Feeling good about making it 10 days so far without drinking. I feel more clear headed when I wake up and I can work out in the gym for a longer period of time. That's the good news.

The challenge I have now is that anxiety is showing me why I was drinking in the first place. I'm disassociating for hours at a time, which really sucks when it happens at work because I have to explain that I can't deliver what I promised for the day. I also had a flashback so it looks like PTSD is back. I need to remember how I did containment before. I'm in enough pain to commit suicide but I don't trust these thoughts. I'm still waiting for an improvement in depressive symptoms after quitting drinking. So far they are worse.

As far as I can tell, the main problem is that I have no sense of purpose. I'm not really good at anything, I have no healthy family connections unless the few aunts & uncles I see on Christmas count, and my career has been mediocre. I'm also inconsistent in my values, so attempts to connect to something larger than myself have yet to succeed.

Yet I can't seem to get any psychologist or psychiatrist (that I could afford) to take me seriously. Probably because I've been on this merry go round so many times I know the lingo well enough that they think I am trying to fake it or something. I guess I have to quit eating and lose 15% of my bodyweight before my suffering is clinically significant. In the meantime concentration is down and my intellect is the main advantage I have in the marketplace so although my career is okay I am well below the median for my graduating class. In other words by the time my symptoms are obvious enough for even a doctor to spot, I will no longer have insurance to even afford an HMO doctor. At that point I wonder why I am even bothering. My life is really pretty nice from external perspective but I can't enjoy it because I'm too bitter about the past and paranoid that things will go bad again. It's only faith that keeps me going right now.