I wish I could yearn for social connection while sober.

You know that feeling of warmth you get when you’ve had a few beers and you’ve made a genuine connection with a friend? That feeling when you can almost feel your friendship ‘deepen’ a level. A feeling of kinship.

I’m an introverted person normally. The thought of a one on one meet up with a friend would normally give me a fair amount of social anxiety. Three is a crowd, and these kind of group meetups give me some respite from the constant thoughts running through my head. (I can ‘fade into the background’ if required.) But a group setting doesn’t provide that one on one deepening of a friendship I find.

But even when that one on one kind of meeting does happen, I don’t seem to strive for that deep conversation until I’ve had a drink. It’s all very surface level, and I seem to be fine that that. But when I drink, I suddenly ask questions which probe deeper.

Is it merely the inebriation? I feel like others that I know are ‘naturally’ at this level of emotion in day to day life. I feel like a drink brings me up from a negative state of emotion to baseline. Or perhaps that is just a dependence on alcohol which I need to nip in the bud in order to reset myself somehow. (But I have never felt this level of emotion in my whole life when sober. I just feel, in a word, grey.)

Anyone else have similar feelings?