JMS1999

So I have been racking my brain all week about why I always had to drink in excess??? hmm was it the company I kept? Well perhaps it was...I was thinking of something my sister said to me the other day after my accident/ rock bottom, she said "You are going to find out who your real friends are." I thought yea yea whatever..Well here I am only a few days later and I realze who my friends are..I have told everyone that I do not wanna drink nor won't drink anymore by the way...I can't even begin to tell you how many friends haven't returned calls or texts bc of this decsion i have made. Boy what a fool i was to think that some people were my true friends...not even a hey how are ya holding up? nothing from some people I thought were REAL friends...Well Sis was right I know who my real friends are and it's sad it takes a good decision like to stop drinking to realize who your friends are...I wasn't calling anyone asking for pity or anything like that I was calling to just talk like the friends I thought we were and I realize that they are infact the ones with the problems. Yes mostly everyone I know drinks and alot of them in excess...But hey thats their problem right? And if talking on the phone isn't good enough for them then it's their loss, there will be a time when they need something and sober me turns my back on them...wooo i'm done ranting!!

Dee74

A lot of my latter day friends were drinking buddies - even if I didn't realise that at the time, the main 'glue' that kept us together was alcohol and drugs.

It's natural those people will back off...apart from anything else noone wants to look too hard at their own life or contemplate change unless they have to.

I reconnected with a lot of old, true, friends when I got sober - and made lots of new ones.

I hope you will too JMS
D

LexieCat

Some people just don't know what to say or do when confronted by news like that. They might feel guilty/worried about their own drinking (i.e., "if s/he is getting sober, what about ME?"), they might be afraid you are going to try to "convert" them, they might feel embarrassment or shame for you (assuming that's how you feel).

Don't worry too much about it for right now. Concentrate on your recovery. You will make new, TRUE friends, and some of the others may come back around in time. If not, as you said, they were not friends who were good enough for you.

Congrats on your decision--stick with it.

Anna

I was pretty amazed at the amount of change I went through in early recovery.

I knew instinctively that I had to remove a couple of toxic people from my life (not drinkers, just toxic). What I didn't know, was that removing them, made 'space' in my life and almost immediately two amazing people appeared. One of these people became a true mentor and guide, and I learned a lot from the other person. So, be optimistic that the people who have distanced themselves from you, are paving the way for new people to come into your life.

whiskers31

Yes, you will realize who your true friends are. I had a lot of "drinking buddies". No matter what we did, there always had to be alcohol involved at some point...going to a game, playing golf, parties, concerts, watching sports...and it wasn't just a few drinks...always to the point of getting drunk. Hopefully some will be totally supportive, but probably the majority will either not want to do any activities with you if you are not drinking or you won't want to hang out with them. It was very enlightening for me to hang out with them a few times while sober. By the end of the night, they were just plain annoying....loud, obnoxious, rude, argumentative and not very enjoyable.......made me think, damn, that's probably how I was also!.....Needless to say, I tried to stay away from them when their main focus was just to get drunk......which was most of the time. I have one friend from that group that is great to hang out.....he won't drink when we go out or if he does....just has a couple...he really could take it or leave it. Another eye opener was when I asked someone from the old crew to go to a movie, and they just said "Why, they don't serve beer there?"......my only advice, as lexie said, is to focus on recovery.....and totally avoid drinking focused situations......if possible.

firestorm090

Sounds like spring cleaning to me, I too thought I had tons of friends till I quit drinking, then the invites dried up, the phone went quiet and I felt all alone and abandoned.

Then I realized it's a necessary part of letting go of the old to make room for the new. Kinda like tossing old clothes out of the closet to make room for new ones. It's tough to let go of some relationships and so-called friendships because by letting go we create a void in our lives, but that void is necessary in order to have room for new relationships and allow us the freedom to move on to healthier situations. Too much old baggage weighs us down and keeps us stuck in a rut, sometimes we have to jettison the excess weight in order to help us begin moving forward again.

In time your dance card will fill again and your phone will ring off the hook, so enjoy your down time and focus on enjoying the mornings when you don't have a hangover or feel like crap, for those are the gifts we can cherish now.