Anyone ever have a friend go crazy on them?

I feel for you and completely understand your decision to distance yourself. If your friend is a minister in a large church organization, it might be helpful for you to contact them and let them know you are worried about her health. For example, in the United Methodist church there is district and conference leadership (roughly, city and state) that pastors work for. If this were happening to a pastor in my conference, I think the leadership would want to know and would be able to help her get help.

She’s not an active minister currently employed, but has a masters in theology and refers to herself as one. A couple weeks before I visited she had a really rough patch with some other personal problems which led her to quit all her sources of gainful employment. I’m really not sure how she’s going to survive.

You don’t need to be schizophrenic to be paranoid, because it’s a disorder all on it’s own - though the relative who has this diagnosis is also clinically depressed.

She can make any claim she wants, but she won’t recover on any claim based on the above.

My bad! :smiley:

Just as an update, she got the package yesterday which included a book I’d borrowed, a handmade thank-you note, several hard copies of photos of her dog, and the CD of all the images… and today sent me a nasty note describing how my failure to take a picture from a certain angle (and indeed my sending of the package itself) is yet another indication of how there is nothing about me that doesn’t serve my own selfish aims, and so on and so forth.

Sigh.

I hope she does well, I really do, but for the time being I’ve blocked all routes of communication from her. Thanks again, everyone.

We don’t need an afterlife in order to create our own Heaven or Hell here on Earth. If you’re ever tempted to hate her or be angry about this, just remember that she has created her own Hell, and no one can save her from it.

That really sucks Naja. I cant see how being in contact would help either you or her. It’s so sad to see somebody go fruit loops like that.

I’ve never had to experience a friend go crazy, but I did have a crazy apartment-mate once. He took a whole cornucopia of drugs, would giggle at odd times, make creepy comments to women, and other things. He once put what I thought was a breath mint in my hand on the way to a party, and told me it would help me to relax. I realized then it was one of his drugs, but I was too afraid of him to say no, and took it anyway… Foolishly moronic, but oh well. It felt like an alka seltzer tablet was melting on top of my brain. It was kinda cool actually, in a scary fun way.

He also claimed he was an “ovo-vegan,” was fanatical about PETA, and would claim to be Jewish and then claim to be non-religious depending on his mood.

Oh, then there was the time at a party when two frattish boys were talking about Halo and one said “dude I totally raped you that game.” Yes, it’s tasteless vernacular, but that shouldn’t have been reason for my room-mate to fly off the handle and accost them yelling, “my sister was raped! That’s not funny! I’ll call my sister right now do you want that?!?”

Oh memories.

My sister’s ex (and still good friend) is bipolar. She was actually quite sane and on an even keel, but she did introduce my sister (and me) to a bipolar friend who occasionally had severe meltdowns. We usually carried on as if it was business as usual. And made sure not to take anything personally or play into her paranoid expectations.

For example, in your case, my sister and her ex would simply send the CD of images as promised with a message about how nice the visit was and maybe a note about how they’re sorry she is upset and hopes she feels better about things soon. But in no way whatsoever would anyone acknowledge her paranoid/irrational accusations or cater to her delusions. So NO saying “sorry, I upset you” because that validates her irrational notions that you were plotting against her or deliberately acting against her. In her eyes that would be an admission of guilt.

She may have been sad that you were leaving and then her mixed up brain twisted that around so her feelings of “boo-hoo, my freind is going away” turned into “my friend is trying to hurt me!”

Oherwise, no communication is the best route because anything you say or do will someone be twisted to fit her irrational expectations.

You’ve been lovely, I really think so, and I think you did the right thing in both choices.

Ugh, yeah. Complete with sending VERY graphic “love” letters to my husband. The mental meltdown is a very ugly thing indeed. 15 years, and all I have to show for it is some scars. That, and other friends that will still speak to her. They all know she’s gone, baby, gone, but they do it anyway. It’s hard to watch a friendship evaporate with extreme prejudice rather than just a gradual fading.
The good news is that I can just turn my back.

I too have experienced something similar. My friend’s paranoia, outrageous accusations, and other irrational behaviors were exacerbated (but, I believe, not caused) by drug addiction. I was forced to break off all contact with him for my own sake. It is a bewildering and painful situation, and it’s difficult not to second-guess yourself. I sympathize.

I have a sister who is bipolar, and the paranoia which comes with it can literally erase every shred of reasoning capability from her brain. She can become so overcome with paranoia that any decision she makes is not a choice of hers per se, but a panicked attempt to get away from the terror.

I think you handled everything very well, I just wanted to add this to the discussion - that sometimes the mentally ill person is swept away by the illness, that (as you noticed) one little thing happening can cause the person to jump to one erroneous conclusion, which leads to another, and another, until they are standing screaming in the street.

Here’s my entry, scroll down to the second post to see a cleaned up, easier to read version of it.

