DELBERTM

I've found that now I no longer drink I seem to have lost many a friend,has anybody else found this?

Soberwolf

I know i found out who my real friends were in sobriety

Yes this happened to me too Del youl make sober friends that like you just for being you bud

tomsteve

Ohhhh, I'm thinkin one or 500 here have.
When I decided to get sober word got out rather quick to my old friends that I was getting sober. And wouldn't ya know it, only one of them stayed in contact. He got sober about a year after I did.
All the others? Welp, I learned my perception of " friends" was rather messed up and so was there. I hope they are all doing good but am ok with it today as I've made new friends along the journey- true friends at that. Solutions aren't," here, hit this and drink that beer."
And we have some serious, honest, LEGAL fun together.

gaffo

There is probably some tidy saying about this at AA but let me try and explain my own experience in a messy sort of way. I am now in my fourth year of sobriety after being a heavy drinker/alcoholic for 30 years. The vast majority of my friends were fellow drunks or at least very tolerant of drunken behavior at the time that I quit. I was the ring leader, using my natural talents for no good I suppose. When I quit it left a lot of people out in the cold. They needed my place to drink, they needed me to make it seem okay and cool, they needed to have someone to feel superior to "at least I don't drink like that guy". As a result I lost a few right away. As time went on, I booted a couple more out of my life. Once I had quit drinking I started to lose my tolerance for tedious drama queens and self pity parties. Once I was done with that "house cleaning" I still had a couple of good true friends who also happened to be alcoholics, they absolutely do exist. However, I don't associate with new drunk people anymore. Part of that is certainly because I don't really go where the drunks are. Bars and parties hold no interest for anymore. Drunk people are frequently "stuck" and I am not. I want to get up early and move around, I want to grab ahold of life and ride. This tends to drive drunk people crazy. So, I guess I don't really think that I've "lost" anyone anymore, I've just moved on in a good way. I hope that this helps you.

Like2Hike

Wow, Gaffo. I could have written word for word the same post. I'm sure there are others here with a similar story. During the first year I really struggled with a diminished social calendar and loss of "friends". But it has worked itself out now like so many other things that just need to be given time.