My friend is crazy and needs help...

First off, I don't want to use real names here so I'm going to call him J. Anyhow, J is a bit nuts. I've noticed it since I met him 2 years ago (I was in 11th grade and J was in 12th)... he told me that he swore he saw the actual cure for cancer in some other state. This was after I got to know him better, and I was at his house. I thought he was normal, I mean he seemed not all there but didn't notice anything weird.
I pretended like I believed him and that he was just a compulsive liar, until lately, when he finally opened up. He used to live with my current kinda g/f for a while around the time I met him, and me and the current kinda girlfriend just talked about this. I guess she said that he used to just randomly hallucinate every now and then, and he would tell very strange stories to her that weren't real.
He messaged her lastnight and said that its almost his time to go. So I messaged seeing whats up, and being an friend of his, he told me that he has to do something really crazy. I asked what and he replied with that He isn't going to be around for very much longer. I asked Why, and he told me something completely crazy. He said voices used to talk to him but it was so rare that it didn't bug him too much, voices that weren't him, and J also said that for the past month, every few nights this voice talks to him and is commanding him to build some signal thing or something to go out into space and have contact with these people talking to him, and they are command him to do this for them. This is when he admitted himself that he was crazy, and that these voices are so scary, and that he is in so much fear of this, that he has to do what they are telling him.

I told him I wanted to help him, because I'm worried, and by help, I mean help him in building this signal.. I know its just some kind of, either, he is a chronic liar like this and has been his whole life which I don't personally don't believe. OR he has some kind of weird symptom that makes him delirious or something which I believe.

So, what exactly do you think is wrong with my friend? He said that it has to be done in Winter. I'm not scared of him, just what he could possibily do.

 

From what you've told, he doesn't sound like he is a danger to himself or to anyone else. Help him build his signal thing if you want to.

 

Yes, help him build his signal and see where this leads if he is not dangerous. He may appreciate the gesture and that would make it a lot easier for you to help him if he does have a problem. If he does not appreciate your help then you should begin to worry, or if he places unreasonable faith in this signal.

Sounds interesting, though, I wish I knew someone like that.

 

You stated "This is when he admitted himself that he was crazy".
If I were you I would help him seek out psychiatric help as soon as possible.
Helping build this signal just helps feed his delusions.
But it is up to you, you make the call.

 

I can see potential harm to himself. If/when he builds his signal and nothing comes. This could be a bit hard for his ego to process. At that point suicide can be possible.

A lot of it could be attention seeking behaviour, trying to inflate his self importance.

There is a group, in the uk at least, that focuses on building a relationship with ones voices...I will try and find their website for you because this is a very reasonable alternative to medication.

here is a wiki article on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Movement

 

Who's to say that what he is hearing isn't real???

 

You should be more concerned if people don't acknowledge how crazy they are, in my opinion and experience. The people that act like they are reasonable about these kinds of things can be far more dangerous than somebody who can look at themselves critically to begin with.

 

Because logic points at it being a paranoid delusion, things like this happen from time to time with the mentally unstable.

 

yeah, I've read over the notes of my psyche appointments. A big part of it is monitoring for insight into ones condition. However, the label 'crazy' is dismissive in its simplicity, one can use it to terminate a monologue expressing the depths of ones anguish.

 

Very true, we don't know what he meant to say when he said himself that he was crazy.

 

I have an idea! Let's take all the corpses of dead schizophrenic homeless people and make an abstract collage at MOMA in Manhattan, we will all show up to the even wearing black and in sunglasses, it will be glamorous but understated, and then event will be called- "From Crazy to 2011- An intellectual, post-ethical neo-modernist look at the deterioratiing mind and and our ability to transcend responsibilty for it through being to cool to care".

 

HOWEVER WITH THAT BEING SAID, there is no larger group of charlatans and no bigger 3 ring circus than that which is called THE MENTAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, so really, it is a lose lose situation
but your friend is in need of some help of some sorts, even just perhaps dropping a line to someone else who perhaps knows him better- does he lives with his parents or go to school? He sounds rather low functioning? I'm shocked that as many halluncination as he's had he hasn't already had some inpatient hospitalization of sort (he sounds schizophrenic and usually their hospitalizations are so innocent, meaning non violent, which is why i despise the rep they get for being "dangerous", they usually just die off in the streets)- but that's the thing, he def needs some kind of help.

 

I dunno what's wrong with him, that girl says he should be locked in a loony hospital. I'm afraid he will get sad/mad if I suggest that he should see someone. A lot of people don't understand him.

 

Be careful about investing your emotional energy into someone else, it doesn't always matter how much you care for someone, its up to them to heal.

A psyche ward, in new zealand, is a pretty strange place. I spent all my time there smoking and listening to the locals rant about various stuff that probably wasn't great for me to hear. A lot of the residents think they can help you, but they aren't great communicators and tend to confuse you alot. Aggression is a real problem in those places.

Instead of medical help, perhaps you can get him to talk to someone who is less inclined to medicate. I know from experience that my psychologist prefers patients off any form of medication.

 

Just a bit nuts??


How much does he weight approximately??