The only very close friend I had in the program smoked crack after 5 years of abstinence and died.
The others were aquaintances that I sometimes run into here and there and we catch up with chit chat. I have a close friend from treatment that lives about an hour from me and she visits regularly. We have so much fun together and talk alot about life in general, not "recovery" so to speak.
I met a lot of nice folks at double vowels. I would probably still enjoy the meetings, but since I speak from a different paradigm it's a little silly for me to say I'll never drink again and get the hairy eyeball for an hour; not real productive for anyone. There were lots of people I enjoyed listening to and thought they were quite wise about living life, but my aversion to dogma and talking heads ended up outweighing the positives. So there it was. In answer to your question....how you address it depends on how close your friendship is I suppose.