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From: Health Concerns on 18 Mar 2007 15:10
I am very worried about a young friend of mine. She is a 20 YO college
student who is very intelligent, well-spoken, and in many ways a super
achiever. If you looked at her resume of achievements, and if you hadn't
spent the last year with her and seen her do the things she had done,
you would never guess that she has so many problems.

The only people who really know her more than I do are her parents and
one really close friend who goes to school in the mid-atlantic area
and doesn't have much time to spend with her nowadays. She claims that
none of her friends who left her hometown to go to college don't come
come back anymore. But that might not be totally true.

She told me she had a very rough time in her senior year (2004-2005) of
high school and her freshman year of college Fall 2005 - Spring 2006. I
know her grades were not up to her usual standards her first semester,
and she apparently went out to many frat parties and drank with a fake ID.

Things got a little better the spring of her freshman year grade wise,
and she didn't seem to be doing as much drinking. She wanted to
transfer to another school up North where she thought she would fit in,
but they didn't accept her because of her Fall semester grades.

She got the rejection notice from the other school in the middle of a
6-week foreign study program in a country with a history of serious
depression and alcohol abuse. Her e-mails to me indicated she was out
at clubs every night and alcohol was sold everywhere (mixed drinks in
cans even sold in coffee shops and internet cafes). Once she got home,
she bragged how she was totally drunk the last two days of her stay, and
needed to be "poured" on the plane for the ride back to the US - and
they even had to confiscate some canned alcoholic beverages from her.

She said more than once that she was or had been depressed, going to
therapy, and had been taking anti-depressants. I didn't find out that
she was taking Prozac until right before Christmas 2006. I then found
out there are risks for consuming anything other than moderate amounts
of alcohol when taking Prozac.

I feel she is self-medicating with alcohol. She probably had 10
different sex partners (including me) from her senior year in high
school until the end of her Freshman year. She had at least one old sex
partner this past summer but probably more. Then she had at least 7
different sex partners this fall and spring semester (including me).
She would go out to bars two nights a week with her co-workers, and 3
nights a week to meet guys.

She would meet slightly older guys in bars who would buy her drinks,
dance with her, then take her back to her dorm room for sex. She became
a "bootie-call" girl - someone you didn't take out for a pleasant night
on the town - but you called up after you were done with your friends or
meeting other women you think you might have a chance for a long-term
relationship with.

I didn't find out about that until late October of this year. Then I
had to cut out our sexual relations and I think she felt somewhat
rejected by that. But what was I supposed to do - continue to have
sexual relations with someone who didn't care about my health?

She missed a great number of classes this past Fall Semester - a friend
of mine who was in her last class on MWF (2-3) said she missed 10 out of
45 sessions, and when she did show up she would often reak of tobacco
smoke and alcohol coming from out of her pores. She seemed to be
getting straightened out before the end of the Fall Semester, but what
she was really doing was changing her tactics. She set her sights on
either bartenders or bar owners to date and screw so she would have a
"house" bar to call her own - be able to go to it, dance and get drunk.

Now I am a few years older than she is. But at least she and I
concocted a story to explain the times we spent together. She called me
her "uncle" since she did have family about 90 miles away. We were of
the same race - both white. The bar owner she is going out with now is
not. She defends her choice to date him as her friends in the small
college town would accept him over me because he lives here and had lots
of friends her age in town. On his MySpace page he has only comments
from white chicks, one of whom calls him a "pimpdaddy".

That is because he is an alco-pimp - trying to make friends with tons of
young undergrads to come and spend money in his bar. If he can get
enough cute chicks to drink and act silly in the bar, he can make the
guys want to come there and spend money. But there is no way that her
friends in the dorms will accept her dating a short dumpy black man. I
don't accept the fact that this guy lies about his age, had been found
guilty of Assault and Battery (hit his own kid), beat his wife before he
divorced her, and then had to be sued for child support. On top of
that, his bar buddies are also scum - one was arrested and found guilty
of aiding and abetting in Assault with a Deadly weapon (held down a kid
while his friend shot him in the head). One of the danger signs of
someone who is manic or bi polar is if they date or have relationships
with abusive partners.

I care about her a great deal and it's very hard to walk away from
someone you have know and love and have felt that way about for over a
year. Yes - I said love. Not that I want to marry her.

I feel she was might have been misdiagnosed with depression when she
might have been manic all along. Or that with no monitoring of her meds
and no therapy down here she might have slipped over into being manic or
bi-polar. The local college counselors seem to feel that she needs
serious help - intervention, a full evaluation including therapy, med
evaluation, testing for nutrition, seeing if her BC pills are playing a
part in her mental health condition, etc.

I have no leverage to help her get treatement, so I called her father
and mother and they share my concerns over her behavior, but they don't
seem to want to lay down the law with her - tell her to stop drinking
and going to bars, and associating with abusive people, getting therapy
and hanging out with people who can help her to regain a postive outlook
on life.

So I wonder if anyone else has been in the same place my friend is in
now - and if you could share how you got out of it and regained a
healthy life?


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