View Single Post
Old 08-19-2013, 10:40 PM
  # 1 (permalink)  
Plenny
Member
 
Plenny's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 2,747
Watching a good friend go down...

I have an amazing, beautiful, supportive friend. She has major depression and self esteem issues. We were drinking buddies for years. Then a few years ago I noticed that she was turning into a different person when she drank. I told her the first time it happened and that she hurt my feelings, and SHE was offended and angry at ME. She planned to kill herself on the night I threw her a birthday party at my house. She told me this after the party.
When drunk (nearly every night sometimes): She says mean things, she eats everything in sight, she forgets to pay her tabs, she falls down, locks herself out of her apartment all the time, she'd call me in the middle of the night and I'd pick up, worried, and she'd slur into the phone indecipherable things. It chilled me to the core. One night I saw that her phone was calling me yet again. I decided not to answer it because I had to get up early to work and her calls usually disturbed me and made me restless. Then she called over and over. When I picked up it was another friend of ours saying that my friend was in very bad shape and they were going to call an ambulance.
Soon after, we confronted her and told her her drinking was out of control. She quieted down for a while and then got right back to her old ways. She evades me, knowing that I'll be honest with her. But she's hurt me so much that I feel less and less like confronting her to repeat my concerns for her health.
Now her blood pressure is through the roof. She was taken to the ER during a hospital visit for another reason because they found her blood pressure was so high. She has rapidly gained weight. She doesn't look or act like the woman I knew. Her lips turn blue when she drinks and she wheezes. She recently fell down in the bar and twisted her ankle badly. I think she is worth so much more than this and I hate to see someone as elegant and wonderful as she really is lose her dignity this way, and put herself at such risk.
She is avoiding me like the plague. I keep trying to have dinner with her. She bears a grudge and doesn't want to talk to me about her drinking because she thinks my concerns are about my issues with my alcoholic parents. (I told her I couldn't be around her when she was drunk anymore because it was hurting me and yes it did remind me of my alcoholic parents, and now I'm the bad guy?)
About two months ago, I quit drinking and have been using this site for support. I quit for my own reasons.
I want to be there for my friend. I fear for her life, and I fear that she doesn't value herself enough to save herself.
I do not know what to do with all of this information. I feel like I am watching a train wreck.
Thanks for your patience with this long post.
Plenny is offline