Not sure this is the right place to post this, but I'm a bit desperate for advice and there isn't a dedicated mental health community. Sorry if inappropriate, will delete.
About 10 years ago a friend of mine had what I think was a psychotic break. Or maybe his problems just escalated enough for him to get super hostile and paranoid with me and push me out of his life, and the psychotic break came later. Basically, he got progressively more and more antisocial and paranoid, increasingly incoherent (talking about a lot of far out conspiracy/woo type shit) and just hard to be around. I sometimes called him out/challenged him on this stuff (not with the necessary grace, I'm sure, but I was young and dumb and didn't really know how). Eventually, after some stupid discussion (I think he'd said climate change as fake or something like that), he sent me walls of text messages accusing me of manipulating him, trying to make him look bad (don't know to who), being brainwashed etc. I tried to push back, and to kind of explain how much that shit hurt (we'd been close for like 5 years at that point), but he just escalated and escalated. Eventually he was basically talking to himself, projecting like crazy, like "I know I'm not crazy" (I never said he was) and "if anyone needs a psychologist, it's you" (I never said he did). It got heated enough and he got hostile enough that I just had to completely disengage. That triggered him even more and he spammed me through every venue, in the end even with weird veiled threats ("watch what you get in the mail, bitch ;)) kind of things. I blocked him and went no contact.
In the years following I learned through mutual associates that he wasn't doing well, but most people sort of also stopped talking to him, so details were sparse. I felt like shit, like I abandoned a friend in a really dark place, but I had no idea how to help or even really make sense of what had happened. I had introduced him to a friend, who didn't stay in contact after the break, but had his facebook still. He told me at one point that he was posting completely unhinged shit. Literally that he had been kidnapped by the government and forced to eat clones of himself, and posting audio files of him talking to local police trying to report this kidnapping. I never listened, but my friend heard a few minutes and it was as horrifying as it sounds. At this point I figured it must be schizophrenia/psychosis, but I didn't even know where he was living (he was calling the police in a different city in the recordings), didn't know any of his family (and back when we were close I got the impression he'd broken with most of his close relatives).
He just contacted me today with the message "Hey, about back then - I found out that we only fought because some psychos were injecting us with serums that made us hostile to each other. I want to apologize, I was being crowd controlled for the last 10 years. I was being majorly timeline morphed, it was illusion of autonomy". I'm translating, but that was it, like almost word for word. Now I'm sitting here, all the old feelings welling back up, feeling so fucking sorry for my friend, but still just as powerless. He's clearly still delusional, but he feels some way about what happened, he is reaching out. What the fuck do I do? Do I respond? I want to tell him not to feel bad about what happened back then, like who gives a fuck, but I don't see a way to do that without implicitly agreeing to his delusional premise. I'm privileged to never have had to deal with this stuff, but I'm so lost. I have no idea if it would be harmless to hit him back or if it's like a massive bad idea.
Any input is massively appreciated.
TL;DR: Old friend who had a psychotic break and whom I lost contact with reached out to me, clearly still suffering from major paranoid delusions (he says he acted out in the past because of mind control drugs essentially), don't know what to do.
I am not a mental health professional, but I have had several friends experience varying degrees of psychosis. I see how difficult this is for you, and it sucks to know that someone you care about is hurting very deeply, but If I’m being honest, I'd suggest contacting the closest mental health crisis support team (but do your research first; they are not all created equal) in your area and consulting with them before putting yourself in harms way.
First, people with psychotic disorders are not inherently violent, to say otherwise would be categorically false, and I’m not tryna be ableist.
People with psychotic disorders are, however, less predictable. Those who are rendered unpredictable — through no fault of their own — and also have violent tendencies are inherently less safe to be around.
In my experience, it’s best to totally disengage if they’re unmedicated and have violent tendencies when they’re off meds — ESPECIALLY if they’re in a country with easy access to firearms. I think your friend falls in this category, based on the not-so-vague threats you’ve received.
A good buddy of mine developed schizophrenia. Partner stuck with him. He threw her down the stairs and shot her because he believed she was an agent of the government. Another friend r*ped a stranger at a concert and… removed pieces of her body with his teeth. Another friend went full on “I’m Jesus” mode and “sacrificed himself to save the world” by hanging himself in his apartment in front of some friends who were high af and thought it was just a harmless joke. I have more, but I think you get the point. Though, there is a final, personal anecdote that is extremely relevant to you:
Many years ago, a kindhearted acquaintance of mine tried to befriend a very unwell, unmedicated person experiencing psychosis in the hopes of one day pointing him towards help. It went well for a few weeks (or as well as it could) until one day, the person experiencing psychosis decided to walk into the coffee shop and execute him and as many others as he could before turning the gun on himself.
My point is that, it’s hard to watch people suffer delusions, but when those delusions carry a risk of violence it’s probably advisable to steer clear.
Edit: man, this post got me down memory lane to a long gone time in my life and deep in my feels about some shit. RIP Shmootzi.
Damn, I'm really sorry about that, no one should experience that shit. Appreciate you taking the time to give me your perspective. I don't have much good to say about my Eurotrash country, but at least we don't have firearms everywhere.
FWIW he was a very peaceful, gentle and conflict averse person when I knew him, so it's hard to imagine him as violent/dangerous. But I think I also have to accept that he isn't the person I knew anymore, and I don't know what he might do.
I've found out that the sister of a friend works in psychiatry specifically with paranoid schizophrenia. I don't know if that's what he has of course, but will contact her and see if she knows about how to make a referral to some kind of welfare check kind of thing.
Thanks a lot for answering, and RIP to those you've lost