Mental Health My old friend, his mind is gone

[thecrx]

I knew (still know) a kid named Goose in my early years of high school. We would all hang out as a group of friends and drink, skateboard and smoke weed, usually in that order. Goose was one of the most genuine people i had met. He would give you the shirt off his back if he felt you needed it, and at the same time would tell you to your face if he thought you were doing something wrong. He had tough family problems, and they had no money. Sometimes when he was drunk he would say fucked up things about life and it not worth being living in a very sad, odd tone. Sometimes he would also fall into a very eerie star, sometimes into your eyes, for a few seconds, but would come back to normal real quick. Overall though i just thought he was little weird, but so are we all. In 2006 or 2007 when all of us started graduating or dropping out Goose moved from our town in the southeast to somewhere around L.A. due to his family.

That was the last time i saw or spoke to him, untill today, 6-8 years later.

So today i get a call from a friend (Q). He says another friend saw Goose walking on the side of a street in town and picked him up. He says he's acting funny, not making sense, possibly strung out or something. The friend who picked him up said he couldn't take it, so my friend (Q) on the phone picked him up and brought him to my house. Me and my Q hung out in that group as kids and still hang out as adults. Q was also a little closer personally to Goose than I was.

While waiting at my house for them to arrive im very exited. I want to see Goose and see what hes been doing. If he has a drug problem i feel i can help him through it or any other personal problems. The acting funny part is not what im worried about, I just want to see my friend. I mean last i know hes in california, and now is walking down a busy road in town, wtf, you know.

Q comes in my door first with a serious look in his eyes. I see Goose behind him and come up to him and give him a dap and a hug. His hand grasp feels week and his body is very off balance. He smells like shit and I can tell he has been living on the street a while. We go sit outside. Within these couple of minutes of being reunited i can tell somethings off about him. I assume hes on or coming off heroin or something. He seems confused and somewhat dazed and talks with a high pitched, raspy voice that sounds like it strains him when he talks (junky voice). Gooses eyes are glazed over and very zombie like and he has jerky body movements with his legs, arms, and head. He sometimes gets up and walks around confused and sits back down quickly. After a few questions about how hes been I can tell that it is more serious than i thought. I now get goosebumps and chills that still slightly remain. He Cannot answer questions logically. Sometimes he does not even answer questions. Sometimes he will just stare with those very eerie soulless eyes from when we were younger or make a weird sound or twitch. When he did answer questions the answers would be irrelevant. If i were to ask him how he felt he would say something like "yea man, i didnt watch that show". Most of the answers where questions back to us that made completely no sense. Everything he said did not connect with anything else he said or we said. He could only say short sentences too. Q broke down and asked Goose what happened to him, how he is not the same. He answers with another confused question to us that makes no sense. I ask him if he realizes the situation right now, beetween us 3, and how me and Q are seeing you right now. Still, nothing but short slurry sentences that make no sense. He sometimes also closes his eyes and zones out for a second or two. Me and Q look each other in the eyes and realize something must be done. We take him to the hospital and wait with him untill we know he is fully taken care of and leave.

There were some short moments in the "conversation" where Goose would seem to come back to normal for a second. All of them included memories. Life would come back to his eyes and he would stop wriggling around. Some would be memories of things us 3 did in our younger years and others would be about people from that time period. All of them where questions like "do you remember when" or "where is so and so now". After he asked the question though he would fall back into the zombie like daze and not remember a thing and not be able to make sense again. Also finally when we asked Goose if he wanted to go to the hospital he said "yes lets go there" while standing up ready to go. That was one of the only questions that we asked him he answered with an actual answer. While talking to him and on the ride to the hospital he would say things about "them" or "they" or "everything" . They killed my sister, they put me in a trance, "they stole my soul" "everything is backwards". He also said things about weird eerie stuff and called some things evil. He even asked us on the way if we were going to kill him. It seemed like his subconscious mind was working, he was able to pull out past memories for short duration, knew he needed to go to a hospital, but the "now" reality did not exist. It was like the opposite of sleeping or something like that. He seemed very stressed and anxious the whole time too.
All this happened after a busy day at work and now its 3:30am and i have to work again tomorrow morning. There is more but I cant write anymore i just felt i needed to get this out of me somewhat. This is the most fucked up i have seen anybody, in a movie, t.v., books, real life, let alone a friend. This was one of the most fucked up days of my life and i feel so bad for Goose. Its like he wanted to tell us what was going on in his head, but he couldn't. I just hope he can come back to his head, we will see though.

If anyone has any insight or anything feel free

 

[ParappaTheRapper]

Completely seriously, I totally hate geese. Most arrogant thing that exists. Only thing that exists that can damag a stride or cruise.

