A key point of many recovery programs is to separate yourself from your drinking buddies, which is probably the most difficult thing for anyone in any situation. It's something I still deal with in some ways: Drinking friends are extremely easy to find. Real friends absolutely do not show up everyday.
I was just thinking about some of the people this morning that I just don't have the need to associate with anymore. There are two that I still occasionally hang out with, but there was a deeper friendship besides booze from the start.
If you are having this problem now, it gets better over time, I promise. It may take a couple of years to learn life again, but you can heal. In retrospect, having much more time on my hands just made the initial loneliness much worse.
My friends changed but also the reasons to hangout with other people also changed. This took time for me to understand. What matters to me personally has slowly morphed over these last few years and that is reflected in who I choose to associate with.
My conclusion is that I absolutely underestimated the time recovery actually takes and how my views on things like friendship would shift. As my entire personality was based on alcohol, I have found that reevaluating past decisions or assumptions can be useful, if not paramount to moving forward. This, unfortunately, takes lots time and time is not a friend to anyone fresh into recovery.
(This was just another one of my random annual stopdrinking posts. If you needed to relate to this in some way, that is awesome. For me, self-reflection is important and I choose to make it public. If this post seems self-centered, that is because it is: It's just not unhealthy.)
I have total respect for decent rehab programs and AA. Believe me, I have had my fair share of both. AA is a great place to make friends that have a shared goal and already have something in common.
But no, it wasn't for me this time around. I was sick of AA, and just plain sick of being sick. AA did give me a start into sobriety and I highly recommend it for anyone who is serious about sobriety at least once. At a minimum it's a learning experience.
But, there are other opinions and AA is not the only way to live. I can go for days without even thinking about my own issues now, and that is what I always wanted. There are times I need to talk about sobriety and that is exactly why I am here now.
Just we have heard in AA a thousand times from people who have been sober for years, I can say the same thing with 100% certainty: If I drink again, I am dead. Someone will find me in a ditch somewhere or my car will be wrapped around a tree. If actual death doesn't get me, my life will basically be over at that point. I ain't got no more chances. It's hyper-generic to say things like that, but I believe every word of it.
I'll be damned if I am going to waste any more time in AA or rehab. I just want to live out the rest of my days and have death be out of my control, where it should be.
There actually are normal sober people out there in the world, believe it or not. The "normal" people that I associate with who do drink don't pressure me to drink but also don't give two shits about my alcholisim: It's a foreign concept to them and is completely irrelevant to daily life. (Just the way I want it, actually. It's normal, or at least, one concept of normal.)
FWIW, I try to make it back to AA once a year around Thanksgiving. Its a good reminder to go and I think it's out of spite that I even go back. It's a routine and part of my own sobriety and it'll keep working until it doesn't. (Obligatory: "Keep coming back.")
I fill my life with life now. It can be boring and kind of a pain at times, but it's what I got. But to say I didn't need other drunks in my life would be a lie. Here I am, and I am no better than the lot of y'all reading this now. In fact, ya'll are probably better people than me.
totally agree with everything you said, I'm the same, my life will be over, no more chances. id love to be completely free, but I need to lean on others who've done it. i don't know how to live, im an 11year old in a 30year old body. been an AA tourist for a year, I got 1 week today and through the program it's like I've just rocketed through puberty. 4 meetings a week and lots of zoom. theres no other programs in rural NSW australia I'm just ecstatic to be with like-minded individuals, steps or no, hp or no, sobriety or no, I fkn love them and I tell them.
Well, rock on!
I am about a mid 20's kid stuck in the body of a 40 something now, me thinks. My brain was put on hold through my drinking years, and a whole different version of me grew up before I killed him off, metaphorically.
Keep up the routine of meetings, if you can. There is a ton to learn and a ton of experience from others you can learn from.
I believe I may have chatted with you before, and probably said many of the same things. Regardless, this is something I repeat to anyone recently sober, and still repeat to myself: If you don't want to get drunk, then don't drink. Super simple. (It literally saved my life, so I pass it forward from my first and only AA sponsor who told that same exact phrase to me, years ago.)