Dear Sars,

I am a 23-year-old former college student who has had a rough go of the last year and a half. In mid-2005, I was a strong student at a good university. I suffered from depression, but thought I had it under control. I didn’t. I stopped doing any work, stopped taking my pills, began drinking horrifying amounts, and failed out of college.

It was a hellish time, but I got a tremendous amount of support from family and friends and started climbing back. I’ve been seeing shrinks, taking pills, and maintaining my sobriety for thirteen months. I’ve started going to the gym, lost 45 pounds (I’m not John Basedow, but the word “morbid” no longer has a place in describing my weight), and have generally committed myself to self-improvement and getting my life back on track.

As a part of this, I am living in Florida (friends, family, et cetera are in Maine) as part of a year-long volunteer commitment to helping migrant teenagers. I have also joined AA (after a year of sobriety on my own) and begun to apply to colleges to get the ball rolling again. My life is going really well; I have a lot of things figured out that I never did before. The problems are social.

I am very extroverted. I consider myself fairly smart and very funny (don’t get me wrong, I have many areas I need to improve on). I love meeting new people and making friends. The volunteer program has been good for this, and so has AA. But the friends I have made there tend to be the kind of people I talk to about love, hope and the direction of my life. I have very few friends with whom I can talk about the NBA, movies, or women. In short, I want to talk about insignificant things. These conversations were easily had in the fraternity house or the barroom, and they are really important to me. I’m not afraid of going to bars and ordering tonic and lime, but the friends don’t seem to pile up the way they used to when I drank. I know full well that making a seventh friend is easy, but making a first is hard. And down here, I don’t have anybody. Do you have any ideas on ways I can find this level of friendship?

Second, with my new weight loss, I have spent a couple of times going out to bars and trying to start conversations with women. I am really confident in most social situations, but I can’t seem to do this. Part of it might be that the last time I tried connecting with a woman while sober was in 2001. I worry so much about seeming like a creep that I just sit in the corner (to quote Doug Stanhope: “Like the only reason I’m in a crowded dance club on ladies’ night is to watch sports bloopers with the sound turned off”) and probably seem even creepier.

Do you have any tips on either ways I can muster the courage to talk to girls in the bar scene or other scenes that might involve less anxiety?

Thanks,

P Version 2.0

Dear Two,

Congratulations on all your progress.Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you, in two parts.1) Talking to girls is going to involve anxiety; this cannot be avoided.2) The “bar scene” is no longer for you, and it’s time for you to leave it behind.

The first part of your question, about finding “buddies” instead of friends with whom you have nothing but meep-and-deaningfuls, is probably just a matter of giving the friends and acquaintances you already do have a chance to get to know that side of you.If they don’t share your interest in basketball, well, okay, but it’s possible they don’t even know that’s an interest of yours.Friendships take time to build; all the stories and parts of you that friends know take time to be learned.There’s no reason you can’t invite some of your existing circle over for pizza and to watch the game, because there’s no reason these different levels of relating can’t co-exist in the same friendship.

If that’s not working out for you, join a group or club based around activities you like.Speed-date, if only to meet new people.Have a party and make everyone you invite bring a friend.Participate in a pro-basketball bulletin board and see if any of the fans there do meet-ups.

But the bar thing is, I think, done.It’s not about your sobriety, although I suspect that, in terms of living sober, it’s maybe time to put that aside as something you just don’t do anymore — because what if you did approach a woman successfully and begin dating her?Presumably she drinks; she’s in a bar.How do you plan to manage that in a relationship?Not that you have to date a fellow recovering alcoholic, obviously, but this doesn’t strike me as the best target selection…and it wouldn’t even if you weren’t working the steps, because there’s nothing wrong with picking people up in bars, but of the couples in my circle of any standing, none of them met that way.They met at work, they met through friends, they met via Match.com.Again, I’m not saying it can’t work, but you’d probably do better meeting women in a setting that’s more about common interests than about drinking.

Chatting up people in whom you’re interested romantically is awkward; that’s just life.You’d probably feel a lot more at ease if the venue were a little more conducive — dinner at a friend’s house, an art class, whatever, but someplace where striking up a conversation with a stranger isn’t quite as inorganic and random.

In short, generally: give the friends you do have a chance to be more for you, and stop going to bars.

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