Gottalife

I often read how people stop drinking and lose friends as a result.

I don't get it. Through drinking I lost all my friends. When I stopped they all came back. They almost declared a national holiday, they were so delighted I had finally done something about rejoining the human race. They had been so distressed to watch my decline from a youth with potential to a barely functioning human being.

What kind of friend dumps you for taking the action necessary to save your life?

Berrybean

Drinking 'buddies' - Other people who place alcohol at the top of their priority ladder. They were the people I chose to hang out with for a long time. Their drinking made mine seem okay for a while. The things they got up to lessened my shame about my own misdemeanours.

I lost those friends. Turns out to have been no real loss at all. Not sure they even noticed me go.

BB

August252015

This has thankfully been my experience too. In addition to the wonderful support you describe, I'd add that I had also isolated so much that a good number of real friends had no clue it had gotten so bad, because I stayed away from them. Thankfully, they were thrilled I came "back" to them.

Often, when people talk about "losing" friends I hear them still trying to having drinking people/places/practices in their lives just like nothing has changed. But for me, everything had changed so it was clear who was a friend and who wasn't, where I needed to be and go, and where I did not.

Dee74

My experience matches yours Mike and yours August - sober, I reestablished links with a lot of old friends ...but like Berrybean I had a lot of drinking friends...

as I sunk lower and lower down so did the company I kept.

That's not to say they were all bad guys - and I'd known some of them for 20 years....at the beginning of my recovery I genuinely felt they were my mates...

but we were all alcoholic or drug addicted or both - addiction was the glue that held us together (no pun intended).

D

sobersolstice

My friends are for the most part very healthy, though they imbibe in beverages from time to time, they're mainly athletes.

As my sobriety continues, they are coming back into my life, and I am a happier person. Even my college buddies with wives and kids are coming back into my life.


There are a handful of people I've worked with that drink too much I have removed from my life, or have removed themselves from me. Those relationships were so strewn with misguided communication and confusion over forgotten conversation that they weren't enjoyable.

Eaglelizard

About 12 years ago, my (now ex) gf noted that most of my friends were bartenders. So I dumped her and kept them. That worked out well.

tomsteve

i found it was the drinking friends that disappeared. i havent heard from any of them since my last drunk- no phone calls to or from.
it hurt a wee bit at first. then realizing what type of friends they were i got angry- first at them and then at myself. then accepted responsibility for them being my friends.
my friend pickin machine didnt work for crap.
however, i have ran into couple of them at AA meetings. some were there as a result of DUI and some they truly wanted help.
ive also made true friends since getting sober, ones that were there when i was truly fighting for my life- when i was going through cancer treatment.
what kind of friends visit someone in the hospital goin through chemo and all the friend they are visiting can do is barf and poop themselves!?!?!?!
and make jokes about it!?!?!
my kind of friends.

Wholesome

I've also found that my drinking buddies have faded into the background but old friendships have been rekindled. My old friends who didn't drink the way I was drinking and who I spent less and less time with as my drinking slowly became my only pastime. The one relationship that I mourn is my best friend of the last 8 years..... her and I did a lot of drinking together and she reaches out to me all the time and I know that my absence is hurting her. Every time she invites me out it's a drinking event though and I'm not into that anymore.

Frank14

Against the Wind by Bob Seger:

The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
I found myself further and further from my home, and I
Guess I lost my way

SimplyFree

I quit drinking, my very good friend put in a keg. He got whiskey for his birthday, I went home early. Friends are a luxury, in my humble experience. If you have them more power to you. Know you are blessed.

Gottalife

I can understand the logic of that. Exactly what I would have done. Ya gotta get your priorities right

Gottalife

Among my drinking buddies ( I use the term loosely) there was a kind of pecking order. There was always someone in the group whose drinking behaviour and demeanor was worse or lower than everyone else. This poor bugger justified everyone elses drinking because none of the rest of us were "that bad". He would also become the butt of all practical jokes, would be ridiculed and pushed around until he was driven away.

I became that sad case, ridiculed and picked on by those not as bad, so I was driven away from my "buddies". I could feel resentment about that but I don't. I understand my part in it. I never really treated them as true friends. They were only in my life because they drank like me, and justfied my drinking. I was using them at least as much as they were using me.

You could almost see the progressive nature of the disease as the make up of the group changed over time. As one fell out the bottom, a new guy would arrive looking for people that drank like him. Kinda like a production line. Very sad. Not a genuine offer of friendship to be found anywhere.

oldmate

From my own experience.

I have very few real friends. Throughout different things that have happened in life it has sorted the wheat from the chaff.

I think learning to be content with your own company is very important,
especially for people in our situation.

The people that looked down on me for being a working class drunk
dont deserve a minute of time nor anymore of this post. i wouldnt
want any of them back in my life for salt. Them people more often than not
are there for the good times but not when you need help.

I have found i cannot rely on anybody but myself, and it has been
proven time and time again.

I have found being sober wakes me up to how unreliable and selfish
people are and i choose to not have them around anymore, where
as when i was drinking i let a lot of stuff slide.

Thats me anyway.

BixBees505

Cracked. Me. Up.