BTW we fired him for stealing a few weeks later, hopefully he’s gone for good now. Sucks, we were best friends at one point, but I’ll call the police if he shows up on my doorstep.

Oh yes. Happened again this Xmas, in fact. But I can’t just cut off the contact. It’s my daughter’s mother. Xmas week was great, but she overdid it, and wound up back in the hospital. Tonsilitis. So, I stayed longer than I’d planned, to watch our daughter until her parents could arrive to spell me. I have always had to try not to take her little displays of temper personally, but she started going off on the smallest things, beginning with insisting that my not being able to get ahold of a friend of hers was me not knowing how to use her phone, to being callous enough to mention a NYE party her friends had invited me to. That was the first time I had to just hang up on her. Next day it was not showing up exactly when she expected. (After lunch means after our lunch, not yours.) down to berating me for ‘looking funny’ while she went off on me from her hospital bed. Sorry, but if you’re going to hurt my feelings like that, it may show on my face. Past a certain point, I just don’t put up with it. Next day she calls at eleven and If I don’t have our daughter at the hospital in one hour, she’ll report a kidnapping. yeah. I called her parents, asked if They could come up a day sooner, I’d be with Emma at the Motel 6.
Last I saw of her, she was calling me a ‘devil worshipper’ and telling me I suck. In front of our daughter, in the hospital lobby. It took careful negotiation to get back the watch I loaned her, because she was complaining about there being no clock in the room. You see, she knew the watch was the one I got from turning in the wedding set we never used. So, calling attention to the watch was ‘a slap in her face’.

I packed up my things and we went. Had a lovely New Years Eve, just me and my Emma Grace. She almost made it to midnight. Not bad for six. Sorry, Six and a Half. Very firm on that point she is.

On my trip back to Phoenix, she called to complain heatedly that I hadn’t put the water bottles back exactly where they were before. I moved them to mop the floor, but she was having none of it. I hung up, I don’t need that while I’m driving through L.A. traffic.

In the past, she’s apologised for things like this, but this time I’m going to tell her the same I told our daughter, who apologized for being caught standing in the tub the third time, when she’d been told twice, that "Sometimes sorry’s not enough. I know you’re sorry, but you have to change the behaviour.

It will probably work as well as it’s worked in the past, I’m just an arrogant bastard who has no right to tell her what to do.

I was friends with a couple - let’s call them Barry and Theresa - back in high school. I was a friend of Barry and an acquaintance of Theresa, and I initially introduced them to each other. When they ran into each other by chance a few weeks later, they hit it off and became a couple. Despite the many, many, many times I told Theresa that I had no romantic interest in Barry whatsoever (and vice versa), she was always a little paranoid that we might have a thing for each other but that didn’t stop persisting in seeking my friendship. I often felt like I was befriended by her whether I wanted to be or not.

After several years (when we were about 19), Barry and Theresa had a baby and asked me to be Guardian (like Godmother, but without any religious commitments). I agreed. In the twelve months that followed the baby’s birth, I became increasingly worried about Theresa and urged her to seek counseling over the abusive and traumatic childhood she’d suffered, and she kept agreeing in a non-committal way. I wondered if she was suffering post natal depression, and thought that she was becoming slightly unbalanced - between PSD and the unresolved issues from her past, anyone might lose their grip on sanity. In the last couple of months before their daughter’s first birthday her behaviour became really erratic. I won’t go into detail about anything but the final straw, which came over our mutual friend (who I shall rename Georgia for the purpose of this story).

Georgia was the first in the room to notice that Theresa’s daughter was reaching for an overflowing ashtray on a coffee table and she stepped right over, took the little girl by one arm, stepped her back one step and sat her on the floor. She then moved the ashtray out of the baby’s reach. I watched her do it without comment - she was gentle, it was unremarkable and I’d have forgotten it instantly had Theresa’s friend Kylie not made a big deal out of it fifteen minutes later (when Georgia left). Theresa seemed unconcerned because she hadn’t been watching and didn’t see it happen, and when Kylie insisted that Georgia had pulled the child’s arm hard enough to dislocate it, I thought she was exaggerating. Theresa asked my opinion, I told her I didn’t think it was a big deal, the child hadn’t been hurt and had been prevented from getting into something she shouldn’t have touched. Theresa seemed to take my word for it and the subject was changed. Imagine my surprise when I saw Theresa a week later and she was angry about Georgia, accusing her of lifting the child by one arm. Quickly establishing that they hadn’t seen each other since the last time I was there I tried to calm Theresa down, telling her that Kylie was an idiot, that Georgia had been quite gentle and that there was never any risk of the baby being hurt by her actions, but Theresa dismissed what I was saying and insisted that Georgia had abused her child. When I pointed out that she hadn’t even seen it happen, she retorted that she had, that it had happened when I wasn’t there and I wouldn’t know. I reminded her that I was there and she triumphantly seized upon this as a second instance of Georgia jerking the baby by one arm. A week after that, she was declaring it had happened on at least four separate occasions, including one where Georgia had carried the child down the length of a hallway by her arm, feet off the ground.

