect she would like. But it might be worth a try.

that is the burden of being area woman

she's not "wrong" but basically in re: public perception of alcohol in the usa and uk, well that horse left the barn quite some time ago.

that is the burden of being area woman

― Art Arfons (La Lechera), Wednesday, 12 October 2011 16:34 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

;-)

she's not "wrong" but basically in re: public perception of alcohol in the usa and uk, well that horse left the barn quite some time ago.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 16:36 (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

how so? we get "binge britain" stories in the papers every week (with the same fucking stock photos) - how is that not a popular and warped perception of alcohol?

no what i mean is i'm not really sure much can be done about it at this point.

i thought i saw the horse headin out alright but that was about tennish and tbph i was already fuckin scattered

Alcohol, I hate you, I love you, I can't go on living with you and I can't live without you. (in a socially acceptable way)

i've a cosy non-dependent relationship with alcohol, for an irishman

So someone on FB pointed out that apparently, as some people here might have predicted, this lady is a lobbyist and may well have an agenda. I feel weird for wanting to agree with her now, even though I do on the whole.

I feel alcohol to be a better social lube while weed is more for solo ops or friendly fire

COVID lockdown as a supercharger of social anxiety

the advent of additional social rules wrt pandemic behavior and stuff has been not great for social anxiety

Zoom meetings have actually helped my social anxiety a lot. Being asked to speak in a staff meeting used to turn me red with embarrassment and stammering. I've been contributing a lot more in zoom meetings, taking the lead in some discussions, etc.

Socializing with people in person is still mostly a complete disaster for me. I always used to reach for booze in an attempt to get over it, but it never worked. My experience in my 20s was that I'd just keep drinking in the hopes that I'd get over the anxiety hump, but I'd never really lose any inhibition until maybe 10 minutes before I needed to find a bathroom floor to pass out on.

So has getting older helped at all?

I somehow have developed into a decent public speaker. I credit all the sports talk/baseball games radio I listen to teaching me about pacing and filler words and how to pause without totally freaking out... idk maybe getting older is a part of it? Glad to hear it’s gotten better for you too, peace, man

I usually can't decide if its more social anxiety or just social aversion for me. Is there a difference?

I’ve had to do a ton more public speaking and presenting in the last year and I feel it’s definitely a skill that you can improve at just by practicing and doing it over and over.

Zoom meetings have actually helped my social anxiety a lot. Being asked to speak in a staff meeting used to turn me red with embarrassment and stammering. I've been contributing a lot more in zoom meetings, taking the lead in some discussions, etc.

a lot of in-person anxiety results from felt inadequacy in the body,

Interesting thought!

So has getting older helped at all?

Not much. I'm better at socializing sometimes, but mostly not. Social situations for me these days are rare and pretty much amount to talking to other kids' parents.

I mean, I don't fall asleep on the bathroom floor anymore.

I never use alcohol for social anxiety but seeing as how everyone else seems to I think maybe I should. It is the big legal sedative everyone uses all the time yet does not seem to see as similar to other powerful drugs

less fun, worse withdrawal. if you're not dependent on it yet keep it that way

the social lubricant thing has always had disappointing results for me- there's less anxiety but i'm still unable to participate in a normal conversation. combining it w (prescription) amphetamines is the only way to get me to talk & then the alcohol is more or less beside the point. wouldn't need any of that shit if i could actually relate to more than like 5 ppl who are never in the same room/city/country (so much of what i thought was lifelong social anxiety is just being surrounded by ppl i can't trust w anything i care about)

zoom is even worse than irl for me but if i'd been using it all year i might feel differently

maybe sugar is the true social ubricant

Yeast. A spoonful of marmite would do the job.

Ice cream works as a social lubricant imo

we're talking about ubricants, not lubricants

"Lubricate My Life"