# How i got over my Social anxiety



## Porterdog (Sep 17, 2010)

Hey guys. So i was sitting here having breakfast and i remembered this forum, and specifically how i'd never see anyone who conquered SA posting here, mostly because they were out living there lives. Heres my transition from severe SA and depression to a normal (emotion-wise), happy guy. I will try keep it short and concise. I posted on here alot from 2010 till 2013

So, as a kid i was always shy. When my parents divorced this transformed into social mute-ness. I would only grunt at people to acknowledge their existence when they talked to me. There were some periods where my home and school life were going well where i was relatively well adjusted but for the most part i was an outcast.

Fastrack 2010; i had progressively been getting less and less sleep because of a computer game addiction. I think i had been awake for two days straight when i suddenly just stopped having an interest in the games, and in everything really. It was very strange. So for some reason i decided i would try get fit, break out into the world, and work on my social skills. Looking back that was the day i started my 4 year transition into normality. It came with pretty severe depression though, as i was facing the problems i had formerly hidden away.

Over the four years, i was one of your average medication-forum pharmacologists type. I would spend hours upon hours researching medications and pharmacology trying to frantically find that one medication, or combination that would fix me (I never found it).
Some worked in the short term, but proved useless and even more harming in the long term. I was never able to do counseling, i just found it useless.
Looking back, i actually gave up alot of opportunities to get better because i was so stubborn and convinced that there was some magical pill that evil psychiatrists and doctors had been keeping away from me to support their agenda.
I had a bit of success with psychedelic drugs for a couple of months, but found these are fake nirvana. They dont bring happiness in the long run. although i absolutely love them and still occassionally do them, this quote by hunter s thompson sums up what im trying to get across really well -


> *That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel." *


So in 2013 i had tried every type of medication that i had wanted to try. My last medication was parnate, which worked, but made me impulsive and slightly paranoid. The impulsivity caused me to use a lot of drugs, including the MAOI and PEA combo which i look back on in disgust and would never recommend to anyone. After quite a few OD's and being so tired of being tired, i booked myself into a psychiatric hospital.

I was at the end of my rope, and after trying all these novel drugs to no avail, it was either get better at hospital or die. So i FULLY tried the two things that i had previously hated and thought were farces; SSRIs and CBT. Specifically Luvox (Had previously tried Citalopram and zoloft). And they worked. Although i had made lots of big steps in the previous four years, improved my social skills, faced fears and what not, this hospital visit put all of the pieces together. It has been a year since i left hospital im still on luvox, which i am going to continue weaning off when life gets less stressful. Apart from that i am a normal well adjusted young adult. I have made at least 30 new (good) friends this year, i have improved a ton on my hobbies. And i am about to finish my first semester of uni, which i put my all into (I failed all my subjects in high school because i never applied myself).

TL;DR: I know giving advice is pointless; most of the time the only way to learn is to make your own mistakes. But a couple of realisations i made along the way are:
Try and look at yourself and your situation from an objective view. Sometimes its not the system thats failing you but you thats holding yourself back. It certainly was for me, if someone had of told me to wake up to myself back then and i had listened (Which i wouldn't have) i would owe them 4 years of my life.
When your comfortable, you dont want to move. I mean for me, it took me to be at complete and utter rock bottom to finally start moving up (You've heard that before). Thats the most annoying thing about these disorders. You may want to change, but your brain doesn't. Theres no tip for this, although my opinion is, paradoxically, your biggest enemy is your comfort zone.
Try go to Alcoholics anonymous, even if your not an addict. me, and all my non-addict friends at the hospital found it helped out immensely. It isn't religious, but agnostic. It pretty much takes the good aspect from religion, and combines it with group therapy and helpful/motivating advice from other people.
Hope this is food for thought.


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## Farideh (Nov 13, 2011)

I'm actually interested in your breakfast. What did you eat for breakfast?


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## Porterdog (Sep 17, 2010)

Farideh said:


> I'm actually interested in your breakfast. What did you eat for breakfast?


Oats, wheat bran and a bit of brown sugar. It wasn't a very tasty breakfast i'll tell you that much


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## ramblinrose (Apr 5, 2011)

Thank you for the insight, I love reading the success stories. I especially like the line about how a person's biggest enemy is his comfort zone. I generally don't like to take risks if I believe it's going to end in failure. A depressed mental outlook doesn't help. I had the opportunity to go to a job fair today and wound up staying at home with a million excuses as to why I didn't go (I didn't prepare adequately to speak with recruiters, I didn't have my resume printed on special resume paper, ect.). Now I feel like crap for not going and just giving it a chance. It's so important to motivate ourselves to get out of our comfort zone, and if we "fail" to realize that it's not the end of the world.


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