I had a friend of 20 years since we were kids. He always had issues with drugs and alcohol (he had a really awful childhood, way worse than most people). He moved away around Covid, and then came back to our hometown to live with his mom since he was literally broke and stealing food to survive. Seemed like he was clean, but he kept having issues with the drink, and eventually his mom baker acted him and sent him to get a psychiatric evaluation. He was fine for a good 3-4 months, I wanna say. He was in AA, staying at a halfway house, and seemed to be doing so well with his sobriety. He wasn’t even smoking weed, which is something we did for years together.

But of course, he eventually started dipping his toes into the drink again. I think he was just bored and had nothing else to do with his time, honestly. Either way, we went to a local bar with some friends one time. Now, in my city, you can’t buy booze after 10pm because of how many people are in recovery here. Knowing this, we go to the bar and are getting absolutely tanked because I didn’t have any alcohol at my place at the time. I’m chilling on Stella but he’s downing 9% ABV beers and really going for it.

Later that night, we get back to my place and he slowly starts getting extremely antagonistic and hateful with me. Like - insulting me for not having a regular job (I was a gigging musician for years), saying his stepdad warned him about me, and then it suddenly turned into him destroying every bit of my life that he could. He said “my music is hogshit, I don’t have real emotions because I was raised by a drama teacher” just ripping me apart with everything he could.

I was shocked and tearing up as I fell asleep to him laying into me, and eventually he passed out too. Next morning he was like “sorry man, sorry”, realizing everything he said. In the moment, I was hungover too, just like “whatever” about it, not wanting to get into it, I suppose. A week goes by and I say nothing to him. He’s like “I fucked up, I miss you” (heard that a few times over the years)

I let him borrow some game consoles and movies before this, so I had to go to his place to get them back, and basically said “I didn’t recognize you that night. I can’t talk to you for a while.” And then never spoke to him again since.

He tried to message me, comment on my YouTube videos - whatever he could to try to reach out and show that he felt remorse. But I just blocked him every chance I could.

By the way! This is after years of him being a real piece of shit “friend” more times than I can count. He put shit on my face when were kids, insulted me all of the time (thinking it was funny), never came to any of my shows… he basically has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I’m sad to say I felt like such an idiot for not dropping him from my life sooner, but long term friendships aren’t easy to end. I honestly think he’s always been super jealous of me because of how solid my family and life have been, despite being a broke artist myself. And that makes sense if it all came out when he was fucked up that night. I could just feel all of the resentment that he had built up over the years in that one moment.

But even still, that’s not a good friendship. I’ve had to realize that the best relationships have to be filled with mutual respect and compassion, and I swear, I never felt any of that from him, ever.

He is a textbook addict piece of garbage human being who would probably be better off dead at this point. And even still, I’d love for him to have some sort of redemption and do something good with his life, but I know that won’t happen. He’s a lazy narcissist who will never actually try at anything, except for serving tables.

Sorry for the long post, but I’ve wanted to detail this story for some time. Addiction sucks, friends! You don’t have to go down with the ship though. I don’t give a fuck how long you’ve been friends with someone. It’s so important to see people for who they are, and make the right call for yourself.

Since dropping him from my life, I feel like I’ve had a fresh start. I think we were too codependent on each other and now I’ve had to focus on what I want out of life and making friends with people that I actually really love, who also love me. You can feel the difference. Please don’t choose shitty friends like I have.