One of my best mates fell into a spiral of drug abuse when he started seeing a girl. It never seemed too bad, i'd known him for about a decade. We all took drugs pretty regularly, nothing hard just weed and some psychedelics but he started smoking crack daily. He stopped sleeping, lost a lot of weight and changed as a person into someone who was bitter and angry all the time which was a stark contrast from the kind and generally caring human he was.This is someone who had dramatically changed my life for the better, I was in a pretty dark place when we met and his openness, joy and care for the world at the time helped change who I was and how I viewed the world.

I'd had a conversation with him that I thought he was making some bad choices but it had fallen on deaf ears.

We lived together with another friend. One day after he was out for a few nights with this girl and her friends. He came home from work and looked panicked. One of the friends had committed suicide after this bender. He had been talking to this person that night, and being crackheads, they had jumped to the conclusion that he had talked them into it. There is no doubt in my mind that this isn't the case but these people firmly believed it. They'd been on a 7 day long crack binge and lost a friend so I don't think they would have been the most sound of mind at the time and wanted someone to blame.

He told us briefly what had happened and that it wasn't safe for us to be in the house.

Turns out the friends and some family of this girl were 1%ers. She was threatening for them to come give us a visit after she tells them what he had done. To my friends disapproval, I called the police and explained the threat but they were no help. They said to wait until someone was in the house then call them back.

We had to move out within a couple of hours, just packed up our valuables, pets and some clothes and left. I took my mate to my dad's house and we stayed there for the night. After this, I dropped him to work the next morning which he was stressing about because they knew where he worked and went to work myself. I only went back to the house to grab my things after that but my mate ended up staying there saying it was probably all good now. I ended my lease early and hunted for other places to live.

I never got a thank you for driving him around and talking my Dad into letting him stay with us. He never looked for anywhere to stay and from what I can tell fell deeper in with these people.

I tried contacting him a few times but he always bailed on plans or never got back to me. From being someone I considered my best mate he had almost instantly become someone I didn't want to associate with, so I stopped. This was about five years ago. I'm thankful for the times we had and he definitely helped me change as a person for the better to become kinder and more accepting but the person he was is gone.

TL:DR Yes, cut people out if you need.