Before you finish reading, you'll become the confident, engaging person you already are at parties. Show up without needing a line. Wake up without hating yourself.

You're getting ready for a party. That familiar dread starts creeping in. What if I'm boring? What if I have nothing to say? What if people think I'm weird?

So you do what works. A line before you go. And suddenly—confidence. You're talking to everyone, making jokes, feeling interesting. It works.

Except the next day, you're a vegetable on the couch. Can't do anything productive. Your partner's frustrated because you're useless. You lose the entire day.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice is calling you a loser.

If this sounds familiar, you're caught in something that feels like a solution but is actually making everything worse. Let me show you what's really happening.

What Nobody Tells You About Using Substances for Confidence

Here's a question worth sitting with: When you first started using socially, how much did you need to feel confident?

Probably a lot less than now.

That's not just tolerance in the simple sense. Something more significant is happening in your brain chemistry—and it explains why this "solution" is slowly becoming your biggest problem.

The Truth About Why Your Baseline Keeps Dropping

When you use cocaine, it floods your system with dopamine. That's what creates the confidence, the energy, the feeling of being interesting and engaged.

But your brain is designed to maintain balance. When it detects excess dopamine, it responds by reducing its own dopamine production and sensitivity.

Now here's what this means for you: When you're NOT using, your baseline drops. You feel worse. More anxious. More flat. More like you need something to feel normal.

Research on dopamine depletion shows that this isn't just withdrawal in the temporary sense—it's your brain adapting to expect artificial stimulation. The "vegetable" state after using isn't just a hangover you can push through. It's a predictable neurochemical crash from depleting your reward circuits.

So you started using because of social anxiety. But the cocaine itself is now making your baseline anxiety worse. Which makes you feel like you need it even more.

Do you see the trap?

You're not treating your anxiety. You're feeding it.

Each use digs the hole deeper. The thing you're using to fix the problem is the thing making the problem worse.

The Avoidance Mistake That's Hurting Your Real Confidence

But there's another mechanism working against you—one that's easier to see once I point it out.

Think about running. When you first started, could you go as far or as fast as you can now?

No. You built up to it over time. And how did you build that capacity?

By running. Even when it was hard. Especially when it was hard.

Now imagine if every time you were supposed to run, you took a taxi instead. What would happen to your running ability?

It would never improve. It might even get worse.

Social confidence works the same way.

Every time you use cocaine to get through a social situation, you're taking a taxi. You never learn that you can actually handle it without the drug. You never build the muscle.

Research shows that using substances to cope with social anxiety prevents the natural learning that happens when you face uncomfortable situations and discover you can handle them. The discomfort you're avoiding is the very thing that would build your capacity.

You're not failing to develop social confidence despite using. You're failing to develop it because you're using.

Why the 'Confident You' on Drugs Isn't Who You Think

Here's where most people get stuck. They think: "But the person I am on cocaine—funny, interesting, able to talk to anyone—that's not who I really am."

Let me push back on that.

When you're on cocaine, who's doing the talking?

You are.

Who's making the jokes?

You.

The cocaine isn't making you a different person. It's temporarily silencing the anxiety that blocks you from being yourself.

The funny, interesting person IS you. The anxiety is just putting a wall between you and others.

This changes everything. Because it means the goal isn't to become someone you're not. It's to lower that wall without needing to damage your brain chemistry to do it.

The social skills are already there. The personality is already there. What needs work isn't you—it's the anxiety response that's blocking access to who you already are.

The Biggest Self-Criticism Mistake (And Why It Backfires)

Now let's talk about that voice. The one calling you a loser. The one that attacks you hardest the day after using, when you're lying on the couch feeling pathetic.

"You said you'd stop. You're weak. You're pathetic."

That voice feels like it's trying to help. Like tough love. Like it's the part of you that wants to be better.

But notice what happens when it attacks you. What do you want to do?

Escape. Not feel it. And sometimes that's exactly when you reach for something else—cannabis, maybe—to quiet it down.

So the shame from using leads to more using to escape the shame.

This is what's called the shame spiral. Research shows it's one of the primary mechanisms that keeps people stuck in addictive patterns. Self-criticism doesn't motivate change—it creates pain that drives escape behavior.

The voice calling you a loser isn't helping you quit. It's part of what keeps you using.

You're Not Weak—This Started as Self-Medication

Here's something important: your social anxiety developed before the substance use. You didn't start using because you're an "addictive person." You started using because you found something that temporarily solved a real problem.

