Something i need to get off my chest

[Tha_Wood]

So my psychologist tells me i need to share this history that i have with a friend that passed away. It's too hard to do in person so i figured the next best thing would be to posy it here. Read it, don't read it up to you but here it goes.

Back in 2010 I was working for a company that dealt with tradespeople. Sometimes we would take clients to sporting events. In 2011 I was starting out on a full blown addiction to speed and meth. I was high functioning went to work everyday did my job pretty well even though I was high 5 to 7 days a week and only sleeping two nights a week. We took some clients to a football game one weekend. This is where I met Daz. I was high obviously had a bag of speed with me. I went to the toilet to have some and Daz was in there. He asked what are you sneaking in here for, i told him i got some speed, do you want some. He had some. We continued partying after the game and went to a friend of mines house. There we started smoking meth and Daz joined in. Halfway through the night Daz told us that he went to rehab years ago for a meth addiction and this was his first time doing it in 5 years. Being as fucked up as we were we all laughed about it, Daz included. This was the night that derailed Daz's life again. Within 3 months he was getting divorced, smoking meth almost daily and sleeping on couches. This continued for the next few years falling deeper and deeper into addiction, all of us not just Daz. One night after a 5 day bender Daz joked to me it was my fault he got back on the drugs and his life went to shit. He said it jokingly but i knew there was some truth to it.

December 27th 2016 was the last time i smoked meth. Over the next 12 months I worked on getting my life back together while cutting all ties to people still in the drug game. Daz was one of those people. Turns out 2017 was a rough year for him. He ended up homeless, jobless and broke living out of his ute. He couldn't afford drugs anymore so he was drinking 4 to 6 litres of boxed wine a day in his ute. In February of this year he reached out to me and another friend. He wanted to get sober. I took him in at my house under the condition that he didn't drink and if he did drink he wasn't to drive his car. Things were going well for a few weeks while we waited to get him into rehab, he told us he wasn't drinking and was doing well. He was going to check into a rehab place on a Wednesday morning after staying with me and my partner for 3 weeks. I went to work that morning said goodbye and he thanked me for helping him and letting him stay with us. That afternoon I got call from the emergency department. When Daz went to check into rehab he blew 0.413 on the alcohol breathalyser. That's fucking crazy high. He was rushed to hospital and placed on suicide watch. The hospital said he was alright but they needed to keep him overnight for observation and i could pick him up in the morning. It turned out he had been drinking 4 to 6 litres a day of boxed wine while still living with us and driving everywhere still. The hospital aid i would have to administer alcohol to him three times a day otherwise he could die. I made the decision that i wasn't going to have him back at the house as 1) I have a life and administering alcohol to him three times a day was not going to be easy, 2) I was mad he had lied to me for the last 3 weeks and 3) and this is probably the one i feel the most guilty of I didn't want the hassle anymore. I won't try and justify it but that's what was up. He stayed at the psych ward for a few days as they were not able to just release him until they got in touch with an old girlfriend of his who signed him out and put him back on the street. I never saw Daz again after that, I talked to him on the phone a few times but I really just wanted to seperate myself from him. He died 3 weeks later. It was most likely suicide.

The guilt I feel about this is intense. I got him back on the drugs, even though it was his choice i still supplied them. I turned my back on him when he needed me because he was becoming an inconvenience. I'd like to say if i knew he was going to die i would have done things differently at the end, but thinking back on it I was pretty sure that was the destination he was headed when I turned him away.

 

[Rukas]

It wasn’t your fault man. You gave him every opportunity to get his life together. It sucks that you were a part of his relapse, but if it wasn’t you it would have been someone else.

The important thing is you got yourself out of that.

It is horrible what happened to him. But that was his journey not yours.

I’m just happy that you’re safe and doing amazing now. Live the best life that you can. Stay clean. Do it for you, do it for your girl, and do it for those like Daz who will never get the chance.

 

[keco52]

For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand I’m not gonna read it right now but I will come back to this.

I’m sure sharing it was difficult. I hope we both find peace.

 

[Tha_Wood]

It's fucked and I can't explain it but I want people to call me a piece of shit and blame me. I dunno why. It's not healthy and logically I know it isn't my fault he's dead but I still blame/want to blame myself.

 

[yak pac fatal]

he's a grown man. he made his choice and you made yours. the problem with addicts who tryna sober up/remain sober is they don't cut ties with their other addict friends so the same cycle continues. miserable people love to drag people back into that black hole so they don't suffer alone.

 

[dilla]

You sound like 2 good friends of mine from college.

6 of us were supposed to move to an apartment complex our second year and I was going to live with the one I was closest with from freshman year, until he got kicked out. So instead I got potluck in a 4 BR with 3 other guys. Cool guys, but they weren't my buds. Four of my friends got the apartment just above.

Anyway, one got kicked out and the other one was 1/4 of the guys upstairs. They both got in to weed and kept it from all of us for most of second year. Until a month before the end when it came out they were dealing and smoking in large amounts and the other 3 guys found out. They confronted him and he said he'd get rid of it. He didn't. A week later, the guys just up and moved out on him to a completely different complex. The front office even let them break their lease early after they were told of the situation, but could do nothing about it.

I finished that semester and over the summer, I too moved out without a sound, because the guy had changed. A lot. I moved in with the other guys at the new place.

