Why are you sad right now?

[BlackMastodon]

Call a crisis center ASAP. Not sure how things are where you're at (unfamiliar with the Bakers Act) but it absolutely sounds like he needs psychiatric health immediately for his own safety and for others'. Best of luck, this sounds like a really awful situation.

 

[CannibalCricket]

Last night I realized my best friend is not actually in the throes of a meth addiction, but he’s been in a manic state for the last 2 months and because of his history with substances, everyone around him has suspected it’s been drugs.

This started up in January and has been escalating, I had to take a step back because I was assuming it was a drug whirlwind I didn’t want to get caught in, but after visiting him last night and putting a HUGE fucking puzzle together, I’m 99.9% confident it’s not drugs.

This guy used to be OCD about being neat and clean, when I walked in his apartment last night he had moved everything into his bedroom, which was just a mountain of clothes, furniture, food, cat box, cat shit and basically everything in his apartment but his guitars/TV (not sure where that is right now) was just…..everywhere.

He can’t stay on one thought long enough to say anything coherent, in a 10 second sentence he can go through every emotion, he’ll laugh, cry, get angry within seconds.

To make matters worse, he got evicted and was supposed to be out 8 days ago.

I’m the only person this guy has in his life, his family is all dead. I have no fucking clue what to do right now. I’m considering having him Baker Act’d as he’s starting to talk about suicide, but his landlord will throw out all his shit when he’s in the hospital and he’ll be homeless after. I cannot have him in my apartment in the state he’s in (I previously forced him to live with me when he needed it, this isn’t that situation)

I have someone at work who spends all her time in the mental health arena so I’m going to consult her when she gets in, but I’m at a loss or how to handle this right now.

Man I am sorry for your friend. My brother had a psycological break down and the things you are describing sounds like what your friend is experiencing. Everyone including myself thought he was on drugs. When they tested him at life management he was clean except for weed, which he had a perscription. Baker act is a good thing to start now. There is a marchman act and an exparte order. If you can try all of those. My brother ended up in jail because the psyche ward let him go after he said he wasn't suicidal. It is a terrible thing to see happen to a loved one. I hooe your friend comes out of this unscathed and able to heal

 

[RevDrucifer]

Call a crisis center ASAP. Not sure how things are where you're at (unfamiliar with the Bakers Act) but it absolutely sounds like he needs psychiatric health immediately for his own safety and for others'. Best of luck, this sounds like a really awful situation.

Man I am sorry for your friend. My brother had a psycological break down and the things you are describing sounds like what your friend is experiencing. Everyone including myself thought he was on drugs. When they tested him at life management he was clean except for weed, which he had a perscription. Baker act is a good thing to start now. There is a marchman act and an exparte order. If you can try all of those. My brother ended up in jail because the psyche ward let him go after he said he wasn't suicidal. It is a terrible thing to see happen to a loved one. I hooe your friend comes out of this unscathed and able to heal

Thanks, guys.

I got in contact with a legit crisis center today. Being in Florida, I’m cautious of treatment centers because it’s a huge racket here and many don’t care about the patients. One of our paralegals at work served on the board of this place, she was a patient herself and recommended them to me.

Because he’s not consistently threatening suicide, I have to have him agree to talk to a professional and their mobile crisis unit will come talk to him in his apartment.

I spoke to him about 30 minutes ago and he was surprisingly clear for the first few minutes, but once he started talking about all the problems he has he got manic again. At a certain point I had ot hang up on him because he kept interupting me and just screaming at me even though he wasn’t mad at me, I just got out “Some people are concerned” and he went the fuck off, I couldn’t stop him.

Gonna give it another shot when I get out of work and can see him in person.

 

[crushingpetal]

Last night I realized my best friend is not actually in the throes of a meth addiction, but he’s been in a manic state for the last 2 months and because of his history with substances, everyone around him has suspected it’s been drugs.

This started up in January and has been escalating, I had to take a step back because I was assuming it was a drug whirlwind I didn’t want to get caught in, but after visiting him last night and putting a HUGE fucking puzzle together, I’m 99.9% confident it’s not drugs.

This guy used to be OCD about being neat and clean, when I walked in his apartment last night he had moved everything into his bedroom, which was just a mountain of clothes, furniture, food, cat box, cat shit and basically everything in his apartment but his guitars/TV (not sure where that is right now) was just…..everywhere.

