my BP-friend will frequently visit a small circle of guys for a while (usually a couple of weeks, sometimes months) but he would never call them his friends, allthough he would always adress them in a very warmly manner as "matie" or "chief" (when he has forgotten their first name

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usually these visits end sooner or later with an argument or a fight and afterwards he will hesitate to visit them for a while until he has more or less forgotten the problem or until he considers
they will probably have forgotten the incident, than he returns and a fresh cycle begins... .

I have often wondered why he still obtains any "credit-points" with those guys and I think it must be a mixture of goodwill (they know him a long time and they probably suppose it's his drinking that is causing the trouble), their own profit (when he's in a good mood he can be very funny, charming, helpful and generous, more or less "buying" their company) and something else that I would call "recognition": most of those guys are dealing with similar problems and share similar interests like music, gaming, blowing, ... .