Friends

[AsLongAsIHaveMyTea]

I have hugely cut down on drinking recently after wanted to give up for ages. I drink only a small glass of wine if I’m out and make it last all evening, if that. I’m heading towards totally stopping but at the moment am in a “Sober Curiosity” mindset.
What I have realised though is a few of my friends have been treating me differently. They become short tempered with me once they realise I won’t be drinking, trying to pursued me to and ask me “if I’m being boring again tonight”. These people are my best friends. I feel I am fun and take part in the evening and conversations just as much of not more than if I was drinking so I don’t really get it. I’m also obviously much happier in myself and and a wife and mother.
Had anyone else experienced this? And what’s the solution? Thank you

You are shining a light on how much they are drinking if you are drinking so little now.
When you all drank at the same rate it normalised the amount they were drinking. I vaguely remember reading the author’s view on this when I read
buuks.co.uk/shop/unexpected-joy-of-228517p.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA4b2MBhD2ARIsAIrcB-QMPdFbKf4ynE4phOFM5JIQv85m-c65tCMEZPZOyQtkBLHZITFsugQaAjCGEALw_wcB
They are not great friends if they are treating you differently rather than encouraging & supporting you though.

We who drink far too much often don’t like it being thrown into sharp relief by a sensible friend who’s avoiding alcohol.

It threatens the lies we tell ourselves.

I do see where you’re coming from and I think I agree, but to be honest I just want to hang out with my friends and them not be weird about it?!

Just top your one drink up with soda or lemonade through the evening.
After a while your friends will be too pissed to notice.

We often don’t realise until we stop how much our friendships are based on mutual enabling of our drinking. Your friends may get used to your lower level of drinking. If they don’t/can’t you may have to find a healthier friendship circle where the friendship and activities are not based on drinking. Sorry.

Many congratulations on cutting down. The solution is not to start drinking again when you don’t want to and true friends wouldn’t try to pressure you into this.

Good luck. The transition from a drinking to a sober lifestyle is hard but immeasurably worthwhile.

This is a well known and well documented phenomenon. ALL the quit literature talks about it. You may be interested in Annie Grace’s FREE online ‘Alcohol Experiment’ where you quit for 30 days and each day she sends you a video regarding research, how to manage social situations etc. I’d highly recommend it. You need to scroll to find the free link. You obviously don’t have to quit but it does explore the psychology around cutting down/quitting, whi I think you may find helpful as you explore sobriety.

Thank you everyone. The Alcohol Experiment sounds good I’ll have a look at that, thank you. I unfortunately do think that they’ll notice if I’m just topping up my glass with soda or whatever- it will also not stop the “oh you’re not drinking” questions, I just want everyone to get used to it really not not expect me to drink!
I have made some new friends with other interests which is so lovely, but I don’t want to lose me old friends either.

Here’s a post by SoberMummy on this topic

mummywasasecretdrinker.blogspot.com/2015/03/will-i-lose-all-my-friends.html

PS just noticed quite a few useful comments on that blog post as well.

Yep, unfortunately the people who have a problem with you stopping drinking are the ones most likely to have a problem themselves.

It’s hard because I don’t actually want to lose my friends, but I don’t see where I fit without drinking with them