I'm scared my friend is psychotic and/or drug affected, is it normal?
I'm very worried about a bloke who's been a friend of mine for nearly 8 years: initially I was sexually attracted to him but he wasn't to me and it settled down into a friendship which I valued.
The first flaw came when he verbally abused me over the phone when I was calling to say I couldn't keep an arrangement to organise firewood together because I was ill. I was very hurt, because it seemed to come out of a clear sky without explanation. I wrote to him saying that I would keep my distance for a while, as I found male verbal aggression frightening because in the past it had often escalated into physical violence.
We had only superficial contact for a few years until one night he told me he'd "forgiven" me for telling people he'd been physically violent towards me. This had never happened and we had a number of conversations over a period of time before he said he accepted I hadn't said it, that someone had lied to him about it and we were then friendly again, although not as close as before. I suggested that perhaps he'd misconstrued my letter and enlarged into an accusation and at the time I thought he'd accepted this explanation.
(He lives alone and fairly isolated and has a long history of drug use & abuse, and is well known for concocting and/or exaggerating stories over time.)
A few more years on into the frienship he was my main support person after I was raped and was a wonderful friend to me at that time.
Recently I supported him when he had an injury to his hand and as far as I was concerned all was good until last night, when he verbally attacked me in public in front of mutual friends, again out of a clear blue sky, alleging that I'd lied about being raped, that everyone knows I'm a liar, that he'd been attacked by friends of mine because I'd told them he'd been violent to me .......... I tried to physically remove myself from the group but he followed me, yelling in my face, literally frothing at the mouth.
A few moments later, he was relating perfectly normally to other people as if nothing had happened.
Today he followed me in the street and yelled the same accusations with some variations to the lies and I walked away. I later discovered he had visited family members of mine and has talked to other locals, telling the same lies.
One mutual friend had thought recently that he could be using ice and I'm concerned that he seems psychotic and don't know what I can do about it, if anything. I will of course keep my distance from him and keep telling myself that anyone who believes his crazy stuff isn't really a friend of mine anyway, but it's a very difficult situation. It's a small town and mud does stick.
Any suggestions on how to handle it would be much appreciated!
Apologies for the length of this post: it could've been much longer, this is only the bare bones of the story