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A friend of me became a neo-nazi.

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dragonrider

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We grew up toghether and we where very close when we where young. We used to share everything, and at some point that included psychedelics as well.
In hindsight i must say that i was still pretty immature when i started using psychedelics. I was 15 then, and i more or less lived by that stupid "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" idea. I took as much LSD as i could as often as possible, and maybe you could say that i encouraged him to do the same.

I cannot say for sure that he suffered a psychotic break, as i'm no shrink. But something sure as hell went terribly wrong inside his head. He became increasingly more paranoïd and delusional.
I didn't see it coming, and when i saw it, it was already too late.

Nowadays he's a neo-nazi. A convinced hitler fanboy. He believes that he "took the red pill" and saw what most of us refuse to see, wich in his view is that the purity of the white race is being threatened and being mixed with inferior blood, that hitler was a true hero who unfortunately failed because of the vast extend of the jewish conspiracy. etc.

I would not at all be surprised if he would make the headlines one day, in the way anders breivik did.

I don't understand it. This is not how i remember him at all. This is not the guy i knew and grew up with.
And i feel terribly guilty. I obviously should have prevented him from taking LSD. But i encouraged him instead.
 
people are parading around in the streets with hammer and sickle flags screaming about fascism(just for perspective..soviets killed more than the nazis)..the left sort of fell off the gameboard they went so far..and it is creating the alt right. Now, I hear the word Nazi yelled for any little non pc viewpoints. It's really really sad that it's such a commonly used word like this now and shows the lack of depth people have in relation to they're understanding of historical events. They far left and right are all gone nuts.

Identity politics will lay a person to ruins if they spend too much time wading around in that crap. Most of them seem to have PTSD and defer resentment in extremely erratic unhelpful ways.

People are people, first. Individuals. The rest is history..literally. Anyone can go find out what really happened.

Ignore all of this if you ask me. The end result is everyone fighting and more broken traumatized people sweaping in with communist agendas.

I dont mean to sound like a conspiracy nut..but I mean take a look at current global politics..and Russia.
 
I am truly sorry to hear about your friend's slide into a bad place. Please don't feel guilty about it. You are not your brothers keeper. He made his choices and you made yours.

Do you feel you could talk some sense into him? If not, walk away and let him run his own path. Ultimately, I feel people who hold these kind of views because of a deep seeded anger that only the indivdual can battle. It is up to him to change his thinking. The best you can do is provide the alternative to him and allow him to make his own choices. