Picket Fences

One of the most effective tools for sobriety is to surround yourself with a picket fence of friends. Sober friends.

Perhaps because it presents a visual in your mind, this concept is pretty easy to grasp. It’s a circle of friends who share the same interest in maintaining their sobriety as you do. More important, it’s a way to be accountable to someone other than yourself.

Your new friends in sobriety surround you and protect you from taking that first drink. They call you during the day, just to see how things are going. They meet you for coffee or dinner before meetings. And they participate in activities that are fun — even without drinks or drugs.

One of the reasons many of us become alcoholics and drug addicts is because we’re lonely. And part of breaking that addiction to alcohol or drugs is ending our relationship with our bar-drinking friends and drug-using connections.

When we say we are powerless over people, places and things, we mean that if your goal is to stay sober, it’s best to avoid those people, places and things that are associated with your addiction.

That means you probably shouldn’t drop by your neighborhood bar for a Coke and a chat with your old drinking buddies. Like the crusty old-timers say, “If you’re always hanging out at the barbershop, you’re eventually gonna get a haircut.”

Why would you think you could go to taverns, have lunch with your connect, or keep booze in the house “for company” and stay sober?

Here’s a better plan: Go to more meetings. Get there early. Leave late. And when you get there, stand by the front door and shake hands with people. Remember names. Listen to the sharing and pick out the folks who say something that sticks with you. Talk to them after the meeting.

Don’t like the meeting you’ve been going to?  Find another one.

Finding a good meeting is much like finding a good bar.  Maybe when you were drinking, you stopped by a local watering hole for the first time. You order a drink, chat up the bartender a little, and then go home. You come back the next day, and maybe the guy next to you initiates a conversation. Then his friend comes over and you’ve got a lively chat going.

Pretty soon, you’ve got a tab, a whole room full of new friends, they’ve given you a nickname, and you’re having your mailed forwarded to the bar.

Finding a meeting that seems comfortable to you can result in a slate of new friends who are sober or trying to stay sober. Friends — not drinking buddies. It’s a new social group. Instead of a relationship based on drinking or using, buying drugs, selling drugs or sharing drugs, you’re meeting with people who have no agenda other than improving their lives.

Face it. How many of your drinking buddies will meet at 6:30 in the morning to talk about honesty? Or love? Or how to handle resentments?

The end result is that you’re giving yourself a chance to learn once again how to have fun and make friends, without drink and drugs.