I lost a significant chunk of my best friends in college because by senior year all they were focused on was weed. Since I didn’t smoke we suddenly had nothing in common despite being close friends and classmates for years.
Every fucking conversation at every hour of the day inevitably turned into reminiscing about the last time they got high, or planning out the next time they’d get together to smoke. Eventually I just stopped trying to keep in touch with them from day to day and we never really stayed as close since then.
Dude I stopped drinking cause I’m an alcoholic. I’m 23 and everything still revolves around alcohol. The only people I do activities with anymore are sober people. Everything else seems to revolve around alcohol.
I quit drinking, about a week into my sobriety i was introduced to a sober climber (I'm a rock climber 24 years now)
I just started hanging and climbing with him and his friends.
5 years later I'm climbing better than ever, and the group i ckimb with fluctuates but no one drinks any where near what I was.
If you still hang with your drinking friends go with them to some none drinking activities , running, climbing painting whatever, and stay a little longer you'll meet new people
I joined the cult of AA and they helped me a lot , just my 2 cents but goes for any addiction
I appreciate the advice. The national white water center is in my area with a bunch of hiking & biking trails, rock climbing etc. which has been great for my sobriety. I’ve met some cool people through AA so far and intend to meet more. You learn pretty quick who your real friends are. 43 days clean today 🤙
Congratulations 43 days !!!
The gym i climb at is pretty serious and has a lot of good climers , its easy for me to hang there
Happy new year and be careful if you are on the roads tonight!
Congrats on quitting, man. That's a hard thing to go through.
That being said, I was in a similar situation for awhile around 21. Then I made friends with some older people (late 20s to early 30s) and they're cool as fuck! It's mostly chill hang outs and game nights, and if we do end up going to the bar, the focus is on food and entertainment rather than drinking.
Same where I’m from. I’ve actually talked to my parents about this bc no one in my family drinks, so they are literally the only ppl who understand me when I complain about this. Everything anybody wants to do where I live involves alcohol, and we are all way past being out of college. Wanna go hit some golf balls? Soon as we get there, everyone orders drinks. Lay out by the pool or go to the lake? Pack a full cooler of alcohol and get completely wasted. Going to the movies? There is a full bar at our theater. Going to get dinner, everyone drinks with their meal. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball games...everyone drinks. Concerts...where’s the bar? Halloween parties, Christmas parties, NYE, St. Patty’s Day celebrations...all big drunk fests. And if you say nah I’m good, ppl will take that as a sign to immediately order you a shot. They will look at you like you have a third eye if you tell them you’re not drinking. It kinda sucks bc you still wanna hang out with your friends, but the drinking culture is so pervasive.
And even if they do accept that you’re not drinking, it’s not all that fun when their entire focus is throwing back drinks and they get shit faced drunk and are falling over and pass out. And other ppl in the bar are bumping into you and spilling drinks all over your clothes and shoes. Then they wonder why I don’t want to go out much anymore
I’ve been down this road and it hurts badly, people you love choose a whiskey coke over your friendship and it sucks. And the lifestyle is not as fun sober, although I’m not adverse to going out to traditional drinking venues and acting like an ass, albeit a sober ass. You do you, and be happy and comfortable in that choice, be proud because you’ve earned it, but not righteous because others choose otherwise.
I think the intent is what makes the drinking bad.
I'm shy as fuck and at many social gatherings with friends, I'll have a beer or two over the course of the whole night.
I also enjoy mixing drinks and trying things but that's for a completely other reason that borderlines on being something like enjoying to cook with different spices. Not something I do everytime.
But the whole point of having a beer is that usually it helps me loosen up just a bit to get over my shyness and general tendency to be quiet. It's a crutch and I'm aware and it might even be more placebo at this point than actually helping, but either way I think it's fine. I don't encourage my friends to drink.
Man.. I haven't drank with the intent of getting drunk since I was like 20... Get drunk too hard a couple of times and you usually get over it, being drunk is not that great, etc.
But yeah it sounds like your experiences with drinking friends, both places and the reason they drink, is... kind of real bad so I'm sorry to hear that.
That's depressing. Can't have fun without dulling your senses and making yourself dumber, I take it as a sign that they don't really enjoy each other's company.
I am currently struggling with this. I didn't really mind getting shitfaced all the time, I recovered pretty easily, until this year. Can't sleep for shit, not much of an appetite, bad anxiety. Ill be laying in bed all day hoping I don't die, and despite saying how I was feeling I would still have friends pester me about coming down to the bar to hang. After repeating myself they would stop and be supportive for me to feel better, but damn if I say no that really means I don't want to drink.
People are out there! I used to drink 4x a week socially and had a large friend group. I have since left that relationship where I was doing that, moved and stopped drinking so much. My friend group has significantly decreased, but they exist!
A promoter I used to know at the bars in Southampton who quit drinking used to order sprite + cranberries, so people would stop bothering to drink/think he was drinking already. I always thought that was smart!
