I really want to respond to this but I haven’t gotten a spot like this right yet lifetime. Every single time it’s a fucking disaster.
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Maybe you need to get his family together and tell them all this. They can commit him perhaps. Otherwise I don’t think you have many levers unfortunately.
Have you called one of the suicide prevention hotlines? I bet they have heard this story before and might have an idea.
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Yeah. Hopefully someone gives you some practical advice, jmakin, but I just want to say it’s clear from your post that you’re a good guy and your friend is lucky to have you around. My experience is that it’s incredibly difficult to help in spots like this. You can drive yourself crazy trying to come up with the exact right plan or saying the exact right words to help. No matter what happens, you’re trying to do the right thing and that is admirable. I hope it works out.
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+1 to what clovis said.
To me, this has to have the biggest impact on how you should proceed. You are genuinely concerned for your friend–for good reason. He is engaging in self-destructive behavior common in people dealing with depression and substance abuse issues. That he has in the past been able to function in the world without consistent professional attention, is no guarantee that he can continue to do so. What you’ve shared about his past relationships seems indicative of someone who is hoping that they can find peace and happiness outside of themselves.
You need to sit and have a think about what help and support you are willing to provide unconditionally, and what help and support you’d only be willing to provide with conditions(ie. him seeing a therapist). Know what your boundaries are for your support, and for when you’d contact his family for help, and when you’d contact health professionals for support. You don’t need to etch these in stone, but you need to know how you feel now so you can focus on thinking clearly and being consistent with him going forward.
Continue to reach out to him, spend time interacting with him, letting him know that you value his friendship and value him as a human being independent of anything else.
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My experience here is limited but I want to second this.
I’ve shared this article before.
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Thank you for sharing that article again. Well worth the read.
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Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I feel a massive amount of guilt that I am doing so well and my friend is struggling so severely. I also feel a little like I am gonna lose him to something bad happening and I don’t know if I could live with that unless I did everything possible to help him. But again, I know it is a fine line to walk between helping and enabling, and I definitely could enable him if I was inclined.
I don’t think he’d ever ask for help but if he was in a situation where he was facing being out on the street I’d feel compelled to give him a place to stay. No strings attached is fine with me. I’d just worry about things getting worse, or him dragging me down or screwing me over somehow. I’ve learned in my life that you cannot fully trust an addict in the throes of addiction.
Calling the suicide hotline is a good idea. The day he smashed the phone, he went AWOL for over 24 hours. I ended up going to his house and practically beating down his door to check if he was ok because he had been talking extremely weird and I feared the worst. He was “fine” but acting strange and his place was a disaster. it seemed like I had walked in on him definitely contemplating something. Again though it’s just a strong, strong feeling, I don’t have any concrete reason to think so. But I have had brushes with suicide in my life and I know the signs. I know what he must be feeing right now. That is what worries me a lot, because I know in his shoes I would be seriously contemplating it.
He hasn’t done some of the red flag stuff like talking about death or hurting himself, so I doubt medical intervention would be possible. But the way this is going - it doesn’t seem too far away if it continues this way.
In the most selfish sense I want him to get a little better so I don’t feel so guilty about it. But that’s really secondary, I really fear for his well being at the moment. If I knew he even had a single plan about what to do about his situation I’d feel a lot better about it, or if I knew his parents would step up to give him some support if things got really bad. But I don’t know any of that and sort of feel like I’m the only one who really gives a shit enough of what happens to him to do something. He doesn’t even seem to care, and it’s frustrating.
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Blessed be what an article. Reading it now but had to pop in when I saw my boy Gabor mentioned 
But here’s the strange thing: It virtually never happens. As the Canadian doctor Gabor Mate was the first to explain to me, medical users just stop, despite months of use. The same drug, used for the same length of time, turns street-users into desperate addicts and leaves medical patients unaffected.
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Dr. Gabor Mate is the man.
Also some recent post on this site had me pull out the book “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach. Probably a book I need to read once a year.
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Did we just become best friends???
Very nice to make your acquaintance TS 
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First anxiety attack in a while hit me.
Goes to show that the CBD oil isn’t a cure but a treatment that has its limits. For example, the signs here weren’t that obvious which is an improvement. They existed but were not noticeable to the average person.
It also goes to show how much this quasi-lockdown is fucking with my mental health. Distance teaching will not be good if it’s affecting my mental state. It was bad during the lockdown and it’ll likely be even worse during another one.
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My mom buys me a self help book every other year for Christmas and it has become a family joke because I never actually read them.
I’m putting this one on the list though. I am laughing at googling it and finding a “summary” version on walmart. What demographic is that for?
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Huge market for people who want to be familiar AS THOUGH they read something. It’s like that scene in Avengers: Endgame when Ant-Man asks, “How many of you ever studied quantum mechanics?”
https://media1.tenor.com/images/9f2166c252968974b5fea1e22f3b837c/tenor.gif?itemid=18489263
Just had my second session and boy was it eye opening. It will sound like I’m saying fire is hot because it seems so obvious but it’s becoming clear my anxiety is rooted in my loss of control.
My whole life I’ve been the boss. I ran my last company. I moved to a new company right when covid hit so lost my work control and my private life control.
For a type A control freak that is not good. Add in my obsession with politics and the fact I don’t even get to vote!
My psychologist pointed out that covid and the new job has just make it clear I’ve never really had control. My control was an illusion.
As I said, news flash fire is hot!
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That’s great! Breakthroughs like this are my favorite part of therapy. Sometimes they feel obvious in retrospect, but I think without outside help it’s quite difficult to analyze ourselves and our patterns. After all, we’ve been living our whole life this way so it just feels normal… no need to think about how or why the patterns got there.
I had a realization recently that I’m terrified of provoking anger in others, and I go to great lengths to avoid it. My dad was an alcoholic prone to rage, so ldo that makes sense. My therapist had been hinting at this for months and somehow it only clicked for me now. If I were looking at it from the outside, I think I would have noticed the connection much quicker.
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Speaking of looking at things from the outside, I started listening to the Dear Therapists podcast recently and find it fascinating. You basically listen in as they do a session with someone, and then bring the person back later to see what happened.
It’s by Lori Gottlieb who writes a column in The Atlantic, and Guy Winch who has two fantastic TED talks on youtube. Two of my personal favorites. Highly recommend.
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It’s really interesting I would have bet my life savings my anxiety was all about increased isolation due to covid, as I’m pretty social.
Control never crossed my mind as a cause and now it seems so obvious it’s the real cause.
So glad I got some help as I would have spent all my time trying to put out a fire when the real issue had nothing to do with fire.
I keep telling myself, my therapist and my friends how this is so out of character for me which when you think about it is an odd reaction. I’d never say “getting an ear infection was so out of character for me”!
I think I am still sort of connecting mental health issues with personal failing in a way I would never do for physical health issues.
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I am going to download this!
New CBD vape pen is immensely helpful in anxious situations.
No burnt hits with this one!
Finally think I found a competent therapist. First session is November 2nd.
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I’ve never tried vape pen. Dumb question. Is that the same as smoking? Will it make me cough like smoking?