Amin747

I relapsed, of course....
after finishing my last exam, a bunch of friends insisted on having a drink, and without even thinking or realizing it, i find myself with a bottle of black label, some jazz music, and completely drunk at 2:00 am.
woke up with the worst headache, completely messed up, and of course with heavy feeling of disgust and guilt.
One question kept circling my head, should i stay away from my friends to stay sober or should i just deal with it?
maaaan what a though choice!
what do you think guys ?

August252015

I'm sorry you relapsed. Pretty common situation - it is a hard concept for many of us to grasp, that yep you need to change things up in your social life.

IME - not drinking has to be the absolute priority. ANY and ALL socializing and friends and "situations" don't happen by accident - but by choice - and the choice best for most of us is not spending time with drinkers....eventually, most of us either find we don't want to hang out with old friends (maybe drinking was actually the only thing we had in common?) or we can, and it's fine to be sober regardless of others.

It's up to you - what are you willing to do to get and stay sober? That's a simple choice, not always easy, but IME with the friend thing and everything else, the results are far better in sobriety than they were while I was drinking.

D122y

Amin,

I don't have any really close friends. Once I got married, a kid, and a dog, I had enough companions to survive.

I am pretty sure the company line is stay away from your drinking buddies.

I have never been a company man like that.

After i quit drinking, I still always went to functions, like yours, and celebrated.....

.....without booze.....

It was enlightening.

It was hard at first, but then it was empowering. It is especially awesome waking up the next day and having a normal amount of mental and physical power.

It is the greatest feeling in the world.

I love going into work Monday morning and being stone cold sober. I see a few red eyed and weak folks. Usually about 10%.

10% is about the amount of folks that end up always drinking to black out. Many others manage to moderate successfully most of the time.

I was pretty good at moderating most of the time, but once in a while I would get destroyed. That was part of why I had to quit.

Thanks.

Dee74

I chose my friends over sobriety for a long time, Amin.
By the end of my drinking my 'friends' were really only drinking buddies - the only real connection we had was alcohol and drugs.

Be smarter than me. You don't want to lose twenty years of your life to addiction like I did.

Your real friends will support the things that are good for you - like sobriety.

D

MantaLady

I agree with August. If you can’t trust yourself to be with friends when they are drinking or to go to a bar etc then sobriety must come first and for a while it’s best to steer well clear. Good friends will understand and still be there to welcome you with open arms when you are ready to comeback. Drinking buddies and people that aren’t your real friends anyway will just move on. At least you will find out who is worth keeping in your life.

I went out for my first proper night out last Friday after 8 months and I am so glad I waited and felt strong in my sobriety before doing so. I had a few cravings on the way to the club but after I got there they disappeared and I had a great night. I found people who I used to spend time with that were drunk just didn’t interest me anymore, repeating themselves, talking absolute rubbish and to be honest boring the pants off me. I did my own thing, had a great night and woke up happy, fresh and remembering every wonderful second. Waking up sober and not hungover never gets old. xx

WhoDeyPI

If they don't support your sobriety, you'll need to cut them out of the picture. I've been able to keep my friends. They still drink, I still go out with them while they drink, but they fully support what I'm doing. They don't even "assume" that I'll volunteer to be a DD, which is nice. They have actually cut down drinking as well, and we do other activities that don't center around getting drunk.

ChloeRose63

You can have friends.
But, you cannot be friends with the bottle because the bottle is not your friend!!!
It takes time to convince yourself of that fact!

thomas11

I completely agree with many of the responses. Your social circle is going to change. But how important is sobriety to you? If it truly is the top priority, we are willing to do anything to get, and stay, sober.

Evoo

Amin,

I learned later in life that some relationships were built on alcohol. And some friend groups really only came together for the purpose of drinking -- and drinking to excess.

But your most meaningful relationships will weather through without alcohol. You real friends don't go anywhere.

You may lose *some* friends. But I can tell you this, when I was in the throws of my addiction I was always egging people on to drink with me, because sobriety put a scary mirror on my own addiction. Someone even "cutting back" would've seemed threatening to me.

Don't take it personally.

Remember -- alcohol is a form of self-sabotage. It will compete with your energy, your ambition, your memory, your meaningful relationships and your success.

You just may find you really like the person you are without alcohol, and forge relationships that will stand the test of time without it.

Keep coming back .

CupofJoe

Are these friends or drinking buddies? I had to learn the difference. I've kept my friends. The drinking buddies are long gone...

And you're asking your question on a site that's dedicated to recovery from addiction. I think you know the answer you'll get.

But maybe honesty is a good place to start? I've never "found" myself drunk accidentally. And I always knew what kind of answer I was going to get from places like this one.

It's your life, but I can tell you that my life has gotten infinitely better since I got sober. I hope you'll choose the way that's best for you.

August252015

To MantaLady's point and as one alcoholic's point of reference:
I started socializing with stuff like one-on-one lunches around 4 mo
I didn't take my first out of town trip til 9 mo with my now husband
First party at 14 mo
First wedding at 19 mo
......no interest in bars, clubs, huge parties, etc.

A high school acquaintance approached me a couple weeks ago about wanting to get sober. He had 11 days...then decided to go to the weekly trivia w drinking "friends" as he had done for a long time .... started w soda water, "had a sip of sangria and woke up around the corner from home and couldn't recall much of anything from the night." Pretty typical outcome to the choice to go out with drinking friends early on, based on the stories I have heard over the last almost three years.

I've never once heard someone say they were sorry they didn't go. There is ALWAYS another chance to go get drunk. There isn't always another one to stay sober.

biminiblue

Great answers by everyone...I just wanted to address the part that was glaring to me:

When I quit in March of 2014, I didn't relapse. So my nearly five years continuous sobriety is intact and I didn't use language like relapse or slip or trigger because when I quit, I was done.

There were no events or people or emotions that could lead me to a drink, because I don't drink. No matter what/who/where/why. That option is off the table.

I'm going to make it to that five years. I had to start with a non-negotiable commitment, though.

DreamCatcher17

I got rid of EVERYONE that was a threat to my sobriety.

SoberCAH

This is a good question, Amin.

But I think your experience with choosing friends answered it.

The title of this thread should be "Life or Death".

I agree with Bimini that my sobriety is non-negotiable.

I make the rules for my sobriety - no one gets to make a decision for me.

If they don't like it, it's their problem, not mine.

When I got sober, my ex and I ran around with some very nice young folks, but all of our get-togethers involved pretty significant drinking, certainly among the men folks, so to speak.

As I think back, only 1 or 2 of these people were alcoholics (1 drank himself to death at age 53 and the other smoked himself to death in his early 60's.

I made the decision that I could no longer hang out with that group.

That decisions and other pro-recovery decisions I made early represented pivotal junctures in my early sobriety, which has led to what is, thus far, a fairly good bit of sobriety.

When I got sober, the only people who came to visit me were my ex, our priest (still a friend) and the man who became my sponsor and who still is.

When I got out of treatment, everyone at the bars I frequented knew precisely where I had been and they were all too happy to cut a wide circle around me.

Choose sobriety and life, amigo, not friends, alcohol and an alcoholic death.