YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THIS

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i have a friend who no longer lives in my town. i am very concerned for him.i now that the way he's going he is not going to live to be 20 and he's only 16 now. what can be done.


********* the long version *********
not very important
when i was 9 i moved from sydney to armidale (a crappy hick town) when i started school i met a boy *Hugh* and from the first time we spoke we were friends. we have been misfits together for years, we grew up together and every major event in our lives during oure friendship has been with one another. we both smoked together every drug we ever took we tryed together he first time.we just had lots of firsts together.
gets relevant here
thing is that when we were 13 almost 14 i developed a drug induced mental illness and tryed to kill myself (really do myself in no bulls**t attention seeking crap) and i was then placed in a closed detox centre /mental heath facility.
given time i got better *not in a born again cristian way* when i returned home i had lost most of my friends they mostly thought i was an idiot for letting " THEM " tell me i had a problem. Hugh was the only one who stayed my friend. shortly befor my 15th birthday he had to leave town.
from that time on i see him for a week in every school holiday when he comes to visit his father.
the last few visits i have begun to feel increasingly concerned for his wellfare. his parents a both drug users and are frankly to wraped up in their own lives to parent properly let alone set limits which they themselves don't uphold.
my friend is depressed he thinks his parents don't love him he doesn't see his sister (who was very important in his life) any more and i'm too far away from where he is to be any real help.
my friend drinks i haven't seen him strait in the time since he left he believes he only talks well after a few drinks. he see's nothing in his future he can't stay in school, he can't get a job and every cent he gets he spends on drugs.
he can't put a sentence together, he sleeps too much, he has constant nightmares he gets anxious if he doesn't drink .

i can't see any way to help him. i don't know how long he will live like this. i just feel from everything he says to me he's hopeless and i can't see that it's good for a boy with a drug adiction and no suport system to be feeling like that. i don't know wht my life would be without him and i'd like to know if there's a way that i could get my friend back.

it's only that i can see how i must have upset my own family when i was sick like this

does anybody here know what i can do?

It's hard to help someone unless they want to be helped. It seems like he thinks he has nothing to live for. He needs to find something. A family member, religion, a friend. There's not much you can do except be his friend. He has tough times ahead. I'm guessing pretty soon he will end up caught by the legal system of wherever you live and have to deal with an extended withdrawal. That's when he's going to need your help more than any other time.

Good luck.

Xeno's got a good point chuck.

Im afraid all you can do is be there for him and make sure that he knows you are there. Things are likely to get harder before they can improve, your own experience probably tells you that, just be there as the friend you are even through the lowest points.
I know that this doesnt seem a major ground breaking approach but at least with you there he isnt completely alone!

Don't forget though if you need support too when things get rough, because it wont be easy hun, there's always us lot.

I'd do what I did with my "little sister" when it became aparent that her mother was a druggie, her father was a drunk, and neither of them could properly take care of her. If your parents like him, I'd find out if you could move him in with you. That would take care of some of the problems, though I know it would cause a few more, like money problems.

Good luck with it all. I hope you can find an answer soon.

he lives 10 hours drive away from me. i only talk to him on the phone ocasionally because he is never home or coherant.

i honestly wish i had a spare room in my house if i did i'd be happy to have him here even if he were going out every night at least i could watch him and try and ease him out of this behavior.

I moved Lynds into my room with me. We didn't have a spare, either. Sometimes you have to sacrifice privacy for something more important.

my mother as much as she has grown to like/pity Hugh would not like me at almost 17 to have a BOY just 20 days younger than me sleeping in my room.

Aaah, you're a girl. Kinda hard to tell by your name. Sorry.

One of my best friends is a clinically depressed sociopath. And with the kind of suicidal/homicidal crap that he's pulled, it's very emotionally taxing, and it does make me agonise over whether or not he'll even live out the next year. I agree with the others: be there for him. You have to remember, as much as it kills you, that it's him who has to come to terms with his problems. You can't for him, and you can't "fix" him. In the end the emotional damage for trying doesn't go away and makes your own sanity destabalise. Very little you can say or do can influence his decisions directly, and sometimes trying to makes people more stubborn. But sometimes just knowing you're there and that you care, and having enough conscience to know that their actions are hurting you, too, can help them hang on. In short, be there for him and absolutely do whatever is in your power to do--but don't burden yourself with the expectation that you can do anything more than that.

i may go down to the centre link office to see what foster parenting benifits we could get if any were he living here

That would be a good idea. We didn't get foster parenting benefits when we moved Lynds in, and it was a bit rough. Actually, she technically wasn't a foster kid at all. She just spent the night at our house a lot. Every night.... I think her parents STILL haven't caught on.