Hi I would like to share where I am at right now. Outwardly, I am living my recovery. I am out meeting with friends and fellow members. I am keeping calm and trying to do the next right thing but inwardly I feel a bit numb with everything that is going on. I am walking on egg shells and I am a bit lost. Im not really sure what the next right thing is. I cant keep a conscious contact with my hp. I have this horrible feeling of impending doom. I am waiting for everything to tumble around me at any moment. I am scared of life right now. Thanks for listening.

I'm not a professional, but here goes:

My experiences with feeling numb and feeling how you feel right now related to PTSD and combat trauma, but I believe it's all kind of the same thing. Feeling "numb", as my therapist described it to me, comes from shutting off parts of yourself that are "feeling" stuff, and we do that instinctivly to avoid feeling whatever it is we don't want to feel.  My breakthrough in PTSD therapy came from confronting the stuff that made me shut myself off in the first place, re-feeling those ugly feelings in a safe environment (because those feelings were intense, let me tell you), sitting with them for a while, and then releasing them.  We get kind of blocked up, when we don't cope with things correctly; the normal progression of dealing with stuff is a) stuff happens, b) we react emotionally to stuff, c) these emotions hang around until they eventually disperse d) we move on.  

Now I don't know why you're in Al-anon; I would assume that you're recovering, but it may be a different situation.  I'll just assume that if you're in recovery, you were probably "using" in order to avoid coping with some thing, some ball of emotions that seemed to big and scary to cope with at the time, and the substance gave you the distance you thought you needed to function.  so instead of going from a) - > b) - > c) - > d), you got stuck.  Instead of allowing those emotions to run their course and then diffuse, they got balled up and stuffed somewhere, and that numbness you're feeling comes from having feelings stuffed away.  The sense of impending doom; boy have I felt that, before. For years, even.  That eventually everything was going to come crumbling down.  I think when we wall away parts of ourselves in order to convince ourselves that we've dealt with them and we're "fine now" , underneath it we know that we haven't really dealt with anything, and that any moment, just the right thing could smash that wall to bits and we'll be standing there with a flood of negative emotion that may very well drive us nuts. At least, that's how it felt to me. 

My advice, if any of this rings true (it may not and I may be way off) is to find a therapist and talk about this stuff; they're really good at finding ways of gently guiding you through these hard to deal with emotions, so that you feel strong and safe in allowing those things that scare you to come up.   It sounds like that while you're on the path to recovery, maybe you haven't actually faced the stuff that shut you off and made you turn to a substance in the first place, and you know it's all waiting there for you in the dark somewhere.  You gotta go down there and clean the closet out, man; take it from someone who's done it.  Whatevers down there, it's totally faceable, and once you face it, feel it, and let it pass (because it WILL pass, nothing stays around for ever unless we hold on to it) you'll feel the difference, I promise. 

It has been a day since you posted this, so it may no longer be relevant for yesterday. But whenever I feel this way I usually check HALT, and add another H for Hormones. Oh! And add an E for exercise! So HEALTH (hey I made my own cheesy acronym). I simply cannot think logically if I am hungry, or sleep deprived. Both of those lead to anger. I never feel lonely but I left that in there because others might. If I don't get any exercise, I go into a tailspin. Can you get some vigorous exercise in? It might clear out some debris. I hope you are feeling better!

el-cee, I have experienced this many times; sometimes for me, it was a resting period.  I used to worry about it, because, I got so used to believing that something was "wrong".  Perhaps it is a nice time to just be with what is and keep up your recovery work/play...maybe do something fun???  Peanut butter cups work well for me

My precious friend, hang on sister sledge.  We are all in this together.  You are never alone.  Know that when times and thoughts begin to overtake my well being...I am merely a phone call away from a friend in the program. Also I love that I can simply flip to the back of my Courage to Change book and literally look up what's going on with me and find instant feedback.  If it's fear, there is help.  If it's self care, I can read what others before me have done.  If it's pain, problems, lonliness ...it's all covered in this simple guide. I know you can do the Next best thing....and hon, that's all you have to concentrate on.  Trust me, this too shall pass.  Check out page 315.