He can’t stay on one thought long enough to say anything coherent, in a 10 second sentence he can go through every emotion, he’ll laugh, cry, get angry within seconds.

To make matters worse, he got evicted and was supposed to be out 8 days ago.

I’m the only person this guy has in his life, his family is all dead. I have no fucking clue what to do right now. I’m considering having him Baker Act’d as he’s starting to talk about suicide, but his landlord will throw out all his shit when he’s in the hospital and he’ll be homeless after. I cannot have him in my apartment in the state he’s in (I previously forced him to live with me when he needed it, this isn’t that situation)

I have someone at work who spends all her time in the mental health arena so I’m going to consult her when she gets in, but I’m at a loss or how to handle this right now.

So sorry to hear this. Legal aid can possibly help with eviction:

Get Legal Help - Broward Legal Aid

Legal Aid Service of Broward County provides free civil legal services to low-income and otherwise eligible residents of Broward County. Our mission is to provide high quality free civil legal advice, representation, and education to the disadvantaged of Broward County, so as to improve the...

www.browardlegalaid.org

 

[CannibalCricket]

Wow. Exactly like my brother(he is doing excellent now). Holding all the issues and day to day in becomes this giant knot of all problems. It was hard to talk to my brother because he would start with a simple conversation that would jump topics so rapidly it was impossible to follow and harder to talk him down from how excited and irritated he was by everything. Im not sure how drastic he is but it may help to try and get him to talk about what is going on right at the moment. Scenery and the things around. Visible things. It helped to calm my brother sometimes. What little experience i have it seems to come in powerful waves, the delusions and emotions. Inbetween those moments they can seem lucid and receptive to reason

 

[SalsaWood]

Dude probably moved all his stuff deeper into the dwelling to make eviction more tedious. If he starts talking, well, crazy, as in the case of exercising or expressing significant incongruities with reality that's a different matter. Plenty of completely sane motivations lead to depression and perpetual or compounding uncertainties which can be especially destructive or counterproductive in fact. You're not going to be able to Baker Act him, I guess you've figured that out already, but it's good to be informed about how you can help him. Getting him formally diagnosed is really the most important thing at this point, though that can backfire as well since most psychiatrists push a strictly functional form of lunacy themselves. Regardless that will be your best bet right now, accurately assessing the problem.

 

[RevDrucifer]

So sorry to hear this. Legal aid can possibly help with eviction:

Get Legal Help - Broward Legal Aid

Legal Aid Service of Broward County provides free civil legal services to low-income and otherwise eligible residents of Broward County. Our mission is to provide high quality free civil legal advice, representation, and education to the disadvantaged of Broward County, so as to improve the...

www.browardlegalaid.org

Thank you, brother!

This is an odd one because he’s claiming he hasn’t received an official eviction notice yet. I’m actually in property management and have enough resources that if there’s anything funky going on with the landlord, it’ll be verified. I just need to see all the documentation he has to know if he’s thinking clearly or not.

A frustrating aspect of this is that he has plenty of money, the guy’s been sitting on about $60-$75K for years now, but when all this started he was talking to a financial consultant and he invested everything he had saved because he was walking home with a grand in cash every night at his job he no longer has.

Wow. Exactly like my brother(he is doing excellent now). Holding all the issues and day to day in becomes this giant knot of all problems. It was hard to talk to my brother because he would start with a simple conversation that would jump topics so rapidly it was impossible to follow and harder to talk him down from how excited and irritated he was by everything. Im not sure how drastic he is but it may help to try and get him to talk about what is going on right at the moment. Scenery and the things around. Visible things. It helped to calm my brother sometimes. What little experience i have it seems to come in powerful waves, the delusions and emotions. Inbetween those moments they can seem lucid and receptive to reason

That’s EXACTLY what’s going on. And actually, getting him to talk about what’s going on right now IS the issue because that’s what he’s all fired up about. It’s not like herding cats, it’s like trying to herd a pack of pissed off mountain lions. Any time you put *any* question towards, positive or negative, he cuts you off and starts ranting.

Appreciate the sharing, brother, really, thank you!

Dude probably moved all his stuff deeper into the dwelling to make eviction more tedious. If he starts talking, well, crazy, as in the case of exercising or expressing significant incongruities with reality that's a different matter. Plenty of completely sane motivations lead to depression and perpetual or compounding uncertainties which can be especially destructive or counterproductive in fact. You're not going to be able to Baker Act him, I guess you've figured that out already, but it's good to be informed about how you can help him. Getting him formally diagnosed is really the most important thing at this point, though that can backfire as well since most psychiatrists push a strictly functional form of lunacy themselves. Regardless that will be your best bet right now, accurately assessing the problem.

