A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:there is this guy. he is a couple years younger than me. i'm 22 he is 20. i've known him for about 3 years. he has extreme depression and social anxiety. he is extremely shy and it was a lot of work to build a friendship with him. we have only hung out 3 times. and yet still have managed to keep going as friends. i developed a crush on him and i went out of my way to introduce myself. seeing as i am extremely shy myself this was tough but i did it. i asked him out and he said "yeah, maybe" but never called me. i'm assuming because of his anxiety. i was mad but a week later i started talking to him again. over the course of these years we have gotten to know each other quite well and used to talk every day. first things first, i went to visit him in a different city where he goes to college. we spent the entire day together mindlessly flirting even though i knew nothing would come of it. and at the time i was fine with that. a couple months later he did cocaine for the first time and he tried to kill himself over this girl. i realized that ever since then i've been trying to deny how i really feel about him. recently he tried coke again. and i don't know what else he's been doing. he is impulsive and easily influenced and loves those dangerous people. since this semester has started he has started doing a lot more drugs and distancing himself from me and his family. we used to talk every day through text for hours. now i'm lucky if he even texts me back at all. the girl he tried to kill himself over (also a heroin addict) and his drug dealer are now back in his life claiming to be his friends. one day i couldn't take it anymore and i told his sister about the drugs and his violent outbursts he confessed while he's drinking. it took me two weeks to work up the courage to do this. it was the hardest decision i've ever had to make in my life because i walked into it knowing i would lose him. but i thought i would rather have him alive and hating me than dead and liking me. his sister told their parents about the violent outbursts but not about the drugs. she told me she was scared to do it. he confronted me about it and thought i did it for attention. i did it because i'm in love with him. i just admitted to myself how i felt a couple days ago. i've only known him for 3 years and i am his oldest friend. everyone leaves him. i promised i would never leave him and i would help him in any way i can. but i feel so helpless i dont know how. i haven't told him i'm in love with him. but i told him how much it hurts me when he does these things. he promised he would never do cocaine again. he even admitted to doing cocaine after knowing i told his parents. he has told me he thinks of me as a great source of wisdom in his life given my ethos. and he wasn't angry with me even though i told on him. i was so grateful but all the promises and hurt feelings can't erase my intuition telling me this is far from over. he has never had a friend die so he has no idea how it feels. and through all of this i lost another friend to cancer that just turned 24. it sounds horrible but i wasn't even able to grieve properly for him because i'm so focused on trying to save the other guy. i did research on rehab centers and even called crisis hotline. lot of good that did. his parents are ostriches with their heads in the sand. when it comes right down to it the weight is getting heavy. i cry every night. i'm constantly shaking from anxiety. i can't sleep because i constantly worry if he'll still be alive when i wake up in the morning. i have no idea what he is doing now and has become extremely secretive. at the end of the day i'm ready to give up. he is the one that has to realize when enough is enough and get himself some help. the problem is i feel like he won't realize it and he will die... and SOON! what can i do to make him see that what he is doing is not only killing him but me and everyone that loves him? i can't let him go that seems like the easy way out, and i don't want to be like all the rest that just gave up on him. this isn't about making him love me. this is about saving his life. help me please! i'm so lost!
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female
reader, Candid Cally +, writes (30 November 2012):
You've hung out 3 times in 3 years. Of course he thinks you are looking for attention when you told his sister about him being violent and taking drugs!
Your obsession with him is unhealthy for both of you. Whether he is genuinely shy or not, you have been the person trying to build some kind of relationship with him. Does he even seem interested in putting any effort into maintaining even a platonic friendship with you? Does he only reach out to you when you are the only one available to him?
I tried to help my best friend who was a heavy pill user after her fiance tried to kill her, causing her to have a nervous breakdown and end up in a severly emotionally abusive relationship that revolved around drugs and sex. When she had no one else to call, she would call me drunk and crying and rambling. I'd put everything aside to listen to her and we'd talk for hours only for her to not remember even having called me the next day. She lived with me temporarily. She stole medication from me. She abused my trust and goodwill. And I let her because I thought I was helping her through a difficult time and she would eventually come to her senses and get better.
She didn't. I had to find her a place to stay. She was arrested for drugs. She wrecked two cars because he nodded off behind the wheel. She started seeing a psychologist who she manipulated into prescribing her the drugs she was abusing so she could keep taking them while having regular urinalysis tests. She had multiple prescriptions for one drug 'lost' or 'stolen' in a five week period and he wrote her a new script every time. She had snorted over 240 of one type of pill in less than 6 weeks by the time she finally made it home to her family for the holidays and her sister called me asking what was wrong with my friend an I begged her to do a pill count while my friend was drunk and locked in the bathroom.
