There were a few friends that I slummed with as a drunk. They had little to offer, other than they drank as much as I did. I just walked away without looking back. I did have some moderately drinking friends, and I noticed a slightly altered relationship with them, less time around them than before, and an awareness that I might have to leave if their drinking freaked me out. But those relationships are mostly in just a different phase. I still consider them friends, and I'm always happy to see them. Some moderately drinking friends were obviously not as moderate as I thought when I got sober. I don't know how I missed that before, but I don't see this group very often.
I never experienced any dramatic feeling of tearing myself away from old friends. In some cases, I was happy to let them go. The changed relationships seemed natural to me, and happened mostly on their own as I came out of the fog. While I did make some conscious decisions to see less of certain people, I never felt like I was sacrificing anything.
After a couple of years of trying to find a way to drink without consequence, I finally got to a point where all I wanted was to stop. So what some people view as sacrifice were not sacrifices to me at all. It was more like natural change, except for the cravings at the beginning. That was the hardest part. The rest of the changes, I let them happen on their own.