When to help a friend...?

[amber_dawn]

I've watched a good friend slowly descend into IV heroin addiction, starting when they experienced the death of a close family member about a year and a half ago.
This person and I have been close for a long time, not super close but we've hung out on a daily basis for weeks at a time over the past few years.

He doesn't have that many good friends either who live close enough to him to know whats going on, other than me. He's been in a somewhat co-dependent/emotionally abusive relationship with this girl who also has become addicted, but her addiction started first. Well, actually they both started with Crack and occasional PCP and then she moved on to pills then heroin and he followed. He's inherited a lot of money, basically a trust fund, so most of you can probably see where this is going.....? He just started shooting it probably last week, he went missing for about two weeks (but i got occasional texts from him), and I finally saw him tonight, and saw definite track marks on his hands.

What should I do? Should I tell our other friend who lives in California, a close friend of his who is trying to get him to move out there? How bad it's getting? Should I just let him alone to self destruct? Speaking with him directly probably wouldn't do much, he would deny any problem and just leave if I persisted. I would have to get our friend in Cali to call his family, who have legal control over his money--kind of fucked, right? Especially since I'm not exactly opposed to the use of opiates, but I rarely use them (I have other things I prefer...).

I'm kind of at a loss if I should do anything, any advice? I've had other friends go down this path, and I don't want him to end up the same way.

 

[n3ophy7e]

Hi amber_dawn, I reckon the first thing you should do is talk to HIM about it. Tell him you're concerned about him, see what he has to say, if anything. You should give him a chance to speak up, before doing anything like contacting his family or anything like that.

If that doesn't work, maybe then tell your friend in Cali what the situation is. They might then confront him about it, or perhaps you could both do like a mini-intervention kinda thing and both talk to your friend and tell him you're worried about him.

Then take things from there.

What do you think?

 

[amber_dawn]

Hey, thanks for your response.

My main worry is that talking to him about it will just get him avoid me. Knowing him, he's most likely to deny any problem and if I persist, he'll just stop communicating with me. I would rather be able to hang out with him/know whats going on.

What could I say though If I DO talk to him? I don't want to seem confrontational or like I'm lecturing him.

 

[sekio]

Tell him what you feel and that you're there for him. In the end, however, you can't say or do anything to change some peoples' minds. It's really a gamble between how rational he's feeling and how much he's relying on the junk to get by. Once you pass a certain threhold it's incredibly hard to become convinced it's a bad thing to be dosing all the time.