Thank you for your responses and words of encouragement, Dan, Phil, Toni and GammyRose. They're greatly appreciated. ... For me, depression is the cause/root of my problem, alcohol abuse is one of the symptoms. This is NOT to say that the alcohol abuse doesn't need to be dealt with, as it does and is. At the moment, not only do I frequently go to AA meetings, but I'm also in an outpatient program with Bradford Health Services. In fact, as part of my program, I'm supposed to take part of a short story of mine and read it to the group at Bradford tonight. I'm such that I'm fine when relating with someone one-on-one but I'm not a "public" speaker and have problems relating to a group of people. As such, needless to say, I have mixed feelings about tonight and I'm rather nervous about it. It's a story that I started writing about 2 years ago and, while I personally like it, due to my problems with depression and my fear that it won't be successful if published, I haven't finished it. So, I'm supposed to read it tonight and, frankly, I just don't know if I can go through with it or not. ... Anyway, again, thank you soooooo much for the comments and thank you, Dan, for visiting my website. I hope you enjoyed it.