Letting go of people who drink heavily.
This is obviously something a lot of us have to deal with. This is going to sound cliche, but in my experience so far I've found it to be absolutely true: Those who are truly your friends might find it difficult at first - might even tease us or be dismissive about it ("Oh just cut down" "Oh just have one") or somehow otherwise just not seem to "get it". But, if they really care for you and respect you they will come around and respect your decision not to drink and it will get increasingly less weird.
However, you will also discover that some "friends" were little more than drinking buddies. Those people are usually the ones with drinking problems themselves. In my opinion, it is almost always the people with drinking problems themselves who can't handle us not drinking. Those friendships need to be ditched or at least massively scaled back to arms length. This is actually a good thing, as it does show us which friends truly have our best interests at heart and can enjoy our company regardless of whether we've got a drink in our hands or not.
I have also had a couple of friends who I know have drinking problems themselves, which they're at various stages with and in levels of denials about, obviously find it confronting at first but go on to be wonderful and supportive about it anyway. This is because they are awesome and true friends. Hold onto those people and f*ck the rest I say!
This is obviously something a lot of us have to deal with. This is going to sound cliche, but in my experience so far I've found it to be absolutely true: Those who are truly your friends might find it difficult at first - might even tease us or be dismissive about it ("Oh just cut down" "Oh just have one") or somehow otherwise just not seem to "get it". But, if they really care for you and respect you they will come around and respect your decision not to drink and it will get increasingly less weird.
However, you will also discover that some "friends" were little more than drinking buddies. Those people are usually the ones with drinking problems themselves. In my opinion, it is almost always the people with drinking problems themselves who can't handle us not drinking. Those friendships need to be ditched or at least massively scaled back to arms length. This is actually a good thing, as it does show us which friends truly have our best interests at heart and can enjoy our company regardless of whether we've got a drink in our hands or not.
I have also had a couple of friends who I know have drinking problems themselves, which they're at various stages with and in levels of denials about, obviously find it confronting at first but go on to be wonderful and supportive about it anyway. This is because they are awesome and true friends. Hold onto those people and f*ck the rest I say!
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