Shyness Link To Alcoholism By Paul Campbell Guest Post

Over the last year I have had the great fortune of meeting (via the Internet) many people who have changed their lives successfully after living for years with chronic alcoholism. They have hit rock bottom so to speak with regard to alcoholism but they have been able to pull themselves back and recreate a new life. One of these people is a man named Paul Campbell from Ireland. If you follow Recovery Princess then you will have seen some of my posts linking to his weekly articles for a website called TheIrishBookReview. I benefit greatly from reading these so I have provided the link so that you can check it out.

Paul Campbell is also the author of a book titled “I’ll Quit Tomorrow”. I am in the process of reviewing this book and I will be sharing it with you shortly.

I have been lucky enough to have an article written by Paul Campbell especially for Recovery Princess readers. I asked for the subject to be about social anxiety and shyness and alcoholism as this is a topic that I believe many alcoholics would be interested in learning more about.

Here is Paul Campbell’s article:

My personal and professional experience has led me to believe that alcoholics are born with the alcoholic gene.  It’s frequently (but not always) an inherited gene.  It is usually found floating around parents, aunts, uncles or grand parents.  The scary thing about the illness of alcoholism is its unpredictability.  Many of us can drink alcohol quite normally for many years only to discover suddenly out of the blue we have imperceptibly developed a strong dependence on the stuff, not alone that but in the process, its begun to cause serious problems for us and our family.  No two cases are the same. I have clients who recount how from their first drink at 14-16 years they knew they reacted to it differently than their friends. These folks developed a destructive relationship with booze very early on.  Quite often these people would develop a high tolerance to alcohol and subsequently need increasing amounts to recapture the” high/buzz” of past drinking.

Among others’ late- onset alcoholism’ is becoming very common – particularly with women.  Quite often it’s some form of trauma they experience e.g. divorce, bereavement etc.  This leads to what they think of as temporary dependence on drink to get them through it, but if they have the alcoholic gene it quickly bursts forth into full-blown alcohol dependence.  They will gradually realise they have developed a serious relationship with alcohol.  In a sense it becomes their best friend!

Where am I going with this?

OK let’s clarify it: We are either born with the alcoholic gene or we are not. How it manifests itself can vary from drinker to drinker.  This variable factor seems to take the shape of a series of triggers that can happen to us in life.  These triggers don’t turn us into alcoholics but they are frequently the factor that sets off and brings to life what may have been a dormant alcoholic gene.  For me the trigger was chronic shyness and low self-esteem.  I had been in boarding school from 9 -18 years.  When at 18 I was suddenly dumped in the outside world adult world I simply did not know how to cope.  The Oxford Dictionary defines shyness as, “difficult or uneasy in company; timid” – that was me! I left collage and went into the mad world of advertising.  I might have been shy but I discovered I was creative and I quickly became successful.  I could easily sell a marketing concept or TV commercial to a client but when it came to relaxed small talk I was useless.  The scariest things of all however were girls.  Lord, was I totally tongue tied around them.  But then suddenly (at 19 years of age) I discovered booze! It genuinely felt like a miracle cure.  Alcohol became my social lubricant.  I could relax, chat, and even dance with girls, (mind you very badly).  In business I took to using my expense account to wine and dine my clients.  I can look back now and see that I thought booze helped people to like me!  For many years alcohol was my crutch in life.  I drank on good news, I drank on bad news! I drank when the sun shone or when it rained.  Unknown to me, alcohol had taken control of my life.  For more than twenty years I was a functioning alcoholic but then and very quickly my entire life came crashing down.  Today I have rebuilt my life – it’s a good one and it’s one I don’t need the crutch of alcohol to enjoy.  I had to hit a catastrophic rock bottom.  My work now is to help others from hitting rock bottom.

If you identify with any of the above- do what I did – Ask for help – you can’t do it by yourself!

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Tags: chronic shyness and low self-esteem, full-blown alcohol dependence, high tolerance to alcohol, illness of alcoholism, SHYNESS LINK TO ALCHOLISM

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Get Sober. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.