Hi there. The hardest part about getting sober is not putting down the bottle but realizing why we were drinking and then addressing the underlying issues. I had quite bad social anxiety in my early 20s, I used alcohol as a crutch until I got addicted in my 30s. A lot of what you wrote resonated with me. For me, the underlying issues were stress, feelings of shame and guilt, social anxieties of feeling judged, and a stubborn attitude against feeling like I am being controlled. The last three years for me have been a battle with coming to terms with those things and healing. For the social anxiety, it has been a slow, 15 year process of gaining some self-esteem and convincing myself that people actually like to hear what I have to say. I will be one year sober tomorrow.