My story

Thank you for sharing Brian!

So many of us have anxiety - I think it is often a product of our culture, because people are not open about their emotions, and no care is given to emotional health in so many cases... Eventually habits develop which lead to dysfunction.

Of course I could never give you any diagnosis or real medical advice, but I wonder if the reason you feel like the anxiety around others comes from yourself is because you have something repressed that makes you uncomfortable when others remind you of it in small ways.... If you push them away, then you dont have to acknowledge it. That may or may not be the case for you, but I know I have had many similar types of problems that seemed to work that way....

I feel like for anxiety or depression, there are two routes of treatment.... One is to go deep into the repressed self to uncover it and find healing. This is the scariest but the most effective way. There are a few ways to do this: you can force yourself to stay in the company of others longer, and sit with your uncomfortable feelings to understand them more (you can even bring the feelings up with the person if you feel safe enough), meditation can help (especially deep meditation like vipassana), or energy work and even plant ceremonies can be very effective. I especially find plants effective for this, or even better yet, a combo of all those things.....

The second treatment path is to minimize the symptoms to make them easier to manage. Sometimes this leads to healing, and sometimes this just prolongs the issue without ever really getting into it. Antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds use this route. There are also some herbs that can help with this route, and some have been found more effective in studies then any of the pills the doctors push. For example, after multiple studies showing St. Johns Wort to be more effective then antidepressants, German doctors stopped prescribing pills and started giving clients herbs and found they had better results. Not everyone responds well to the same herbs, so it may not work for you, but this is one example: www.naturalnews.com/026557_herb_depression_research.html (for some reason though, USA doctors wont even tell clients there is a safer, cheaper and more effective route then pills). Other great herbs are Ashwaganda, maca and tumeric. 5HTP is also a supplement that helps some people. I think most if not all of these herbs are safe together, so you could potentially combine them (ask your doctor if they are safe with meds though, or ask if you can ween yourself off them if you like - I dont know if St. Johns Wort interacts well with meds but I think the others do fine).

And of course, you can combine both treatments.... Some psychedelics arent so safe with meds though - especially Ayahuasca is supposed to be dangerous with the pills and with St. Johns Wort (more dangerous with the pills). I think most other plants can actually be safe with the meds, but you might experience the effects differently....

There is also an option of microdosing. Microdosing psychedelics has been found to be extremely effective at helping anxiety or depression. This is almost an in-between type of treatment between the deep healing and the minimizing symptoms paths I mentioned above....

Please dont take any of this as me telling you what to do though.... I am just sharing some ideas you could look into. I always think it is best for people to find what is right for them, but of course we want to share ideas with each other!

You mentioned wanting to eventually get off the pills - is there a specific route that you have been thinking of?