I had a friend, Bill, whom I'd been friends with 24 yrs and when drunk we occassionally were 'friends w/benefits'. The summer before I got sober I realized that in all the years I had not once spent time with him w/o drinking not one single time and he drank as much as I did, he used to email me and just say "want to get drunk tonight?" that's how he asked me out because that is what we did. The night I tried to kill myself which ended my drinking career I apparently even went to his home (I don't remember) and left him a note. He contacted me several days later while I was still in the hospital and I told him what I had done and that I had a hole in my liver, his response was something like "well liver heal themselves easily". After I got out of the hospital he wanted to get together, at first I told him I just wasn't ready to go out. He kept emailing me every couple of weeks asking if I wanted to go out, I finally sent him an email and told him that I could not have him in my life anymore, that I had realized that he and I had never spent time together w/o drinking and that there was no relationship w/o alcohol and I did not want anything to do with alcohol. He expressed hurt and that he thought we were more than "drinking buddies" but that is all we were. I also don't want reminders in my life of what a drunken sl*t I was I want positive reinforcement I want to move forward in life not back.