I worked in the mental health field for 5 years prior to making the decision to go back to school to pursue my Psychiatric RN Practitioner license, for I discovered that I had to expand my options somehow if I ever have any intentions of fully paying off my student loans, which wasn't going to happen with only a BA in Psychology at a private school. In those 5 years, I worked as a Service Coordinator/Internal Business Auditor/Intensive Psychiatric Rehabilitation practitioner. Had many brushes with madness while working there, especially in the Service Coordinator role. I won't get into those.
To the tl;dr police, this is a warning in advance. This is probably going to be too long, so don't read. I would also like to stress how incredibly sorry I am for it being so tl;dr.
I had numerous brushes with madness with a particular friend of mine in college. I wrestled at a D3 college. There was a guy on my team who was very hard-working, popular, nice, happy, intelligent, etc. He came from a respected family. His father owned the suit store in the city in which the college was located. I became good friends with him because the person on our team that I became best friends with (and still am) was this guy's best friend growing up. So he and I became pretty tight through our mutual friendship with my current and now longtime best friend.
Anyways.
Our mutual friend transferred to the University of Colorado prior to the beginning of our Junior years. Around the second semester of our Sophomore year, the guy in which my brush(es) with madness are in reference to started becoming very eccentric. He began speaking about how he wanted to become president of the United States, various political oddities, etc. He also raised his drug use to another level prior from what it was, in which it was already rather excessive. He maintained his toughness though. This guy, in preseason workouts, although not a good wrestler, would finish first in EVERY drill and would just totally dominate in long distance running. This, along with many other things made him come off to me as if he were indestructible.
By about 2nd semester of our Junior year, he became diagnosed with Schizophrenia. By this time, all of his MANY friends with an exception of myself and another person had abandoned him as a friend because everyone was becoming weirded/creeped out by him. Therefore, he was at my house all the time and was at my house the day that he was picked up and taken to the Psych ward and initially given his diagnosis of Schizophrenia. To be completely honest, I cringed whenever he arrived at our place because he really was starting to creep me out as well. However, I remained a loyal friend to him with hopes that maybe in a prolonged period of time, I could help him (although I knew the chances of that happening were low due to how stubborn he was). Not to mention, my best friend who was in Colorado was constantly worried about him and always implied that he wanted me to be supportive of the guy.
When we were Seniors, he joined the cross country team in addition to the wrestling team. He was a football stud in high school and had never run cross country before. He quickly became the team's top runner and once he proved to everyone on the team and presumably himself that he could beat anyone on the team in a long distance race, he quit, but continued to run. He would run 10-15 miles a day and picked up smoking in the process. He would smoke (no exaggeration) 4-5 packs of Marlboro reds per day. He would smoke while running. He would light up cigarettes between every mile. His logic was that he wanted to "prove that he was tougher than cigarettes and any physical ailment that can result from them, including cancer."
A couple weeks before Easter our Senior year, he woke me up at 6:30 A.M. by hitting me in the face with a wine bottle and blowing smoke in my face. Now, if any other friend of mine or anyone else in general would have done this to me, I would have become pissed off and may have instantly resorted to shoving/punching, but this is one of very few people who I have encountered in my life who I was intimidated by, for deep down, I thought he was capable of pulling off some serious shit if provoked.
So I asked him what I wanted and he insisted that I top off the wine he had along with an 18 pack of Budweiser that he brought with him. I was already hungover from the night before and hadn't gotten to sleep until 4 A.M., but agreed to drink with him. After finishing this off, he insisted that we go to a couple bars. We drank at the bars until roughly 6 PM.
We were both annihilated as hell and contacted one of our friends who resided on the outskirts of town. On a windy side-road, to be more specific. This was the one friend who I mentioned above, who was the only one along with myself to remain friends with him. He had been friends with this guy since they were in JH.
