My best and oldest friend (been a brother since second grade, so 27 years now) has been strung out on meth for months and months, actually probably about a year and a half. Last Christmas I saw him for the first time in 2 years, 2 years before he was doing great, sober from heroin and alcohol and really happy and advancing himself. Last Christmas we smoked meth together., we hung out and he offered me some and we smoked it all night and caught up, had a great time. I've done it a few times, never cared for it too much and was always scared to try it more than once in a blue moon. I could tell over the course of that week that he was heading to bad places though, he was doing it all the time and his teeth were getting fucked up and he just looked kinda strung out and was developing obsessive behaviors.
Anyway, over the course of this year he would sometimes send me manic texts about how his brother was a horrible person to live with (I'm sure this is true). He got increasingly agitated. Then a few months ago he started telling me stories about how his brother stole his identity and some increasingly intense tales. I believed him, but realized he was getting deep into meth just by his mannerisms (by the way, he lives 1000 miles away from me so I can only interact with him via phone/texts/Facebook). Then within the past 2 months I realized he's lost the plot, and it's gotten worse and worse. It started when he tried to hit me up for money, with an obvious scam (offering to pay me with Venmo if I wired him cash). He was going on and on about how his brother and his meth friends had constructed tunnels under his apartment, and also behind the walls, and were hiding in his ceiling recording his keystrokes and had stolen $100,000 from him - which he never had. I told him he needed to stop doing meth and get some sleep... he said he doesn't do meth anymore and he can't sleep because his brother's friends try to break in every time he is about to fall asleep but they always know he wakes up and run off.
Obviously no part of me believes him that he's not doing meth. But it's getting worse and worse. About once a week now he makes big public facebook self-harm threats if no one will help him. He thinks everyone is against him, especially his family. He makes threats to his mom all the time because she told him she won't give him any more money. He told her he is going to burn down her house with her in it for Christmas. He hits me up for money about once a week, appealing to our friendship and then being really abusive when I tell him no. I spent a lot of time formulating good things to say about how I love him and am worried and that I believe he believes what he's telling me but he's experiencing delusions, and he didn't even hear me at all and just went off on me and started telling me that I'm the last person in the world who he thought was on his side and now he's completely alone and no one cares about him. I have been in contact with his parents and they're beside themselves. They've been in contact with local police and social workers and such for months and months but where he lives has a HUGE meth problem and they're overwhelmed. They basically don't seem like they care. For example one time a few weeks ago he was texting us all saying he had a gun and was going to end it, his parents found out where he was, walking around the streets with a gun, and 3 people including me called the cops (at this point we hope he gets arrested so he will be forced to detox because he absolutely refuses treatment and insists up down left and right that he doesn't do meth anymore). The cops acted like, you guys again? Jesus christ, fine, we'll do it when we can get to it. Nothing ever came of it. His parents live a good 700 miles away from him as well so they're kinda stuck too.
Anyway, yesterday it reached a head, he was making public facebook posts about shooting up a school if no one would help him (he wants money, that's the only help he can conceive of) - probably because it was the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. He was trying to get me to "help" him and using the threat of that as "leverage". We called the cops again but they seemed uninterested (which blows my mind). I just keep wondering if one day he's gonna do one of these things he threatens (killing himself, killing his brother - who actually does live in the same town - or going on a murder-suicide shooting rampage). He has developed this massive conspiracy against him, he's ruined his brother's reputation in town because he thinks one night he saw his brother beat some girl to within an inch of her life and leave her all bloody on the ground, among other things, and this somehow had something to do with this massive identity theft conspiracy (he also believes he stole $4 million from his brother, while at the same time saying he's broke and needs money). He's terrorizing all of us... I'm afraid to go on Facebook because stupid fucking facebook tells poeple when you've seen their messages and if I see his messages and don't reply he freaks out at me, and if I do reply it goes terribly and traumatizes me further. Not that I use facebook much anyway. But god is it stressful. I don't know when to engage and when to not engage.
People keep telling me I should just forget about him, but he's literally like my brother, we've been best friends since before my actual brother was born. His parents are like second parents to me and vice versa. We've been through everything together until we were past college. I can't turn my back on him, but I can't help him either. It really hurts that he's being so manipulative and hurtful to me although I know it's the meth talking. Until recently he's always been such a nice and giving person. It confuses and scares me that he's lost the plot so badly, I've never seen anyone as crazy as he is right now. He's never had a history of psychosis at all, so it's very clearly meth (he's 35, it wouldn't be schizophrenia plus I know he was doing meth recently). His parents went to visit him to try to convince him to get treatment a few weeks ago (in his location you can't forcibly get someone into treatment or the psych ward even if they're threatening suicide, his parents have tried everything), and he had used every light bulb in the house for meth, and while they were there he was holding a butcher knife to protect himself from "them" who were going to kill him he believed, and he started pulling up his carpet and floorboards to try to find the tunnels under his place, and he even threatened his mom with the knife at one point and his parents had to lock themselves in a room for the night.
Fucking meth, man... my friend has gone from one drug problem to the next in late teens and adulthood. First it was coke, that was bad, then alcohol, that was bad too, I worried about him a lot. Then heroin for years, worried about him all the time. But meth has been, BY FAR, the most fucked up thing he's gotten involved in. I don't even recognize this person. It's so fucked up. I basically think about it all the time and it tears me up.
He has really big self-esteem problems he has never really addressed. If he can sober up long enough to regain sanity (and at this point that's a big if
), he has such a long road to recovery. I don't know if he can do it. But god I hope so...
