No, I am not talking about any relationship with this forum or anybody on it. That's all good.

A couple of days ago, I made plans to meet with a friend I made in AA to meet him tomorrow. I called him a couple of hours ago to discuss the plans more in-depth, and I got a very nasty surprise from him.

He was drunk and stoned, and he was VERY upset with me. Why was he upset with me? Because the first time he came over to my house, he brought his prized scrapbook, and I choose to put it aside so that I could talk with him instead. Now that he is drunk and stoned, he is willing to bitch me out about how much I "hurt" him by not looking at his scrapbook then, and about how he can no longer trust me to look at his scrapbook because of how I "cheapened" it that day. Never mind that my reasons for doing so was because I wanted to have a decent conversation with him - apparently, when he is drunk and stoned, decent conversations do not matter much to him.

I kept on trying to tell him that I wanted to be his friend, but he kept on coming up with reasons why that would not work for him. For example, he asks me if I can take a bus out to his place, and I tell him I don't know how I could manage that, seeing as he lives out in the middle of nowhere. His response? "You have a problem taking a bus to see me, after the times I drove over to your place?!?!?" He seriously took offense to that, and he got even more offended the more I tried to explain that I was holding no hostility or resentment against him whatsoever.

But by the end of this 45-minute conversation, the hostility and resentment did start to rise in my heart. Every word I said to him, he twisted into something that was vastly negative. Clearly, my intents were not at all clear to him, but that's not my fault. At a couple times in the conversation, he said things like, "I am an alcoholic, so I drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is not for me, because sanity is a myth, and....." Yeah, he was talking like somebody who seriously did believe sanity was a myth, because during this conversation, he had absolutely none of it happening in his mind.

I told him I would call him back tomorrow, and I told him blankly at the end of the conversation that I can't keep talking to him when he is intoxicated. I doubt he will even remember this conversation, seeing as he kept on forgetting everything I told him just a couple of minutes earlier, and seeing as he kept on asking me what day it was. More disturbingly, he also kept on asking me if I was involved in law enforcement, or, to be more exact, if I was "one of Big Brother's little helpers". Yeah, I kinda wonder if he has a reason to be paranoid about that at this point, but then again, I know speculating about that will help nobody.

He is a decent enough man when he is sober, but he wore out my tolerance of him very quickly when I talked to him in his druken state.

Ah, well. That conversation is over. Perhaps that friendship is over, as well. In an odd way, he did help me keep my sobriety for today. He served as a reminder of what I could become if I fall off the wagon, and I really don't want to be like that at all. That's a higher priority than any temporary dubious "benefits" giving into the cravings for booze might deliver. That probably sounds terrible - but it is kinda true.

Sounds like your acquaintance has experienced a lot of mental damage from his drinking. Massive loss of brain cells and memory capabilities are the main reason I have no desire to ever drink to excess. I also saw an alcoholic go through withdrawl and end up having a massive Seizure, because he tried to quit.

Yeah, drinking to excess is always a bad idea.

Well, I have made a decision about half an hour ago. I am so sick and tired of being a whipping boy for seriously messed-up people who do not want to put any effort in picking themselves up. I cannot help them if they have no real desire to do anything outside of wallowing, so I should just stop trying in those cases. That certainly will save me a lot of needless stress. A part of me thinks taking such a route is cruel - but then again, those people are cruel for walking all over me and getting pissed off at me when I express no desire to be a damn doormat for them. All these people are really looking for are doormats - people who will enable their destructive ways without any complaint whatsoever. I went through this with my ex-roommate, and I went through this with this asshole on the phone today - I am NOT willing to go through with this again. I cannot help people who insist on destroying themselves and everybody around them without a care in the world outside of themselves.

Yeah, I am seriously pissed off now that I thought about this some more. And, no, I am not going to call him tomorrow. If he chooses to call me, I'll straight up tell him exactly what I think about his disgusting behavior today. That'll end the friendship, but hell, he had no reservations about telling me his paranoia fantasies about how he thinks I really have a hidden motive in talking with him - and then at the end of the phone conversation where he constantly berated me and told me that I am not proper friend material for him, he has the nerve to tell me he cares about me (which I think is a planned play to keep me listening to him and to keep me in the spot of being his doormat). Such manipulative moves even when totally drunk out of his mind. Really. Yeah, I used to care about him, and in a way I still do. But today, he was completely out of line. There was nothing I could say that didn't offend his drunken sensibilities - it was exactly like he was looking for reasons to bitch and moan and wallow in his sea of negativity.

I guess I should have seen this coming when he told me he was giving up on AA - and he told me he was giving up because he thought the 12-steps called for him labeling himself as an inferior human being (and they really don't), and because he does not want to admit that he was ever at fault at any time in his life. According to him, he has "always lived a decent life" and the 12-steps would never work for him. Also according to him, he has had countless sponsors give up on him over the course of the last decade because he did not want to do any 12-step work - he just wanted to get drunk, stoned, high, coked up, tripping on acid, etc. instead. He has worn out his welcome with many other people over the years, and now he has officially worn out his welcome with me.

I know it probably seems heartless to "give up" on people who won't do the things needed to help themselves, but I would like you to think about it this way. The people who trained you to feel guilty about propping them up in their problems are the very ones who benefit by it! It took me forever to figure this out. I have steadily been trying to learn to say no to people who just want to use me, and the most important thing that helps me remember this is that the only ones who benefit from my guilt are the people who gave me that guilt in the first place.

I agree with you. You have every right to be angry. Even a small part of what he said to you was wrong and out of line. It is much better for you to let that go and work towards a healthier place yourself. And thank goodness he made it obvious to you; now you can benefit from a different, more positive relationship in that space.

Oh, and I'm really glad you're not mad at us.

Definitely sounds like this individual was attempting to "gaslight" you. Gaslighters are definitely people to avoid and are difficult to spot.

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

It is a very complicated form of abuse where the victim is usually the one that ends up getting all the blame for the actions of the Gaslighter so that the victim becomes dependant on the Gaslighter. This form of abuse is almost impossible to prove and it is just better to remove yourself entirely from these kind of situations when you run into them.