With very, very poor judgment on my part, I hopped in his car, knowing full-well that the guy was intoxicated and we drove to our friend's place. I knew it was a bad idea, yet at the same time, if I were to tell the guy that I didn't want to ride with him, he would surely perceive it as a sign of disrespect...something he did not respond well to.
When we got on the curvy, windy road that our friend lived on, this guy was driving anywhere between 85-105 miles per hour. I was so scared that I literally felt like I could piss my pants. On both sides of the road, there were steep ditches, one which led to a bluff.
I had my hand on the "oh shit" handle and saw a curve about 50 yards in front of us that was close to being a 90 degree angle. I looked at him, who was looking straight ahead with a glazed, lifeless expression on his face, then back at the road, then back at him and before I knew it, we had approached this curve and I shit you not, he didn't even make an attempt to successfully make the turn with his car...he just drove straight ahead and in his little Hyundai car, we drove straight into a bluff at approximately 95 miles per hour. In retrospect, I honestly thought he was trying to kill himself at that moment and was willing to take me with him.
The front of his car crumpled like a pop can. While this happened, everything seemed to be going in slow motion. In the little time I had to think, I thought I was either a dead man, or was going to be severely injured. Miraculously though, I ended up with only a bump on my elbow from my elbow hitting the passenger side window. My friend didn't end up with a bump or scratch.
We both crawled out through a broken window and had to literally pull ourselves out of the car and climb the ditch to get to the road. By the time we pulled ourselves back on the road, there was an elderly couple who had run about 200 yards to get to us and were panicked and out of breath due to running. The first words out of the guy's mouth was, "oh my God, we heard that crash all the way from inside our house with the television on, how many people are dead?!?! How many people are hurt?! How many people are still in the vehicle?!?!" My friend still seemed glazed and lifeless as he had prior to driving the car into the bluff and didn't respond. I responded to them by saying, "it was just us two, and we are ok." The old guy then said, "you have got to be kidding me, we thought for sure someone had to have died from that. We saw how fast you were going when you drove by. We called the police to have them help you out, hopefully they can help you get your car pulled out."
After hearing this, my friend's demeanor went from "glazed and lifeless" to completely infuriated. He ran up to this old guy, shoved him and shouted, "call them back now!!! Tell them that it was nothing! Tell them we are ok!!!" The old guy said something along the lines of, "son, I really think the police can help you out. And it's too late, I already called them. I was trying to help you boys." My friend grabbed this old man by the shirt and got his face within a couple inches of the old man's face and said, "call the police and tell them not to come, right now, or I will ****ing kill you."
It was just a few seconds after my friend began threatening this old man that 3-4 cops pulled up. When they saw the car, their first question was, "oh my God, how many do you think are dead or injured?" We informed them that we were the only people in the vehicle and they were shocked.
They gave my friend a breathalyzer and he blew something like a .31. They cuffed him up and sent him to jail. They questioned me a bit. They were very curious to know if I knew anything about the Xanax, Adderall and half ounce of dank that they found in his glove box, in which I denied having any knowledge. They asked me if I had a ride, which I didn't, so they drove me to my house.
I woke up at 10 A.M. to a call from my friend who said he had been running laps in the drunk tank (community jail cell for people recently arrested) until he blew zeros and that he just blew zeros and needed me to pick him up. I agreed.
When I picked him up, he was irate as hell with me. Initially he was pissed off that I didn't "break him out of jail." I responded in a manner that I became accustomed to with the thousands of conversations I had with him prior to that in which he was being out of line. My tactic was to tell him why I didn't do what he wanted me to do, while giving him a compliment simultaneously. I said, "well man, I didn't figure you wanted me to because you are tougher than jail and would be able to blow zeros whenever you felt like it." He shook his head as if he understood and respected my response.