Lol sorry. Off topic, that's for real like an inside joke thing I wrote a lot of music about.

But I know how that feels man. I had a friend who disintegrated kinda like that. We actually all ended up helping him move up to couch surfer. Actually pretty bizzare situation. He was at rock bottom, while in and part of a lot of peoples social lives/ on stage/ in bands/ etc.

It sounds like your buddy most likely is schophrenic man. Just from skimmin thru what u had included. Like staring thru people.

Did u ever find out what happened or lend him some money or somethn???

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

He might have schizophrenia, drug psychosis, or both. Schizophrenia is said to become most apparent in the early twenties and he was probably drinking or using to try to cope with it, only to just mess himself up more. That's my best uneducated guess based on the info you provided.

You sound like a good friend for caring enough to take him to a hospital. They will probably be able to give you more info if you continue to visit him.

 

[thecrx]

Yeah, today they had him heavily medicated. He was making a little more sense in the things he was saying so maybe that's a good thing or it could just be the medication. At least he said he took a bus to get here, we thought he walked, that's how bad he looked. Hopefully its just a short psychotic episode but there is definitely a permanent problem i feel.

I also thought it might help if i give him a skateboard magazine or something to get his memory working and maybe jog his brain a little to start making small connections.

My biggest fear is losing my mind and it causes me anxiety sometimes, so this hit me pretty hard. I had to eat a etizolam today but shit man, shits crazy.

 

[RichardMooner]

My brother had a friend named (A) who had paranoid schizophrenia from a fairly young age. My brother met him through his cousin whom my brother was very close friends with. (A) was living with his cousin for a while and doing extremely well. He was on his meds, had a job, a girlfriend, he just seemed like any other normal guy. He was intelligent, really nice, etc.... In fact, even though I was little at the time, and he was about twenty or nineteen, I loved it when he would come over because my brother and I were really close, and when my brother would bring his friends over, I would often feel left out, but (A) would always come into my room and play video games with me and just chill. Well, one day, shit hit the fan and (A) had a psychotic breakdown. His Aunt and Uncle took him to the hospital and afterwards the hospital put him in a ward for a couple of weeks. After he got out, he just kind of lost it. He would go into the store and buy two hundred bucks worth of meet and then walk around throwing them out of the basket onto the sidewalk repeating shit like "They told me to", "I have to do it", "It's them that want". Granted, he made a lot of homeless people really happy, he never was the same again. I remember one time, my brother and I swung by his new place (he moved out of his cousin's), and dropped him off a couple of video games. It was this sketchy little apartment building in the less fortunate part of town. When we got up there, he kept offering me snuff (I was ten haha) and I kept refusing. His apartment wasn't that bad, wasn't morbidly grotesque or anything, but there was random shit all over the place, like tire irons hanging on the wall, or bottles of bleach in the middle of some books on a book shelf, and full bags of menthol snuff in every corner of the house. When my brother asked him how he liked living in the apartment he replied with "The lady next door blew up the kitchen". Shit like that. I mean, he seemed really happy, but he was completely out of it. A couple of days later he just up and left to California. I never did see him again.

Your friend sounds like he was in some sort of state of psychosis. To say that he's schizophrenic would be to jump to a diagnosis far from my qualifications, and without knowing, or seeing him, no one really can. I would wait and see how he's doing in the next couple of days. Even if he's not showing much progress, show him as much love and care as possible. Schizophrenia is not an infinitely dense beast and it it can be helped the majority of the time. Do all that you can to comfort him and help him through. I think the magazine idea is very good. Even if it doesn't help bring him out of it, it might comfort him if he still has any recollection of the time he spent with his friends. And I'm sure that deep in there, he's still there. Take comfort in knowing that you're doing all that you can to help him. I'm very sorry that this has happened to your friend, but he can be helped with the right people and love surrounding him.

 

[RichardMooner]

Completely seriously, I totally hate geese. Most arrogant thing that exists. Only thing that exists that can damag a stride or cruise.

In a sick way, I kind of admire that in Geese. They just have this Vonnegut/Celine like attitude of "Fuck you, and Fuck this. What the fuck- fuck it all". Haha

 

[cj]

OP all you can really do is advocate for the guy getting the mental health services he needs from the hospital.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

^Basically. When someone is as far gone as you describe, only mental health professionals really have the capacity to understand them, to make the connection between their current state and reality and provide them with the appropriate therapy/medication. You're a good friend to help him out like this. I would continue to visit him (pretty doubtless that you will) and track his progress, perhaps ask his doctor(s) what's wrong with him and how you can help.