That's a great story and I'm happy to hear of your enjoyment of the hobby. I've always been painfully shy but I had overcome some of it. Another hobby of mine is RC and I was able to seek out a club and go out to it's field and ended up joining. That was many years ago though and when I had my breakdown, it changed things to a whole new ballgame. For one thing, looking back, it's like I spent two years in a daze. They were trying to administer meds and I swear the Doc's just work by trial and error. I was functioning and carrying on with day to day life but I wasn't happy. I couldn't even go to church and be among a large crowd of people that I knew because of the social anxiety. I've gotten better about that but I still like to sort of sit in the back and stay to myself. My biggest source of unhappiness was that I felt my creativity had been robbed from me. I'm a very artistic and creative guy. I draw, write, paint, play music, you name it. I also have other hobbies besides rocketry that embody the creative element. RC has it and I'm a Model Railroader too. I've had an article published in that hobby.
Anyway, everything is as good or better than ever now except for the amplified shyness, social anxiety and really bad nerves in stressful situations. I'm now retired and my time is pretty much my own. My creativity has come back in droves. I was going like a house a fire on my train layout and I have ideas for a couple of articles with that. I've started a small backlog of low power kits, as mentioned, I've got an Estes Goblin sitting here ready to prime and there's an Alpha behind that before I get into the more adventurous stuff like my Nike X and Mercury Redstone. I also started a thread over in the Mid Power forum where I've been given more options on pursuing a Mega Der Red Maxx but now I'm seriously considering the Madcow Momba which I build and finish to display and give myself a motivational goal to aspire to launching someday. It's all good except for not really having a place to launch.