Then he started tripping on me about the crash itself. He started screaming at me, asking, "why the **** didn't you get us out of that shit?!!?!?!" I had no idea what he meant and asked, "what do you mean?" He yelled back, "you know exactly what I mean!! Why didn't you lift my car out of the ditch and throw it back on the road so we could have sped off before the cops got there!!!!" I was like, "duuuude.....your car is totaled. You can't even drive it anymore, it's so bad." He yelled, "stop making ****ing excuses!!! You could have uncrumpled it and put it back together...and we would have drove off and I wouldn't be in this mess right now!!!! It's all your fault!!!" He was dead serious. And I was pretty strong back then...had to cut weight to wrestle 197 pounds that year and was in the weight-room a lot, and this guy evidently classified me as his "strong" friend. I replied, "dude, who the hell do you think I am? The Incredible Hulk?!? I am not strong enough to do that!?!?!" He interrupted, "BULLSHIT!!! You are the strong one of our crew!! You could have done it!!! It's all your fault!!! I replied back to him, in probably the most confrontational fashion that I ever had with him and said, "what the **** is wrong with you!?!? I am not THAT strong and even if I were, we wouldn't have gone anywhere because your car parts are destroyed and I know NOTHING about cars!! And what 'CREW' are you talking about?!!?!? We aren't the ****ing X-Men. And if we are in some sort of super-human 'crew,' what's your role?!?! The guy who drives cars into bluffs at almost 100 MPH?!?! It's NOT my fault this happened. It's yours, for driving when you shouldn't have and for pussing out instead of attempting to make that turn!!!"
I had no idea what his response to this would be, for I had never argued with him and the only person I had ever seen who wasn't too scared too argue with him (over a song being played at a party) had been punched in the face and had his life threatened by him for a week following the dispute.
He was silent for a bit and after a minute or two, responded with, "your a good friend, Swaff. Can you please drive me to my Dad's house?" I agreed and drove him to his Dad's place, which was a cabin on the Mississippi River in East Dubuque, Illinois. When we got there, he asked me to follow him to the sandbar in front of his cabin and gave me a shovel and told me to start digging in the spot he was going to dig at. I was confused as hell, but was used to being confused in my interactions with him and I helped him dig, wondering what in the hell he had buried on his sandbar. We dug through about 4 feet in the sand and he finally dragged out a safe. He had a key on his chain to open the safe and inside it was a bunch of bars of silver and gold.
He said calmly, "I have these scattered all over the area. They are my treasures that people will be searching for in a couple centuries. I know you won't tell anyone. Now, drive me to the bank. I need some money to buy a new car." The bank gave him several thousands of dollars for his silver and gold. He hooked me up with a silver bar and a gold coin for assisting him.
I remember thinking, "my God, my friendship with this guy, literally couldn't get any weirder." I was wrong.
Two weeks later, on Easter Sunday, I got the call from my roommate that he had shot his stepmom in the head with a shotgun and followed this by shooting himself in the head. The shit he used to babble about regarding his stepmom and his feelings of disdain for her leading to this is something that would take me forever to explain. To put it in short, if it were anyone who I knew he despised more than anyone else in the world, it was undoubtedly her.
This was obviously about as heinous of an act as possible, but to be perfectly honest, I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised. I was surprised, for I don't think anyone ever expects to experience something like this in their lifetime. Yet, at the same time, it didn't surprise me that he did this, for I thought he was fully capable of it....that's why I was so freaking intimidated by him.
During the investigation, it was discovered that he carried a handgun in his backpack with him everywhere he went. This was extremely eye-opening to my roommates and I, for we rarely ever saw him without his backpack. And he was at our house every day, for multiple-hour increments. He even ran with his backpack. It made me wonder how close he ever came to using it on someone. It also made me relieved that I made the decision to somewhat "cater" to the guy and made it a point to not piss him off.
It was this situation that showed me how much a person can change when they develop a serious mental illness. This guy went from one of the most popular kids in our college to a murderer and it was all a result of the symptoms of schizophrenia he experienced combined with the substance abuse he engaged in which increased the frequency and severity of his symptoms.
For those who are still reading, here are a couple links to the story:
http://www.whbf.com/Global/story.asp?s=6348756
http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/6960812.html