i'm so sorry to hear about your friend who died. my very, very best friend and i entered a 12 step program about the same time. i was away on a business trip only to return home to find multiple messages from friends for me to call them immediately when i got home. turns out my best-est girlfriend for my entire life, we were like sisters, had given up the fight and took her life. i was devastated. to know what the gift of sobriety has given me made me so incredibly sad for her. there was so much more GOOD coming that she will never experience. her college age kids will never see how bright she could have shone in sobriety and the joy of having their mom back too. it is a very, very hard thing to go through seeing someone lose the fight to addiction.
thru the years i have lost many good friends to the disease of addiction...one day here, the next day gone. they had been given the "gift" but chose the harder path for reasons we will never know. i do believe however that if we do not completely surrender to the fact that we have a fatal disease and follow guidelines of recovery, we will surely use or drink again.
from your experience and from others, you can learn about the powerful pull addiction has and the destruction of so many lives. we can gain wisdom from these expreinces and sadly our losses too.
i don't know if there is a "safe" point we achieve in sobriety but i can tell you, just for me, what i have achieved is a healthy fear of what alcohol can do to me. by following a 12 step program of recovery day by day, reaching out to help a fellow sufferer, and trying to maintain humilty mixed with a heavy dose of gratitude, i believe i can maintain and nurture this gift of sobriety "one day at a time". afterall, we only have today and i wouldn't have it any other way!
i wish you well, fellow traveler.