Hello
@Chimorin, hope you can find at least some sense of belonging here.
I'm sorry to hear about your friends. I'm also a lifetime straight edger and I've lost friends to alcohol.
One friend got addicted to caffeine, I helped him quit. Then he took up smoking because he worked with tobacco and he liked the smell. When he wanted to quit, I helped him with that. Then he started drinking, alone, which wasn't great, but I once again got him to quit.
When he started drinking again, this time with co-workers, he started acting strange and pushing me away. It was more than just denial about an addiction. I couldn't help him that time and the downward spiral began. I also noticed the same thing with an old school friend, one day fine, the next day, acting strange and pushing his friends away. The start of the spiral.
Weirdly enough, when I started working in fraud prevention, I started to see the exact same patterns from people who had been taken in by scammers. They would push their friends and family away in the exact same defensive manner. I also noticed the same patterns when I started reading about cults.
They say the UK has a drinking culture. Well I say we have a drinking
CULTure. A drinking cult. It's only 3 letters away and some people start acting like cultists around alcohol and those of us who don't partake. Some people find their own way into alcohol addiction to try to cope with problems and have a much higher chance of being saved. Others get taken in by the cult. And it is borderline impossible to get them to leave that cult.