[Chazzz]

Hi Lauren.

Many people embrace the social liberation alcohol seems to bring, especially when you have low self esteem, it softens those experiences and brings your confidence up. Key thing to remember is that's all it's doing, it's still you in there, saying those things, doing that stuff just with a little push. Your drinking is a symptom to your larger self esteem issue, to kick the drinking you need to start looking at how you deal with the bigger issue at hand.

Alcohol notoriously destroys self confidence so you're going to find yourself in an up and down cycle as the two things work against each other.

Next time you feel like having a drink take a few minutes and consider why and what the alternative is. Keep a record of these thoughts and look for trends in triggers and alternative solutions. Avoid the situations that set of these feelings.

A few times a month take a blind leap at things that could distract you from drinking and bolster your self confidence, I'm sure people elsewhere in the forum could give you some decent ideas on how to best do this... Main thing that helped me build confidence was basically the knowledge is power notion. I found things I loved and I crafted away until I was a knowledge in the area. I then felt I could enter any social situation and have anything to passionately and exhaustively talk about. But that's one of a million things you could do.