100 Days Sober :D Volunteer Work

I didn't understand the "introduce yourself" so I'll do that here.  Plus I'm feeling more positive than I was so at least it's not so depressing :)   With Asperger's and a rare nerve disorder (and the depression and anxiety that came with it) have made things difficult at times and I've given up many times and just drank alcohol to escape.  When I was in school I found out alcohol would make me be able to be social because without it I almost never talked and couldn't make eye contact (still very tough, I don't know why but it's almost painful mentally).  

I've been sober from alcohol 100 days and it's probably the best accomplishment I've done in years.  I never could go a month without it in the past.  I self medicated for years when prescriptions didn't work, and mixing the pills with alcohol was even worse.

But yea, 100 days is a pretty big deal for me.  I'm just now getting the confidence that I might be able to go the rest of my life without it.  

Many people can drink normally and I respect that and I'm fine if a friend drinks in front of me.  For some reason my brain just can't handle it well and I've lost friends in the past over it.  It's just really hard with the Asperger's and nerve pain when pills don't work.  I'm looking into natural medicine though now.  There seems to be thousands of leafs, herbs, roots, etc that people have used for centuries.  I'm hoping doctors soon will be trained more in natural medicine.  It's just that without being able to patent a plant, there's no investors that will fund research studies and we end up with some really weird and bad synthetic chemicals in prescriptions.  Anti-depressants really got me close to suicide.

It's fascinating to look at pictures like these and I'm trying to find more resources.  I really don't know what specific plants would be beneficial for my problems but I'm reading all I can.

I think the volunteer work I've been doing is helping me feel like I have more of a purpose.  It's like a Goodwill basically where people donate items and they re-sell them at very low prices and use that money to buy food to give away free to people who are having a hard time financially so at least they and their kids are eating well.  

It's good to be around people, I've been in this room for a few years rarely going anywhere.  At least this gives me some purpose and gets me some exercise and to be more social (very hard with Asperger's).

I know 100 days isn't a huge amount of time, but it's a lot to me.  I'm really trying to hold onto hope that I can get out of this hole I've been stuck in.  Everything bad seemed to happen at once and I gave up.  But I'm trying now to motivate myself to find purpose in helping others and to not focus on trying to fix myself.

I really appreciate the support here.  I hope I can figure out a way to make content that could help others in some way, or maybe try learning photography.  It's really exciting to feel like I could be productive and creative in any way.  Thanks for reading, I love the community and everyone has been so nice and helpful.  This is much better than Facebook!

-John