“the fear of it keeps it alive”. Yeah that’s pretty relatable. The fear/nervousness always makes it much worse. Whenever I forget I stutter I can be almost completely fluent. My situation is probably not the same as yours since I have been stuttering since I was 5, but I also started stuttering one day out of the blue. I also have no one in my family with a stutter. It feels weird for me to see videos of me from before that age talking completely fluently. I don’t think it was caused by the drugs, as they tend to not be correlated to stuttering. My stutter completely vanishes when I’m on amphetamines (adderall), but it increases for other people. And I’ve heard similar things about downers too, like weed or alcohol. I highly recommend you see a speech specialist. I’ve been going to one for 4 years and it really does help. A great analogy is that your speech is a broken car, and speech therapy gives you the tools and knowledge to fix the car. I wouldn’t worry that seeing a speech specialist will make you think about stuttering more and therefore make it worse. At least for me, my stuttering has improved greatly since seeing one because I know what to do when I’m about to stutter. This gives me confidence about my speech, which greatly reduces the fear of stuttering. Unfortunately, trying to forget about it is not a sustainable way to manage it. It’ll creep up on you at the worst of times, like when you’re about to order food or give a presentation. And without seeing a speech specialist, you won’t be able to handle it properly when it does happen.