Hi Boston!
I have to ask you what made you afraid about "we are your friends now?"
At least for me, I can never have too many good, clean friends. That would be like having too much fun!!
What I'm saying is; Do you not have room in your life for new friends from NA? Because I've met some really great women in NA. One of them I called when I wanted to pick up today, and she really helped me. Hey, I'm a great friend to have, you might even meet me in NA!
I have other clean friends that aren't in NA. They are folks who never struggled with addiction. So they can't really help me with this recovery thing. I treasure them, too, but when I need help with recovery, I turn to my NA friends.
And to be honest, I had to let some using friends go. Friends who drank too much, I couldn't spend time with any more. I had to break up my 3-year-long romantic relationship in recovery, too, because he quit trying to stay sober. We got clean together, but he decided to go back and drink some more. So I left that alone. And as a result, I'm lonely and sometimes I'm scared that nobody will ever love me again.
I have the people from NA, and they love me when I can't yet love myself. If you don't need that, God bless you. If you think it's a cult, well, maybe it is. But whatever it is, it's working for me, and for some other addicts and alkies that I know. I hope that makes some sense, and you can see why I'm still working NA.
KJ