I'm sorry that you are feeling this way.

I don't consider it losing friends, I look at it as making different life choices. If a few of your friends were to make different life choices like you did, they'd be right there with you. Who is to say down the road they won't join you? Maybe you'll be a shining example of making good life decisions that others will be attracted too.

We have removed the shackles and blinders of addiction. We can hope that the others will too, but just peer pressure alone (need for socializing) can ruin lives and keep us locked into our active addictions.

I've also found that when you change your life, others that are "friends" will not want anything to do with you out of their own recognized short comings after awhile....they'll fade away. So losing friends is more like a rejection from others. A true friend would be more supportive of self improvement and actively feeding off the growth energy.

What we thought was a group of friends is just a group of users whose common interest is doing drugs and alcohol. Remove the drugs and alcohol, do you really think most of them would hang around each other? Nope. Maybe a few, but for the most part, nope.

It's nice to have friends, but friends of the old life are not the friends we need. Friends can hold us back. We need friends for the new us.

If we would've never got sucked into the world of addiction, we might have built some healthy relationships, but as recovering peeps, we get to start life over to build them healthy relationships. Welcome to life 2.0.

At least this is how I see it. I started recovery 8 years ago, and that's what happened. Of course, I got side tracked but here we go again. The peeps I meet today knows I'm an on again off again drinker, so they aren't bothered by how I am. It's just when I'm not drinking they don't call as much, but if I show up with a beer, they're calling the next day....case in point.

Let's not regret the past and start looking at our new horizon. Healthy people attract healthy people. Only the sick attracts the sick.

Hang in there, please don't let the friend thing affect your serenity.