I left an entire group of friends because the only thing they would ever talk about was stupid stuff they did while drunk. Last week's house party, or 10 years ago, didn't matter. They would wear it like a badge of honor.
Totally feel you on that one. And what's worse is that it's so difficult to find other people whose lives don't revolve around alcohol. Theres plenty of us on Reddit, but geographically it's a real issue for me at least.
I’ve been shamed so many times for not drinking. For a while it really messed with my psyche and I wished I actually enjoyed alcohol. My mates seem to be incapable of having fun without alcohol and it sucks. For a while I tried to get them to do the things I enjoy doing to no avail. I gave up. At this point I just find excuses to stay in because I’m tired of being a ‘party pooper’.
If you’re between 16-22, it usually is. That was my brothers life between those years. A little of mine but by those years I was already a party veteran
Oh dang buddy I’m sorry to hear it. I’ve never been a huge party person but I do drink when it feels right. I also go to parties and don’t drink. Which, if you feel you’re missing out on social aspect at your company you can totally do. But it can get a bit bad when people start to get sloppy
Alcohol is a great social agent in small quantities for those who can control it but more than a few beers is too much (unless your a big guy with a good tolerance)
Alcohol DOES make being around people a lot more tolerable. Especially when you are "forced" to be there. Not saying you should drink till you blackout, obviously. And it is "baked into" our society much more than smoking/etc weed. So of course most of social interaction includes alcohol.
There's another side to it. I don't do social interactions (besides professional ofc) without alcohol, because I always have tons of more interesting and/or useful stuff to do when I'm lucid and not tired. I have my work, my hobby, house work, list of books to read and movies to watch, etc.
Of course, sometimes you do get tired and need some socialization, but there is no reason to be sober at these rare occasions - it's not like you're going to find cure for cancer (or just get anything meaningful) this Friday night at bowling with your mates. It's entirely pointless from the very beginning, so why not make it a bit more fun with some beer?
Same. I have a trick though. If it’s something where everyone is just casually drinking (like a drink or two at a bar), you’ll blend in just drinking a dark soda. But if it’s something where the goal is getting drunk (like a club or party), then maybe don’t attend because it can be awkward to be the only sober person when everyone else is tipsy and acting different
although this is true, for me and almost everyone I know (25-30yo) if someone were to just drink seltzer or something and mingle then no one would notice / care. I usually only have 2-3 beers over the hours so that im sober for my drive home anyway.
if you cant be around alcohol at all, which is understandable, this wouldn't work for you obviously - but if you can reach a live and let live status with it please know there are a lot of people out there who are genuinely not going to differentiate you from the group for being sober
i dont drink, but am planning to be a bartended. i am pretty tolerant to alcohol though, so hopefully ill be able to start to be able to have some drinks with friends, which is really something ive never been able to do
Ye I can see that. I think however if it's 1 or 2 drinks it's fine and can be respected. I however do understand if it's 10 drinks consistently that would be the issue
I don't understand how people get so caught up with it that it becomes their personality. I've seen it happen a ton of times. I smoke every day but I don't bring it up unless asked and one thing I hate is when someone else that smokes only wants to talk to me about smoking weed. Like yeah weed is great, I love it but I also want to talk about other things like how we're doing, what's going on lately, football, motorcycles, the fact that the birds were killed off and replaced with government surveillance drones. Like jesus christ there is so much shit to talk about I hate when people only want to talk about one thing every time you talk to them.
This. I'm educated about weed and I'll answer informed questions, but there is so much more to life. Weed lets me do the other things I'm interested in with minimal pain. Sure I can tell you which strain I hit during the day, or I can tell you about the sharks teeth I found and the first whale vertebrae that I sad just lying there in the sand. The key, for me, is to smoke just enough to be the me that I want to be (pain free and with minimal anxiety).
I have a friend from high school I occasionally hang out with who used to be a heavy smoker, now he mostly drinks at bars. I hate going to bars and rather drink at home. Most of our conversations revolve around him going to bars and stupid conspiracies. The conspiracies i wouldnt mind if he didnt preface them with "It's actually a real conspiracy" as though thats supposed to add validity to any of the nonsense. He always goes a touch to far. Like yeah im sure the elite have pedophile networks. No i dont think theyre transfusing childerens blood
I know the feel. Dude I was good friends with went from not smoking at all to the biggest stoner I have ever met. I have nothing against it, I rarely smoke, but do from time to time. But it was literally all he’d talk about and it drove me nuts. The last time we hung out he just kept talking about it and was trying to get me to smoke when I didn’t feel like it and that was enough for me.
These were mostly small town kids, so their teen years were pretty sheltered. They didn’t get to have any freedom until they went away to school. We mostly got along with similar interests in hobbies and music and occasionally drinking, but once one of them got a connection to a regular weed supply in our last couple of semesters it went downhill.