I warned Georgia about what Theresa was saying and she was upset. Not only were the accusations unfair and uncalled-for, but she was training for a certificate in childcare at the time and was concerned that, if rumors started flying around the town that she abused a child, it may threaten her ability to get a job. I suggested we tell Theresa that Georgia was thinking about getting legal advice, that what she was saying was slander and that Georgia was concerned it would jeopardize her career. Georgia agreed that I should tell Theresa that, and so I did the next time we spoke. I thought it would make her consider her words a little more carefully but it just inflamed the situation and Theresa became more aggressive, more vocal and more determined to punish Georgia for “abusing” her child.

On the day that things came to a head, I answered the door to an agitated Theresa. By agitated I mean… excited, unable to stand still (rocking from one foot to another), speaking loudly and quickly, not making eye contact, jumping from one subject to another… just seeing her, I was alarmed about her frame of mind because she looked unstable, keyed up and reckless. She had three or four girls with her (including Kylie) who I’d characterize as thugs. Theresa asked me if I knew where Georgia was because she said they were going to confront her with their allegations of abuse (up to “at least five occasions” and included carrying the child by one arm across the whole house) and, if she didn’t confess, they’d “make her” confess. I told them Georgia was at work (which was true, and I felt safe telling them this because they didn’t know where she worked) and that I didn’t know when she’d be home. They left, talking about driving by Georgia’s house again to see if her car was there (apparently they’d been driving back and forth for some time prior, waiting for her to come home). I phoned Georgia’s boyfriend and warned him that they were looking for her and to be careful of them because they had the look of a lynch mob about them.

When Georgia got home from work, he told her about my call and she immediately phoned me to ask for more detail. She decided the best thing to do was to confront them head-on, and phoned Theresa to ask what was going on. Theresa backed down a little when talking directly to Georgia and became a lot more conciliatory. Georgia asked why they were looking for her and why they were saying they were going to “make her” confess to something she didn’t do, and Theresa said it was because she was angry that Georgia was suing her. Georgia said “I am not suing you! Where did you get that idea?” and Theresa said “From Cazzle”. Georgia said that it wasn’t true and Theresa said (essentially) “It’s all Cazzle’s fault. She’s the one behind it. She’s lied about everything. Me and the girls are going to pay her a visit” and ended the call. Georgia freaked out and called me to warn me so I already had the doors locked when Theresa and her posse arrived, but I tried to speak to her through the security door to calm her down. I wasn’t given a chance. She threatened to smash her way into the house, to kill me, and called me every name under the sun. I asked her to leave and I walked away to call the police. Theresa hung around screaming at me from outside for a few more minutes and then she and her friends took off just before the police arrived. Later, she told the police to tell me to take a restraining order against her because she thought it would be the only thing that would stop her coming after me.

This all happened the day before their child’s first birthday.

A year later, I received a Christmas card containing a photograph of their daughter, signed with the little girl’s name. I didn’t respond. I heard through mutual friends that at any given opportunity she’d rant about what a terrible guardian I was because I never saw my “goddaughter” and how I ought to spend time with her. I found that baffling.

Finally, about seven years after the event, Theresa tracked me down online and sent me a message telling me she was dreadfully sorry for everything she’d said and done, blaming herself for it all and asking my forgiveness. She said she’d wanted to apologise for years but was afraid to approach me after the way she’d behaved. I accepted her apology and since then she’s been chatty when she’s seen me in the street, and from time to time sends me emails. I’m generically friendly towards her - I want the war between us to be over because I don’t want to look over my shoulder whenever I’m in public for fear that she’ll appear and attack me, but that doesn’t mean I want us to be bestest buddies.

I can see seeds of this in my own behavior. And I hope it never happens to me. I try to be dilligent, stay on my meds, and just generally avoid others when I feel irrationality creeping in. It’s the best that I can do.

It’s a difficult row to hoe, and you have my admiration for keeping up with it.

The Sonoran Lizard King–I’m sorry to hear about your Emma Grace’s mama. It’s easy enough for me to step out of my situation but when there’s kidlets involved… not so much.

My brother’s ex-wife is not so much a victim of mental illness as she just is a nasty, neglectful slob. When she found out my family was intending to take the nephews (six and ten) to Disneyland for Christmas, she spent the next several months telling them she was going to take them to Disneyland for Thanksgiving, then when they didn’t go, said it was because their father didn’t give her money to do it.

The really sad thing is, she’s done crap like that to them so often that they didn’t really believe we were going to go until we were actually in the car, on the road to Anaheim. Right up until that minute it was just another good thing they’d been promised that would never come true. :frowning:

Me, too, Pie. Take care of yourself.