How do you make someone

[hunter]

6. I don't know what to say. I've been in the black hole often enough.

And the hell of it is I never know how far in I am when I'm there.

It takes someone close to me to drag me out, or something scary. Sometimes both.

The further into the dark I am the more I push people away because I also get paranoid.

My most recent (minor) misadventure I've described here. I was avoiding my doctor, and I'd cut back one of my meds because I didn't like the side effects. One day I was bored waiting at the pharmacy and sat down at their new health screening machine simply because because it was a computer. Computers are one of my obsessions. The machine told me my blood pressure was dangerously high, I had a heart arrhythmia, and I should call my doctor NOW! I was looking around fearfully, like maybe the machine had called 911 too...

My worst ever I was living in my broken car in a church parking lot because the police had been bothering me when it was parked in the street. I actually had a pretty cordial relationship with the police since I was one of the more amusing crazy people they had to deal with. An acquaintance of mine dragged me out of that hole, her words were something like, "C'mon Hunter, you need to eat." And that was very true. When I'm in my dark place eating seems like a lot of useless bother.

That relationship blossomed into the codependent romance from hell, but that's another story unrelated to my mental health issues.

For your own peace of mind, you can't make anybody do anything, and there is no "appealing to intellect" when something is seriously wrong with someone's mind.

At my worst I am a very stubborn creature, maybe as bad as my grandma who fought off the police and paramedics for several hours when they came to remove her from her home as a "danger to herself and others." They may not have believed a little old lady could be dangerous when they got there, but they certainly believed it once they had her strapped down and sedated.

If I'm lucky I only inherited a quarter of her crap, but she's not my only crazy ancestor.

Is there someone close to the guy who can check in on him? They might not be able to do anything to improve the situation, but it might relieve some of your own anxieties.