gregorsamesame

For those who've gone sober long-term -- how significantly did it change your social circles?

The thing I always find, whenever I'm trying to do a sober stint, is that there's always this ugly dawning of realisation that a lot of my friends aren't really friends, but drinking buddies.

While they'll generally be supportive of the fact I'm taking a break, activities still largely revolve around bars so naturally I just end up staying home a lot.

I suspect that someone opting for sobriety can make people uncomfortable: after all, if I drink as much as they do and have decided I have a problem on my hands, do they not have one too?

Note: I tend to do a couple of month-long stretches each year not drinking. There are times when I've drank reasonably heavily (average 7 drinks a night for weeks at a time) -- I live in an expat community and this behaviour is normalised.

Going full-time sober is something that I've been thinking about for over ten years. Moderation is a nice idea, but precedent would suggest it's maybe not on the cards for me.

tomsteve

For those who've gone sober long-term -- how significantly did it change your social circles?

greatly!! my friends now are true friends. no more drinking buddies.

PeacefulWater12

My social group changed completely.

The only drinker in my life now is my husband.

Dee74

Hi and welcome gregorsamesame

Like others have said, by the end of my drinking career, I surrounded myself with drinkers like me...drinking buddies.

Some of them supported my decision not to drink - most didn't.

I reconnected with a lot of old friends my drinking had pushed away, and I made new ones - people who only know me as a non drinker.

I have a small but awesome social circle now

RecklessEric

I don't go out very much to socialise these days.
I will meet a friend in a bar for a couple of hours, where he/they drink a few beers but the focus is on talking.
I still enjoy that.
I'm happy to go for a meal or to a gig. But I really like going home when it's time.
In the past I'd be out until the latest bar or club closed.

EliL

It changed completely, for me it had to! I went to AA for first few years and was really lucky to have a great sponsor who introduced me to everyone and we would go out fir a meal once a week and lots of coffees with other AA members (nb this doesn’t happen so much in UK, not sure where you are?). It took me years to finally follow the normal advice I had been given and that was to get a hobby where I would meet people, I used to go to the gym but never mingled so one day I went for a golf lesson and now after a year of joining a pretty cheap golf club know lots of people; we don’t go or meals away from the club nor coffees but do have coffees there and a bite to eat. I’m mid forties no way I would have played golf before then lol but there are other hobbies out there! A mate of mine joined a philosophy group?! They red an article then discuss once a week like a book club?! He likes it and he says he gets a socialising top up from that.

Point is in sobriety you have to take healthy risks and do things you swore you wouldn’t like the above, it’s what most people do to make friends and socialise, never knew that!

Big mistakes in sobriety IMO are to throw yourself into something like work, relationship, even hobby as you need balance. Anyways hope some of that helped.

ScottFromWI

I had to distance myself from the drinking crowd for certain, but quite honestly they are the minority when you really start looking at what people really do with their lives. I find that there are many more opportunities now than when I limited myself to activities where alcohol was consumed freely.

doggonecarl

In the final years of my drinking, I had no social circle. I drank at home. I had a girlfriend/then wife from whom I hid the amount of drinking I did. So my social circle, small as it is, grew when I quit.

Stayingsassy

I had a sinking feeling that I had friends I genuinely didn't like or respect, but I needed them so I could drink with them. Id always get weird feelings of regret after long nights spent hanging out with them because I didn't only lose the evening to cocktails and being wasted, i also lost myself further by letting those people in. Was thrilled to cut them loose after quitting drinking, with a really handy built-in and awesome excuse: "sorry, I'm in alcohol recovery and I no longer go to bars." Easiest way out of crappy friendships i could have ever come up with.

Berrybean

I remember that ugly dawning of realisation that a lot of my friends aren't really friends, but drinking buddies.

Also, the realisation that for the most part, I had no real interest, concern or love for those people myself either. I was a drinking buddy, not a friend, to them too.

There were a couple of exceptions for me, but I did find that it was completely up to me to make the effort in suggesting things to do or places to go that weren't our time-worn path in the friendship. Those people have stayed in touch and we sometimes meet up for food or coffee or a day out or similar. But to be honest they only account for a very small % of my old social circle.

I now have friends that give made at church. Unlikely ones some of them. One of them being a very elderly and frail gentleman who I very much enjoy visiting. A two hour visit flies past and feels like only half an hour in his company, despite him being almost twice my age and different gender and social background and experiences. I can't think of any of my old drinking circle i could have chatted like that to without alcohol to oil the wheels of the conversation.

I also attend AA, and enjoy the fellowship of the meetings. Over the first year I did form a few closer friendships there, and those ladies are like sisters to me now.

I also had some old friends from way, way back who had drifted off because they didn't share my drinking and excesses. I've been able to rekindle one of those friendships as well, not that I see much of her. Plus I'm closer to my mum and brother than ever before.

I suppose nowadays it's quality over quanitity. And that's okay because actually, I also quite like spending time alone now that I've regained my integrity and don't rattle around in my own fears and resentment every time I have down time. That took a while though, and plenty of work on my recovery.

Anyway. Take it a day at a time. Try to stay away from slipperplaces and slippery people. As the old saying goes, if you keep visiting the barber's in the end you'll get a haircut.

BB

August252015

Ditto! I had largely isolated by the end of my drinking, so this was a huge blessing of sobriety. I now have a group - it started very small and has grown greatly in my almost two years of sobriety- of people trying to live their own best lives, alcoholic or not, as my "circle." My closest friends and supporters (and vice versa) make up a small inner circle of this larger social realm.

I only give a seat at my table to people who are worth my time, attention and mutual support. Period. And my life is full.

MindfulMan

My "drinking buddies" were largely responsible for keeping me from total drunken isolation in the last few months of my illustrious drinking career, fully supported me in rehab, and have almost all graduated to normie-type drinking. They still drink a glass or two at parties when I'm there, but have asked if that's OK. As it's not a trigger for me, I've said fine.

I do not, however, attend the annual tiki drink party. For some reason hard liquor is far more of a trigger.

Akc

Same here! My social circle is now completely different but my husband still drinks, not that I expected him to stop because I did (well maybe I did??) he saw alcohol nearly destroy me. But I don’t go to bars and drink soda like I did in the start of my sobriety , I did it to keep friends but they were never my friends . It has taken a lot of time but I now have a very small circle and life is different but I’m happier and healthier.. being sober does not mean the end of having fun

Cosima11

I literally moved to a new state to get away from the social circles and downward spiral my life was in. And it still took 9 months and 3 attempts for sobriety to stick. I was under the delusion I could moderate my drinking if I changed other circumstances, which of course didn't work, and I pretty quickly burned bridges with the few sober people I had in my new location. At that point I could have easily found new drinking buddies but actually preferred to drink alone.. and then proceed to make horrifying drunk calls/texts. So it pretty much took being totally isolated and humiliated to realize how serious this had become..

It is sad because I did consider my drinking buddies genuine friends but I also think they liked knowing they could get trashed all the time but I would pretty much always out do them so their own issues looked small in comparison.