I found out today all his guitars are with a friend, he moved everything of value out of concern his landlord was going to trash everything due to the eviction.

And yeah, we’re at the “expressing significant incongruities with reality” stage. If this were someone just having a rough patch I wouldn’t have even made the post, the guy’s entire last decade has been a rough patch.

I tell ya, as people we throw the word “crazy” around quite carelessly and if more people experienced a legitimate mental breakdown there’d probably be less people wearing their diagnosis like a badge of pride or a unique character trait.

 

[SalsaWood]

I tell ya, as people we throw the word “crazy” around quite carelessly and if more people experienced a legitimate mental breakdown there’d probably be less people wearing their diagnosis like a badge of pride or a unique character trait.

All the things which make us "human" can very easily cross into insanity. It doesn't take much for the "average" person to be entirely unreasonable while they remain entirely sane otherwise, as they often temporarily rationalize insanity more eagerly than the empirical need for sanity can be beat into them by Darwin. Lunacy would be conditional on not being aware of, or being unable to consider, a flaw in what is perceived to be metered and measured logical behavior. Kind of like a system bug that keeps you from detecting system bugs if you want to think of it in those terms. It's semantics more than anything at its core. The fact you're bothered by it being used haphazardly is actually crazy, as I'm assuming you understand the actions of others are reliably out of your own control and folks can be that C word.

If you need to use the red phone on him though at least figure out when that would be appropriate. Shrinks do help folks when they have time, it's not like calling a lawyer's office for advice. I'd call around both public and private to see what kind of feedback you can gather just to have a lay of the land and where yall are.

 

[JDB123]

I tell ya, as people we throw the word “crazy” around quite carelessly and if more people experienced a legitimate mental breakdown there’d probably be less people wearing their diagnosis like a badge of pride or a unique character trait.

Recently my wife and I have been making efforts to remove the term "crazy" from our daily vocabulary for similar reasons (we have friends dealing with mental health struggles who have been institutionalized, etc) and it's been more difficult than I had reckoned with.

You really start to notice how often other people use the word, freely and without much thought or regard. "Crazy", "insane", "psycho", all are used quite frequently in American speech. It also feels good to find new ways to express yourself in conversation, and be a little more conscious of what you're saying in the moment.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Thanks, guys.

I got in contact with a legit crisis center today. Being in Florida, I’m cautious of treatment centers because it’s a huge racket here and many don’t care about the patients. One of our paralegals at work served on the board of this place, she was a patient herself and recommended them to me.

Because he’s not consistently threatening suicide, I have to have him agree to talk to a professional and their mobile crisis unit will come talk to him in his apartment.

I spoke to him about 30 minutes ago and he was surprisingly clear for the first few minutes, but once he started talking about all the problems he has he got manic again. At a certain point I had ot hang up on him because he kept interupting me and just screaming at me even though he wasn’t mad at me, I just got out “Some people are concerned” and he went the fuck off, I couldn’t stop him.

Gonna give it another shot when I get out of work and can see him in person.

Really sorry to hear this. I had a friend go through a severe mental break, he ended up being institutionalized against his will. I don't know what the right choice was for him, but he was even worse after he got out from the trauma of being forcibly institutionalized. Also his primary income was from growing weed (illegally) and all his plants died while he was committed so he came out broke and unable to support himself. He's doing a lot better now but it was a long road. I was visiting him semi-regularly during the intense times before and after his commitment, he was barely coherent but could still drum like a mofo so we jammed a lot. It was the only time he seemed like himself. If I tried to engage critically with his rants he'd get very angry and suspicious. It was really sad watching all of his "friends" who were clearly just around for the weed hookups abandon him. Wish I had something more constructive to add. I feel deeply for you and your friend.

 

[lurè]

My brother has been hospitalized multiple times for bipolar disorder and mental breakdown.

In these cases It's better to be safe than sorry: most of the time they're are going to do something stupid, even if they're not harming themselves.

Once they get better they usually feel really ashamed of what they did but it's still worth limiting or preventing any unnecessary harm.

