Llama, sorry you feel that way man.

I'd suggest you start doing stuff that you really are interested in. Get out of the house and get involved in something and meet people. It'll help a lot. So will working out because you'll start to feel strong and confident. It really makes a huge difference.
Well guys, it's the 8th day since I last took phenibut.

I'm proud of myself for finally jumping off because I've been tapering for a long time now and I kept meaning to jump off but would come up with reasons not to. I just find it unacceptable to be addicted to anything, I've been through opiates, and then ibogaine, and I learned a lot from that, but it's time to grab a little more control again... I had an observer moment over myself and realized my oversight of myself has been slowly slipping and I need to get it back. Fortunately, the withdrawal is really light, the effect I mostly notice is that I feel emotionally fragile, and more easily irritated by a good bit. Stress is harder to handle. Yesterday I went skinny dipping in a high mountain river with my girlfriend, actually we just did naked rock hopping with some really brief dips (that water is COLD) and just had the greatest time, not a care in the world, and then we ended up spending the rest of the day until late running errands... she was being super indecisive at REI (she is the most indecisive shopper ever), and hanging around stores for a long time with indecisive people who want to try every single floor model 2 or 3 times is a thing that has always made me feel irritated and slightly anxious. The manager kept coming up to us and we were in kind of a fancy shopping area in our swimsuits and all gritty from the river and I just felt like he wanted us to leave. Anyway I had a really hard time keeping it together, and got kind of agitated about the whole situation. Normally I would have just felt annoyed but kept my composure. Afterwards I apologized to her and explained to her that I had jumped off phenibut and was experiencing some withdrawals. She knew I took it but she doesn't try to follow my drug-taking patterns closely or anything so she wasn't aware I was experiencing that, and she was really sweet about it.
Anyway that's just an example of how it is... I experience random bouts of annoyance or anxiety, and things that make me feel overwhelmed make me feel more overwhelmed. But it's slowly getting better. I also am having a hard time sleeping. I've taken a little etizolam twice during this period because I was still awake after hours of trying to sleep, but I'm definitely not going to make any sort of habit of that. Anyway I'm pretty pleased by how easy it is compared to what I feared. If opiate withdrawal is a 10, then this is a 0.5. I have had no compulsion to take more at all, I'd like to because I like how it feels but I want more to be out of the cycle of needing to take it. Feels like I'm 70% of the way there. I even left my tub of phenibut sitting on my work desk until this morning when I noticed it.
I'm also starting to reduce the amount of alcohol I drink in a sitting. Gonna stop smoking cigarettes too but I'm waiting until I feel normal first. Fortunately I have no physical dependence on those things, but alcohol in particular I really like. I don't want to stop drinking, but I want to not drink every time I hang out with people or have band nights, and when I drink, I want it to be half as much as I do now. I dunno, maybe I'll get to where I just want to stop drinking, but I do definitely need to do it less.
To help facilitate these changes, I have started exercising again.

For the moment I'm doing some stuff at home like push-ups to get a baseline level of strength back... plus work is pretty busy and generally I go to the gym and take a long lunch, but that's not really ideal right now. Still, I've been struggling to find the motivation to get back on the path of fitness, but now that I've taken a step, it feels a lot easier.
