[komposit]

I'm sorry this is happening to you and I know all too well how distressing it is to be a compassionate onlooker in an event like this.

Something similar (although likely less severe) happened to my wife in a not too distant past. More or less from one day to the next she started feeling very very unsafe, thought people were after her and conspiring to take away our child. She started writing protective symbols on the walls and doors of our house and felt she was talking to ghosts. I would find her yelling at passersby from our flat window. No one in her life, including me, felt like a safe person anymore.

To me it felt like this foreign power had invaded our life and started ripping everything to shreds. I honestly have never been so stressed in my life.

Luckily we did find our way out of it. My wife was on ADHD medication at the time (dexamfetamine) and we had been going through a rough time our marriage. Covid had just happened and we had a 3yo son. I think by the time she started developing delusions she probably hadn't slept well for months.

Her mother came to live with us for a couple of weeks, we stopped the dexamfetamine and we focused on just making our life as low stress and loving as possible.

I am honestly so grateful that we managed to navigate our way out of this together and that we are fine now. I can't give you much by way of advice. The position you are in is unfair and whatever you do to help your friend is commendable.

One thing I realized is that once the human mind is stressed enough it becomes a sort of runaway nuclear reactor, stuck in a cycle of every more stressful thoughts. The kind of behaviors you will see in that situation are hard to witness, and the best thing you can do as a friend is to provide safety, even when the other person sees the opposite. Living together with this person might not be a workable or safe situation for you or for him, and unfair as it might be you might end up in a position where you have to make this call. Your friend might see this as a betrayal. Be compassionate to yourself and your friend in this moment. Know you are trying to make the best out of an impossible situation. Understand you are not in control and that you are afraid to do the wrong thing and that the fact that you feel this way is what makes you a good friend. Best of luck!