 

[RevDrucifer]

Really sorry to hear this. I had a friend go through a severe mental break, he ended up being institutionalized against his will. I don't know what the right choice was for him, but he was even worse after he got out from the trauma of being forcibly institutionalized. Also his primary income was from growing weed (illegally) and all his plants died while he was committed so he came out broke and unable to support himself. He's doing a lot better now but it was a long road. I was visiting him semi-regularly during the intense times before and after his commitment, he was barely coherent but could still drum like a mofo so we jammed a lot. It was the only time he seemed like himself. If I tried to engage critically with his rants he'd get very angry and suspicious. It was really sad watching all of his "friends" who were clearly just around for the weed hookups abandon him. Wish I had something more constructive to add. I feel deeply for you and your friend.

This is actually similar to my buddy; while he’s had substance abuse issues for over a decade, he’s the happiest drunk dude in the world and an absolute fucking riot. Like the kind of guy that can make a 70 year old lady laugh as hard as a 20 year old dude. He’s worked in bars here forever, so he knows everyone who can get anything and that’s brought on a lot of people who straight up use the guy.

We’re trying to navigate this so he’s set up with an apartment before we make any moves. He seems to be doing good when he’s getting the issues resolved, yesterday he got his bank accounts straightened out and got a new license.

 

[RevDrucifer]

Recently my wife and I have been making efforts to remove the term "crazy" from our daily vocabulary for similar reasons (we have friends dealing with mental health struggles who have been institutionalized, etc) and it's been more difficult than I had reckoned with.

You really start to notice how often other people use the word, freely and without much thought or regard. "Crazy", "insane", "psycho", all are used quite frequently in American speech. It also feels good to find new ways to express yourself in conversation, and be a little more conscious of what you're saying in the moment.

This experience is definitely going to make word choice quite a bit more defined. Even when describing myself, I’ve said for years if I go a few week without writing anything I start getting a bit manic and while that’s true, in comparison to this situation it’s like stubbing my toe vs. having my legs blown off by a land mine.

 

[nightflameauto]

A while back the family farm my uncle still lives on had a huge storm. That was sad enough. Recently found out that, despite the fact the birds always had time to anticipate and take cover in the past, this storm swept through so fast it killed off massive swarms of the little buggers. This makes me sad for multiple reasons, not the least of which remembering my mornings choring being greeted by the little poop bombers chirping and squawking each other awake. But the big one? As much as we don't like to admit it, something is changing with weather patterns. My grandparents loved birds and gramps was a big bird watcher. This shit would not have happened in their lifetimes. It shouldn't have happened in ours.

It makes me wonder how many other animals are being killed off because of the weird shifting weather patterns. My understanding is pressure changes in the storm fronts of old warned the wildlife it was coming. Now? The pressure change is mostly in the storm itself as they sweep through fast. That whole thing is both sad and weirding me out on some existential level I can't quite put my finger on, beyond the "we're all doomed" internal dialog.

 

[BlackMastodon]

A while back the family farm my uncle still lives on had a huge storm. That was sad enough. Recently found out that, despite the fact the birds always had time to anticipate and take cover in the past, this storm swept through so fast it killed off massive swarms of the little buggers. This makes me sad for multiple reasons, not the least of which remembering my mornings choring being greeted by the little poop bombers chirping and squawking each other awake. But the big one? As much as we don't like to admit it, something is changing with weather patterns. My grandparents loved birds and gramps was a big bird watcher. This shit would not have happened in their lifetimes. It shouldn't have happened in ours.

It makes me wonder how many other animals are being killed off because of the weird shifting weather patterns. My understanding is pressure changes in the storm fronts of old warned the wildlife it was coming. Now? The pressure change is mostly in the storm itself as they sweep through fast. That whole thing is both sad and weirding me out on some existential level I can't quite put my finger on, beyond the "we're all doomed" internal dialog.

I feel you on this. Even though I'm only 32 and have lived in this same relatively weather-stable area my whole life (only 2 tornadoes in my lifetime in the county, landlocked so no hurricanes, no forest fires, etc.) I swear for the last 5 or so years that rain hasn't been the same. I remember storms as a kid and they were nothing like this; now we get absolutely torrential downpours with crazy high winds and thunder, or barely a sprinkle. Both for maybe 20-30 minutes. We maybe get 1 or 2 actual rainy days per year where it's just steadily raining the entire day, which I seem to remember were much more common as a kid. I don't know if it's nostalgia/hindsight playing tricks, but something has definitely felt different recently, and it also tickles that "we're all doomed" part my lizard brain.