EmmyG

So my husband went to his first SMART Recovery meeting last night. He said it went well, in that he related to a lot of what the other said, and that they all were similar in that they had experienced negative consequences as a result of drinking/drugs. On the negative side, everyone there was about 20 years older than him, and are everyday-drinkers. He is a little different, because he doesn't really struggle daily, weekly, or even monthly. He drinks on rare social occasions, but when he does, it's bad, and it usually leads to bad things, such as the DUI he just got after not drinking for six months.

He has been expressing to me that he would really like to make sober friends. He was planning on joining a new soccer team (we recently moved back to LA), but he went to one practice and when he came home, he told me he doesn't think it's right for him, because the other guys are all single and were talking about the drinking/drugs they like to do on the weekends. I have been quietly wishing he would do this for years. The problem is, he's terrible at the Internet and "searching" for friends. He said he's looked on Meetup.com, but there isn't much there. I looked to, and there is one sober group but it shows the last couple of meets had only 1-2 attendees.

I would love for us to have a social network of people who don't center every event around alcohol. Now that I'm married to someone with alcohol issues, I notice how much everyone constantly brings up/pressures him to drink. I don't want to get too involved in helping him, but as he's genuinely asking me to help, I want to. He's from the UK, and every single friend from there is a huge drinker.

Should I stay out of this?

Florence

Could an otherwise healthy grown adult man do this by himself? Yep.

FireSprite

Ditto & ditto & ditto. Seems beyond codie to get involved. :codiepolice

EmmyG

You know what, nevermind. if I need negativity I have plenty of other places to find it.

CentralOhioDad

Emmy, I sorry you feel like people are being negative, and in a way I understand. Sometimes people are blunt, and truthful at the same time.

WHen I first got to SR I took some of the comments as being harsh. Later when I read them - and the more I learned about alcoholics - I found out that these people were not harsh, but truthful. Everyone is at a different spot in their journey of the road we call 'recovery'.

Sometimes we need a smack upside the head to say to ourselves, "Oh yeah, right!! What was I thinking?!?" That initial smack can sometimes hurt - and deeply.

99.999% of the folks on this site are supportive, caring, and hopeful. Please keep an open mind to all that is said, and maybe give it due consideration.

You did ask for advice, and it was given, delicately or not.

Now, if you want to find some friends for you BOTH to hang out with, then yes, get involved. But to just find friends for him? Yes, that's bordering on mothering - and even mothers shouldn't pick their child's friends.

Take what you want, and leave the rest. But please keep an open mind in the process.

Good Luck,
C-OH Dad

EmmyG

Thanks for that honest reply. I totally get you! It would be quite creepy if I actually went and tried to hand-pick friends for him...what we both would like is to meet some other couples. I don't want to find friends for him and be his mommy. I am just happy that he's taking some proactive steps. It's taken about five years for him to say he wants sober friends. In the past, he always said he didn't need that. So I feel good about this, and was actually excited to hear it coming from him.

All I'm thinking about doing is maybe sending him a couple of links to sites that he can check out, and maybe looking for couples w/kids that we can hang out with. I know I'm not the one with an alcohol problem, but I don't drink because I want to be supportive. I don't have a desire to go to social outings where everyone is getting tanked but us.

Thanks again!!

Seren

Hi Emmy!

I think it's great that your husband wants to find friends who don't center their social lives and get togethers around alcohol. Certainly you can encourage him and even find some new friends yourself with whom you can both spend time.

You might want to invite some new folks over to your house for a popcorn, movie and game night.

My stepson does not make friends easily either. Sadly, there is nothing I can do to make his friends for him, so we just encourage him to try new things that don't involve alcohol when he brings up the subject.

EmmyG

Yeah, it's hard. My husband is actually super-outgoing (more so than me lol). He tends to make friends very easily, unfortunately, they all drink. He likes to play soccer, and we've made some friends through that, but it's just hard when everyone drinks. It would be refreshing to do fun things without that element.

CentralOhioDad

Maybe church groups? Volunteer somewhere at a place he has a passion for - i.e., museum, animal shelters, etc.

Give him ideas, let him follow up. Just like we don't want to enable an alkie's drinking, we don't need to enable their recovery as well. He is a grown man, he speaks English, so there is not a language barrier - he CAN do this. And he needs to do this.

FireSprite

Sorry you took the response to be negative Emmy, really it's just honesty. I didn't mean it to sound judgemental & I apologize if it came across that way.

It seems extremely co-dependent TO ME to get involved in this. Building healthy, sober relationships is part of his recovery, no?

Recovering2

Are you involved in AlAnon? That's a good place to find people in sober relationships who get the struggle. I agree that church may be another place, if that's your belief system. If you're looking for sober couples, then I would do my part. If he's looking for sober friends, that's part of his journey in recovery

Florence

I'm sorry, I totally didn't mean to sound snippy. This is something someone said to me once, and it's become the litmus test for all the things I would otherwise jump in to do for him. For one thing it's made me realize just how much weight I was carrying that should have been his.

Finding the balance between supportive and enabling is, uh, difficult. To say the very least about it.

My AH (from whom I'm separated) struggled with this. All of his old friends were drinking buddies. He made some new contacts at AA but wouldn't go out with them socially (WHY? I have no idea. It killed me.) He did meet another young sober couple and we had dinner with them once. It was very pleasant and I really enjoyed their company. AH made no gestures to do it again. Our local AA group regularly schedules outings, parties, and even trips to local parks and whatnot to do together sober. My AH has never showed any interest, even when I did.

This ultimately, in my non-expert opinion anyway, became one of the major obstacles to his recovery. If he wasn't doing the "everything is great!" routine with people at work, he was a wallflower at AA, or isolating on the couch at home doing the "everything is great!" routine with me.

So that's the context I'm coming from. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, swim, cross the river, splash around, stop complaining, believing that the water doesn't like him, or like being around water at all. Give it a shot, but maintain realistic expectations.

choublak

I don't make friends easily and my social skills aren't great. It's something I have to work at. Nobody makes my friends for me nor do I want them to.

Is your husband going to find reasons he doesn't fit in with every single group he tries to hang out with?

LifeRecovery

Emmy-

The social aspect of drinking and being able to "make" friends was part of the fear my loved one had of leaving drinking behind.

This might be a muscle that is very weak for him if he is similar to my loved one...and the only way to strengthen it is for him to work it.

For me in my own recovery figuring out how to make friends (and only keep the ones I liked) was part of the healing journey for me). I don't know if I would have learned what I needed to if someone had "helped" me with it.