I’ve suffered from severe depression my entire life and experienced much sadness. Severing toxic friendships has been a necessity for me, but it has also nearly destroyed me. It is my hope that tis article will help someone out there, even if it’s only one person.

When I grew up, I never fit in to the normal cliques, I was extremely rebellious and my friends were too. All of my friends used drugs, I sincerely mean every single one of them. I can’t name a single person I know who doesn’t use drugs or have a severe drinking problem, except for my immediate family.

I’m not going get into detail – not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. Actually, I’m not allowed to right now. Basically, my friends started going to prison. One of my best friends from highschool, Brian, lost his mind. He tried to kill his own mother with a butcher knife. His father beat him half to death with a baseball bat and saved her life. He was committed to a mental ward and is now a vegetable who lives on government disability.

Another friend of mine murdered a seventeen year old girl, he is currently on death row in a state prison. My friend Tommy Phillips, died from a cocaine overdose after getting out of prison for drug charges. My very best friend from junior high school, Mario Giovanni Centobie, did not use drugs (the only friend I ever had that didn’t), had the worst story of all. I may write about him in an upcoming post, but it’s so painful. Basically, his family didn’t love him. At his high school graduation, his mother pulled up in the parking lot as we all were leaving. In front of everyone, she handed him a suitcase full of clothes and fifty dollars. She said, “Happy graduation…you’re on your own now,” and drove away. What a way to start life.

On 06-26-98, Mario (who was  highly decorated firefighter at the time) murdered an Alabama police officer after escaping prison. He was serving 40 years for kidnapping his wife and son. He shot the police officer in the back of the head. He was executed by lethal injection 04-28-05.

All these events had a very negative effect on my entire life and attitude. After all was said and done, the remainder of my friends were all drug addicts.

Hard Decisions

I had to make some extremely painful decisions, which are still having an impact on me and will continue until the day I die. The idea of dropping every friend I had seemed impossible. I was already depressed and feeling so lonely, I literally wanted to die. To sever ties with all my friends was the last thing I wanted to do, but I had to.

I quit all drugs and drinking, but that was just the beginning of my problems. I had to face having no friends at all…NONE. When I see someone get all upset because their spouse is out of town for a few weeks, it makes me feel so strange. I think to myself…you don’t even know what loneliness is.

I dropped all of my lifelong friends – every last one of them. It sucks. There is no worst feeling in the world than to know you have nobody. I did it. I did it for me. I rebuilt my entire life from the ground floor. The reason I started blogging in the first place was because of what I went through. I’ve always felt like a social outcast, a deviant, a black sheep – it seemed cool at one time. It seems like a sickening nightmare now. None of my friends have tried to help themselves or go to rehab. I realized that I cannot help them, and had to let go.

One of the main reasons I dropped my drug abusing friends is to avoid prison. I can’t go to these people’s homes and certainly don’t allow them to come to mine. With the amount of people I know in jail, I don’t want to be one of them. To say it was easy for me to change would be a lie. It was in the realm of impossibility. It’s really similar to an abused spouse leaving their abuser. You can’t know what it’s like unless you’ve been there. You have to crawl out of hell before you could ever understand.

My advice is to stay away from drugs and avoid those who abuse them. In my experience, most people find that out the hard way, and go to jail over it. I’ve never been to jail and don’t have a criminal record, but I am extremely lucky. I woke up. I grew up.

The point is, you can change everything in your life no matter how bad it gets. I did, and I couldn’t be happier. We’ve all heard of the term “bad boy”. It’s an attractive image for many young guys and young women seem to flock around them. That’s why they call them a “bad boy”. They are boys…not men.

Remember this: it’s better to have no friends at all than to have friends who’ll get you sent to prison.

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