But backing up a bit, the time between my friends abandoning him and then me eventually abandoning him, these two threw wagers with some of the sketchiest people. People that weren't even students and from out of town and just didn't seem like the kind of people we would hang out with just a year before. During one of these events, they brought a 16 year old girl. A big, redneck, nasty-looking high school girl. And I walked in on the dude fucking her in his room. The other friend, the one who got kicked out for second year, he was there too and just laughed it off despite knowing the other guy had a proper GF back home, 45 mins away.

There's more to that story but it's all sorts of messed up and that whole ordeal went from 10PM to about 4 AM with a whole lot of "WTFs" on my end. The next morning, I texted the buds of mine that moved out and told them I wanted out. I told them what he did, including the underage girl, and told them to vouch for me to move despite the guy living above me, and not with me. We all signed a lease together and requested to be put together and the office knew this. So me moving out like the other guys should have been no big deal. And it wasn't and I was out of there within 2 days, moved in to a new place with my friends.

The mistake I made was mentioning the underage girl. One of the other friends had been close friends with the underage-fucker since high school. He knew him, his family, and his GF and her family. The guy went and told the GF's father that something funny had gone down that weekend and the GF confronted her BF (my friend) over it. And they broke up. Probably a 2 or 3 year-long relationship, fucked up by one guy cheating and, probably, me mentioning it to a close friend of both of ours.

After she broke up, this guy fucked around even harder. More drugs, more drinks, no classes (he was kicked out in between as well) and he now had a partner in crime; the guy who was kicked out just the year prior but was returning that summer. The two of them sold more, did more, and studied less. He knew I was the one that told our friend about the underage girl and I told him I didn't intend for that friend to go and tell his girl and her father. I guess I should have taken that one to the grave with me.

So this guy eventually failed out again, moved back home, and just sort of (metaphorically) died there. Last I heard, he was a server at a BBQ spot. He got in to a horrible car wreck and no one knew until 3 months after it happened, including his partner in crime.

His partner in crime? Well, after he got kicked out the second time, he knocked up a senior in high school (we were 20 at the time, going on 21 that summer) and had a child. I still kept in contact with him but he didn't tell me about the pregnancy until a month before the baby was eventually, prematurely, born. He told me because he had been hiding it from his parents, too, and wanted advice on how to break it to them. I had no fucking clue. The girl managed to graduate while pregnant, had the kid, and this guy began working at his girl's dad's fiberglass factory, where he was eventually fired for dumb shit. He was their only source of income, though his parents supported the child's needs financially and for babysitting. They were a well-off family but denied their son and his girl financial support. Which is fine.

He started drinking. She kicked him out. He always had a problem with drinking but with a family, it was pretty obvious it was alcoholism. She kicked him out, he moved in to a meth trailer and lived there. He was sparse with communication for 3-6 months and I only found out when he finally somehow quit meth and got out of there and he told me via text one day.

His kid's 8 now and his wife was a redneck family but she's turned out to be quite a fine role model for their daughter. He's doing OK now too. He's worked at a ton of different car dealerships as a salesman but he's moved around a lot, too, between brands.

The other guy? No one knows. Even his best bud during their hey-days isn't in touch with him (guy I mentioned above) and no one else has asked family from their home town about him. He played football in high school and was a big guy but someone who saw him last around 2014 said he was easily 110 lbs and just looking like shit.

So the whole point of my diatribe was this. Had I just stayed in bed that night and not seen the act of this dude banging a 16 year old hippo, I never would've known. Never would've told my friends that moved out that I wanted out as well. This guy would still be with his GF, I think, because she wouldn't have been any wiser to his deeds. Or if I had seen him doing it, just STFU and moved out and not told my friends the reason why or just how far down the rabbit hole these two guys had gone. I guess I would've fucked up that one girl's life, had she married him, but better that than wondering if breaking them up was the reason he got deeper into drugs because of no more accountability.

It doesn't keep me up at night but I know it had some butterfly effect and then a domino effect on that dude's life. I just wanted to break my lease so I could move, because he was a bugaboo.

 

[k69atie]

It's not your fault it really isn't

 

[Ristol]

It's not your fault, Woody. You have to accept that. You have to protect yourself and you really can't save somebody who doesn't want to be saved.

Two years ago I was roommates with my best friend. We were basically cousins; we weren't blood relatives but our moms had been friends since they were kids. We went to Kindergarten together.

I got the feeling he was using heroin (again). So one night I confronted him over a game of Chess. I said, "Brendan, if you continue to use, I gotta move out. I can't have my daughter around this." He looked hurt. I went to bed.

I woke up to the police knocking on the door, telling me he was dead. Probably suicide. This was one month after my dad died.

Now, if I hadn't confronted him, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have died that night. But I've made peace with it. I said what I had to say. He's gone, and I wish he wasn't, but I know I'm not responsible. He made his decision.

 

[_carmi]

You can’t be blamed for another man’s decision. He knew what his demons were and still smoked it. Everything else is derived from his decision.

The guild you feel is normal. It’s what makes you a good human being. You just gotta make sure you don’t let this drag you down. Time will take care of the rest.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[ARon]

At the end of the day people are going to do what they want regardless of your previous actions. Some people aren't responsible enough to control their power of choice. He made his own decisions, sadly they weren't the right ones.

Whenever I encountered issues like this I always had to humble myself and realize I can't control the actions of another person and it's narcissistic to think that I could. I can offer guidance but that's about it. If that works then good and if it does not then I most likely lose someone and I'll be sad but the guilt won't be there. Thinking like that helped me out