Studies consistently show that social anxiety typically develops before substance use begins. The drugs came as self-medication for something that was already causing real distress.

You had a real problem—anxiety that made social situations feel threatening. And you found a solution that worked in the short term. That's not weakness. That's human.

The issue is that your solution has side effects that make the original problem worse.

How to Address Both Problems at Once

If we only take away your coping mechanism without giving you another way to handle social situations, you'll either go back to using or start avoiding social situations entirely.

White-knuckling it—just trying harder not to use—rarely works long-term because it doesn't address why you were using in the first place.

What needs to happen is both: stopping the cocaine (which is actively making your anxiety worse) AND building genuine skills for managing social anxiety.

Clinical guidelines recognize that substance misuse in people with social anxiety is often an attempt to cope—and that treating the underlying anxiety is essential for lasting change.

The 7-10 PM Problem Nobody Talks About

Let's talk about the cannabis piece, because it's different from the social anxiety pattern.

Those evenings between 7 and 10 PM. Your partner's not there. Nothing on TV. You've done your run. You feel restless. Empty.

The cannabis fills that gap.

Then you eat too much. Wake up sluggish and guilty. And that feeds into everything else—you wanted to be fit and healthy, and instead you're stuffing your face with junk food while high.

Research shows that people who score high in boredom susceptibility are more likely to use cannabis as a coping mechanism. But here's the thing: using substances to avoid uncomfortable emotions prevents you from developing tolerance for those emotions.

The empty evening is the trigger. Boredom plus easy availability equals predictable use.

Part of the strategy isn't white-knuckling through boredom—it's structuring those evenings before the trigger hits.

You run. You play badminton. You enjoy cinema with your partner. These are things that align with being fit, healthy, and happy. They exist in the evening hours. Badminton clubs meet at night. Cinema trips can be planned.

The question isn't "can I resist?" It's "what can I put in that space that actually matches who I want to be?"

Your Behaviors Are Fighting Your Values—Here's the Cost

You said you want to be "fit, healthy, and happy."

Let's look at what you're actually doing:

• Losing entire days to cocaine recovery
• Three or four evenings a week numbed on cannabis
• Overeating while high and hating yourself for it
• Lying to your partner and damaging trust

Your behaviors are pointing one direction. Your values are pointing another. That creates internal friction—and more shame. Which drives more use.

Every time you use, you're actively working against the person you want to be.

This isn't about being perfect or never slipping up. It's about recognizing that the current pattern has a direction, and it's not toward fit, healthy, and happy.

4 Things You Can Do Starting Tonight

First: Map your triggers with specificity.

Large group events. Alcohol fatigue. Your partner's absence. The 7-10 PM window. These aren't random—they're predictable high-risk moments. Knowing them lets you prepare.

Second: Structure vulnerable times before the vulnerability hits.

Don't wait until you're bored at 7 PM to decide what to do. Have the badminton scheduled. Have the cinema planned. Have the alternative in place before the empty space appears.

Third: Recognize the shame spiral for what it is.

When that voice attacks you—"you're pathetic, you're weak"—notice it as a trigger for escape behavior, not helpful motivation. The voice isn't helping you quit. It's creating the pain you'll want to escape.

Studies show that self-compassion, not self-criticism, actually supports recovery. The internal voice saying you're a loser is part of the trap, not the way out.

Fourth: Understand that "forever" isn't the task.

The voice that promotes giving up wants you to think about never using again for the rest of your life. That feels impossible.

But you don't have to solve forever right now. You just have to solve today. And then tomorrow.

It's not "never use again." It's "don't use right now."

Can you do right now?

What This Opens Up

Once you understand what's actually been happening—the neurochemical trap, the shame spiral, the learning you've been preventing—the path forward becomes clearer.

The confident, interesting person you want to be isn't created by cocaine. That person already exists. The anxiety has been blocking access, and the cocaine has been keeping the anxiety locked in place.

Your brain's dopamine systems can normalize with sustained abstinence. The anxiety that feels unbearable has evidence-based treatments that work. The social skills you demonstrate on cocaine are yours—they just need to be accessible without the chemical.

The question now becomes: How do you actually build genuine social confidence without substances? What does that process look like in practice?

That's where the real work begins.

What's Next

How do I actually build genuine social confidence without substances? What does that process look like in practice?