I've been a less severe of this for most of my life and most of the time don't really feel much of anything. It's kind of dissociative in a way where I realize people come, people go, people live, people die, almost to the point of callousness. Especially towards myself. Story: Recently grabbed a drink with a friend whom I have a bit of history with since moving out here. She explicitly called this out saying "You would be just as happy at home by yourself as you are here with me now". I couldn't tell her she was wrong, because she wasn't. Yaaaaay.The whole reason he did this is because sober him couldn't be vulnerable or show emotions at all. When he would get drunk enough he would be open and cry freely. He would talk about how he felt but if I tried to have the same conversation with him sober it was like I was talking to a different person. It was actually creepy since those moments when he would be open felt like seeing the real him but in the morning it would feel like he was some creepy robot thing.
I had a similar situation with him at one point. I had come back after a long time and we were going out for dinner which he wasn't excited at all for. He hated that he couldn't just be excited because he was to busy with all these worries in his head. I do the same thing to a lesser extent.
I have thought about this conversation a lot more since my last comment. One thing I concluded was, "You can cheat to pass the test, but at the cost of learning the material." Alcohol does allow a person an easy or fast way to resolve a situation, especially if a person's overly inhibited sober. (Anxiety, second-guessing, worrywarts, overthinkers.) I also thought that I think we mostly agree. I thought maybe we are describing flip sides of the same coin, and that maybe what we're saying is this: alcohol does offer an effective short-term fix to a lot of rough patches. But in the long-term it prevents good solutions and allows a person to avoid what they would do better to feel and learn how to handle.
I think where we disagree is just how we view that part of the process. It's tempting to see it as a negative that held us back. Like a short term fix that kept us from really progressing but I don't see it in a negative light. Like for my friend if it weren't for his drinking I don't think he would be where he is now which is in a great place. I could say the drinking held him back from being that person but I think it propelled him forward. It's common to look at every bad choice or wrong turn and see it negatively but those choices help shape us and put us on our path. The other day I realized it was very quiet and the baby gate was unlatched so my neice was probably sneaking off. When I went to get her she glared at me and as soon as I picked her up started wailing. In that moment she was becoming her own person, she knew she wanted to do something and was pushing back against authority that told her not to. We are always becoming our self, every minor thing or bad choice is a part of that process. To me it's a life long process that's in constant motion which nothing can hold us back from. Even if something feels like its holding us back it's really slowly shaping us and starting a fire that pushes us forward. This is a bit of a ramble but I think I got it down right, I just don't think growth is preventable.