One of my best friends as a teenager was a narcissist. As a thirteen, fourteen year old, narcissists are heaps of fun. They're impulsive, they have no regrets or remorse, they get what they want - exactly what every adolescent male desires. Breaking the rules, being a pest, living life without regret.
However, as we started to grow older, something odd happened; he didn't seem to be maturing. Myself and other friends took responsibility for our actions and recognized when we did wrong. We had a much more balanced view of things. We didn't lash out randomly when our egos were pricked, and we didn't take advantage of others and situations.
For this friend, nothing was ever his fault. When something went right, it was obviously because he inherently deserved it. When something went wrong, it was another persons fault, or an extenuating circumstance, or any excuse he could think of. As we reached the later years of high school, we realized something was seriously off, but we couldn't put our fingers on it. He'd single out one of our friends and abuse them verbally and emotionally, pointing out what he saw to be their flaws - basically, he shat on everyone around him. He manipulated and lied to get what he wanted, he had this insane capacity to bend and twist past occurrences where he did something wrong to seem like he wasn't at fault. He sent long, raving attacks to every person who cared about him, pointing out their flaws, and instructing them on how they could be better people.
I reached breaking point personally after one night out of no-where he sent me one of his now infamous and semi-regular character attacks which was so self-righteous, so scathing, so subtly abusive (it's called gaslighting) that I just said "enough." I sent the rant to another friend of mine, and he said, "Dude. He's a narcissist. I've known for ages." I didn't at the time know what pathological narcissism was, but I started doing some research. One of the things I picked up on is that if you ignore the narcissist (something they aren't used to and hate) they simply melt. They break down. It's as if they cease to exist. So the next day we were at his house, smoking a joint together, and he started going on like he usually did about angels and devils and such (he was a big psuedo-spiritual quack at the time, using spirituality as an excuse to "elevate" himself above others.) He turned to me with a completely straight face and said:
"I really believe i'm an angel sent from heaven down to earth to cleanse the world of it's darkness."
It hit me like a ton of bricks. The degree of grandiosity in this persons mind was beyond not normal - it was absolutely absurd. So I tried something, instinctively almost. As he blabbed on about why he was an angel, I slowly started disengaging from him. I stopped giving him eye contact. His voice started wavering. I stopped directing my attention and body posture toward him, even though it was only the two of us there. He started stuttering as he spoke. Eventually, I completely closed myself off to him. We were two people sitting in a garden smoking a joint, but I wasn't "there" with him anymore. His eyes filled with a mixture of confusion and rage. He struggled, with every trick in his little book, to regain my attention, but I wouldn't let him. This heavy weight, the realization of the years of bullshit: the idealization and devaluation, the rage, the manipulation... everything just made sense right then and there.
That was the last time I saw him.
I deleted him from Facebook, deleted his phone number, implemented a strict no contact rule, and I've never looked back. As the years have gone by, I've seen the ways I've been emotionally traumatized by him. I now know the power of emotional abuse - I feel immense empathy for those who have suffered from it. When I hear people grew up with narcissistic parents, it makes me want to give them a huge hug. Those who never come across these people are so blessed, they have no idea.
TL:DR
Had a narcissistic friend, didn't realize he was one till we got older, finally came to my senses, never spoke to him again.