Alcohol gives the illusion of friendship. From my mid teens to about 20, 21, I had a vast number of acquaintances I managed to acquire while drunk. Two drunks can easily be best friends for a night and have absolutely nothing to say the next morning, or ever, when sober.
There were a lot of people on my contacts list I could call up if I wanted to go out, people I'd never seen outside a club setting, unless you count gearing up to enter a club setting. The ones I thought were my real friends joined the other acquaintances and buggered off when I quit drinking.
I guess I have one friend now, but I'm agoraphobic and his social/work life is always so busy I rarely see him online, so he kinda doesn't feel like a friend. There was somebody else I considered a friend once too, but she got a girlfriend and I haven't seen her online, much less spoken to her in about 6 months or more. Nobody can be so busy that they can't take 2 minutes to send a quick hello by email, right?
Anyway, if you want your own large group of ''friends'', from personal experience, drinking is how that happens. Honestly though, I'd rather have one friend than a bunch of people who leave at the first sign of trouble.