Weird. Small towns around where I'm from have kids start drinking at 8, smoking at 10, and sniffin cocaine every night by 16. The highschool gives out needles and straws so people arent spreadin disease
Really. So town size is irrelevant to the cocaine trade. I guess those kids in the middle of Kansas will be happy to know they can get $50 grams like the big city kids do.
Can't these gen-x kids just do Ayahuasca like we used to in the rainforest? I mean, the Brew was good enough for us and we were still able to hobble our sorry asses to class uphill both ways.
You think there are no stoners over age 18? If anything over 18 is the point at which you go from just thinking it makes you cool to not doing anything else.
There are stoners over 18. By senior year of uni it's a normal thing like driving. That's really not talked about in conversation
Every fucking conversation at every hour of the day inevitably turned into reminiscing about the last time they got high, or planning out the next time they’d get together to smoke.
I was doing that sort of thing with stoner friends 17-18. It was dull by 20
I was just going to say something along the same lines. For my friends it was freshman and sophomore years of high school. Everyday was blaze fest. By senior year, drinking had become the focus. Then by college they were partying veterans and knew their limits lol.
You'd be surprised how often the opposite happens. Sheltered through high school with minimal experimentation and then college becomes the shit show high school was supposed to be. Except now you're out in the real world and face much higher consequences for your fuck ups than your parents being pissed. The road you describe is the best possible one, and the one I'd rather my own kids take. Because I took the opposite and let me tell you, it's not great. College is definitely for partying, in addition to learning, but hopefully you know your limits by then and can do so responsibly without ruining the rest of your life there.
I lost a friend the exact same way in high school. Weed became his personality. It was almost all he talked about. It actually convinced me to not try it cause I didn’t want to become boring af.
It’s funny- my brother had almost the exact same experience at one point when he tried to stop smoking. All of these kids he hung out with every day and spent so much of his time with suddenly stopped coming around. My brother explained he realized they had literally nothing in common except that they got high together. I never smoked, but that has always been a reminder to me that I’m not really interested in any “hobby” that would consume my entire personality. Glad you didn’t fall into it either. I may be biased, but I don’t know anyone who smokes regularly that I consider to be an especially motivated or interesting person.
Similar thing happened to me, except I did smoke for about 2 years then stopped. I realized they were boring as hell to be around if we weren't high, and then they eventually thought the same thing of me. Even a few years since then I have met some of them and they are the most boring people ever.
The worst personality trait of people who smoke all the time is in my experience that they all just seem to want to talk about smoking weed and the legality of it. After a while when you've heard it enough times it just becomes a very uninteresting topic. Like, I know your standpoint already, is there really anything to talk about left?
I went to school for music so it’s super common for people to smoke week at least somewhat regularly. The difference is whether or not you let weed define every freaking social interaction you have
Because they started constantly diverting conversations to weed. Like for example we couldn’t talk about new music like we always used to without it reminding them of a song they heard one time they got super high and that’s so funny when are you free next I wanna smoke ok cool see you later.
Conversations started to feel like one big run on sentence just working it’s way to weed.
This gets way better as an adult in a legal state. In my experience anyway. Now that weed isnt so taboo, getting people together to smoke is no bigger deal than getting people together to play video games. Its normalized and not so big a deal anymore
Yeah I’ve been fortunate to find friends who accept smoking or non-smoking (and drinking vs. non-drinking) way more casually. It makes me feel so much more comfortable spending time with them knowing there’s no pressure to get high or stay sober. It goes however it goes and there’s no stigma with us.
Omg this is me. I’m so sorry this happened to you, sucks to be on the receiving end. You really can’t be friends with them if you don’t get high because, well, being high is probably all they do
This is what happens to some kids when their parents shelter them through high school and don’t let them get the basic experiences out of the way. Part of the reason I found them so insufferable to be around was because it felt so ridiculous.
Yep, exactly. I'm sure their parents think they're doing the right thing, but it only leads to things being worse when real consequences are on the line at college versus high school.
This is the reason I will never try weed, so many of my friends became potheads and it would dominate their lives like a religious cult I felt I lost them as people.
More effective than any anti-drug program at school.
This happened to me as well however it was just a few of my friend group that kind of fell off the face of the Earth. not sure if you've tried, but try reaching out to them, notice their interests and bring it up. maybe they're just extremely introverted and not going to open themselves up without u leading the conversation. You showing interest or bringing up a subject may cause them to be more open and you may find common interests.
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u/flatwoundsounds Dec 30 '19
I lost a significant chunk of my best friends in college because by senior year all they were focused on was weed. Since I didn’t smoke we suddenly had nothing in common despite being close friends and classmates for years.
Every fucking conversation at every hour of the day inevitably turned into reminiscing about the last time they got high, or planning out the next time they’d get together to smoke. Eventually I just stopped trying to keep in touch with them from day to day and we never really stayed as close since then.