I don't have much contact with old friends at the moment but that was buy choice due to frustrating times I've been experiencing but they know it's all good and they are my friends no matter what. But it can get hard when you need to have a real discussion about life and there is nobody you can turn to because they just don't go there. So many people fill their lives with trivial matters that the can't even imagine being bothered by real deep issues it seems.
This resonated well with me. I want those deep conversations as well, but I find few if any of my friends go there. My wife does, so I think I'm lucky in that regard. Also agree with those old friends, but still all friends have their different skillsets and things they accept or not. Some are very closed, while others are more open - some you can talk about man stuff with, others not.
It may sound harsh but you should always sever your ties with backstabbing scumbags like that as fast as possible because all they're going to do is drag you down and make your life miserable and that's just the honest truth. I haven't had to deal with leechers like that, but I've certainly had to deal with backstabbers a lot who say nice things to your face and then talk shit about you behind your back, but guess what? If you haven't even done anything but confront them openly about it they're likely to have done it to other people as well. I have had cases where I've done this and they'll either leave me alone and never hear from me again or their friends realise what a two-faced cunt the person I was talking to was and leave them or sometimes even hang out with me instead because they've realised I'm the honest one.
You can't always win with those kind of people, but it's better than letting them drag you down and making your life miserable, fyi, this is why I admit I can sometimes come across as an evil bastard on these forums, I do not like self-righteous people because they're often the ones who act the way you've described or even worse.
Not harsh in my eyes, i drop them at a blink of an eye. Even when they try to 'get me back' for long times, I just refuse any contact. I know old dogs can hardly be changed. Better to get new dogs.
As for intellectual stimuli, I read a lot, and I find the bitcoin community and hacker news and similar sites of good interest, and within the tech community in general there's plenty to use my brain on.
I'm just a bit surprised that so few of my friends have developed to the point where they aren't interested in other stuff than their own house, family, job and superficial stuff. If somebody has a new car, it interest me very little, if they just had a vacation at their cabin, it interest me similarily little. All in all, those superficial things are quite uninteresting.
It's like when you have some issues you go through, the last thing you're interested in is all those superficial things.
And I'm also surprised of the fact that so many people seem to be totally negligent or uninterested in the fact that they're in fact part of a larger society and that everything is interconnected, sustainable development, how aminoacids affect your body and brain, how producers of light bulbs deliberately makes the life cycle of the light bulbs short so they can make more money and how that affects the environment, how lack of exercise and good nutrition affects the body, having self insight, being interested in culture, language, body language, social dynamics, how governments works, how much is double-standard, how companies always lies, discovering the real reasons people behave the way they do, watching a dog carry a stick, watching a cat stretch its body, watching some children jump in a puddle. Helping an old lady accross the street....
I mean, there's so much more to life than reading tabloid papers, watching a soccer game and gossiping about who bought a car, who's with which girl and so on. Sometimes I try to go deep with other men, and I often get just a blank stare back. Emotions - dude lost his girlfriend, telling him I have no issues talking about it. So many have troubles open up, and so many have self limiting beliefs that short cut their own life and the abilities they have to make a great life for themselves.
An open and curious mind, not stiffening into a limited world map - not accepting everything you hear from authority, not accepting status quo by default. Where are these people? Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by idiots (no offence).