Her parents brought her to rehab sometime in the next 48 hours. And I was Given the task of cleaning her apartment and packing her things so her parents could move her back to their state while she was in rehab.
In return, she stole medication from her mother, alcohol from her father, she came back to my city, tried to move in with the guy who messed with her head, went on a 3 day drug binge and spent thousands of dollars. Lied to her bank about where the money went, and used fake urine to pass her next court drug test.
This was my BEST FRIEND in the whole world. I loved this girl and felt closer to her than I felt to my own sisters. I did everything I could for her including telling her parents the nature of her problems (but only after they asked me directly--they already knew) and trying to support her when everyone else gave up.
I snapped and lost it with her when she called crying about losing her money. I told her I knew what had happened, that she was lying, that I was sick of it, she needed to get help and I wasn't going to give mine anymore. And i told her not to call me again until her head was on straight.
Almost a year later she called me. She was finally clean, sober, and starting to make progress on her mental health. My ultimatum was what made her realize that drugs had made her lose almost everything important to her.
If you do truly care about this boy, you will stop interfering with his life and let him decide how to face his demons on his own. He won't get better unless he finds his own way.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (30 November 2012): "he has extreme depression and social anxiety"
"he did cocaine for the first time and he tried to kill himself over this girl"
"he is impulsive and easily influenced and loves those dangerous people" "he has started doing a lot more drugs and distancing himself from me and his family" "the girl he tried to kill himself over (also a heroin addict) and his drug dealer are now back in his life"
"his violent outbursts, he's drinking, everyone leaves him"
"his parents are ostriches with their heads in the sand"
"i cry every night. i'm constantly shaking from anxiety"
"what can i do to make him see that what he is doing is not only killing him but me and everyone that loves him?"
Oh cry me a river OP. He's not killing you, you are in your really crazy game of being a saviour.
OP this guy is messed up, you make great pains to tell us that but guess what? You're even more messed up than he is. You're a bigger danger to this guy than any drug dealer or junkie, because you're a codependent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency
I'm not going to go into too much detail here OP, but you're the sick one here, you're the one who need help and you#re ruining this guys already shit life by not letting him go.
You really want t protect him and help him? Then piss off and get your own life. You're keeping him down OP, how#s he supposed to fix his life if you're always there sticking you nose in and doing it for him?
I have no sympathy for you, the tears you cry aren't for him, they're for you. You have some kind of hell bent ego to heal him when you actually give him the strength to carry on fucking his life up by being his hero.
It's not that I don't understand this OP, I've taken drugs for 10 years, I've known plenty of asshole junkies and the only time they ever get help to fix that is when everyone walks away and they're alone.
You're not helping, you're making this worse, you're making yourself unhappy, you're making him unhappy and it's the courage and strength you give to him that leads him to think it's fine to keep taking drugs. "It'll be okay, just one more hit."
You think you're being his saviour well you're not, you're his codependent demon keeping him trapped in this cycle of hell to stroke your ego and to fulfil your sick need to be someone's hero, what you're doing id beyond selfish and you're actually so deluded you think it's the other way around.
You're the one who needs help OP, you need to go seek professional help before you do something to set him off and have him do something so drastic that you never forgive yourself. You're hurting you and him, so you need to stop. You're the one who needs to be strong here and you have to protect him and you from your martyr complex.
"i can't let him go that seems like the easy way out, and i don't want to be like all the rest that just gave up on him"
They didn't give up on him, they did the best possible thing for him and stopped being his emotional crutch. They were smart OP, they protected themselves and him, but you don't care what effect you're having on him, you just want to be a hero and want to have someone in your life to pity to make you feel good about yourself.
Get help, you're in over your head here OP and it's going to break you into a million pieces. He can recover his life, but you're headed down the same path as him but far, far worse, you're basically breaking yourself OP, you're going to be a broken woman soon.
Get help.
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A
male
reader, Serpico +, writes (30 November 2012):
You are not Florence Nightingale, and it is not your job to save him. He is a big boy, and is completely responsible at his age for his own actions. He is who he is, and is not likely to change anyway, despite your best efforts.
Im going to give you one piece of advice - stop trying to date this person through "saving" him. I dont know why many women do this, especially younger women, but it almost always ends poorly for the girl. If you hitch your star to a loser, you will become a loser, and make no mistake, this guy is a loser. Be with someone who brings you up, as well as you bring up. This part of any relationship cannot be completely one way and be successful.
If you stay with him, in ten years you will be spending most of your time regretting why your life didnt turn out different. Not a guess.
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