I have a severe case of anxiety. This is what my therapists and psychiatrists have diagnosed. I was self medicating with alcohol for years. Unfortunately, while the self medication works in the moment, it leads to a worsening cycle of more getting further depressed, which adds to the anxiety, and made me want to drink more.
This had spiraled out of control, emotionally. It was an emotional bottom and I didn’t see anything left except suicide or hospitalization. It took that for me to understand that I can’t drink.
I quit, but none of the professionals had warned me that losing the self medication would make the symptoms get worse before they got better. I would be surprised if this weren’t the case for you. If you’re drinking because of depression, it’s the norm that the depression will get worse before it gets better.
However, I couldn’t do anything about the PTSD until I wasn’t drinking and hadn’t been drinking for a while. It wasn’t pleasant at all. But there didn’t seem to be an alternative.
People have to get off the alcohol first to treat the comorbid condition. For me, it took letting go of worrying about the PTSD first. Simply concentrate on eliminating alcohol and avoiding it. Only then could I begin to work on anxiety.
All of that is deep stuff, but it doesn’t help you quit drinking. Eventually, you can learn how to deal it it, but that’s less of a priority.
Can you concentrate on your kids? Let the rest of the stuff go and work on being there for them.
There are a number of people on the board who have been in your shoes. Don’t hesitate to PM any of us. In the five plus years I’ve been sober, I’ve seen a number of people stop drinking and turn their lives around. People who were in as bad or worse shape than you or me.
I disagree (rather strongly, at that). Sobriety is more than just not drinking. Or should be.
It should be not drinking and cleaning up the messes you made while you were drinking. It should be having healthy relationships with those you love. It should be setting up a support system so that if you feel the urge to drink, you have a plan in place to deal with it. It should be living a better life than when you were drinking.
In A.A. they use the term dry drunk. Basically it is someone who isn’t drinking* but still behaves as though they were*. Dry drunks run into the same set of problems while sober that they did while drinking because the underlying behaviors really haven’t changed.
Drinking isn’t really the problem (besides the health aspects, of course) but rather the batshit insane stuff alcoholics do while drunk and the batshit stupid things alcoholics do to get the next drink that is the problem. Take away drinking and many times the batshit still remains.
A saying that I have heard in various meetings over the years is 'If you sober up a horse thief, what do you get? A sober horse thief.” The point being, of course, that getting sober is only one piece of the puzzle.
Most alcoholics have years of bad behavior and thinking patterns that are ingrained into their brains. It takes work to change those behaviors and thinking patterns. It also takes, imho, people outside of the alcoholics situation to call alcoholics on their bullshit. That might be a counselor, another recovering alcoholic, a priest, whatever. It also takes motivated work on the part of the alcoholic.
And, as TokyoBayer noted, there may be other conditions that need to be dealt with as well such as depression or PTSD.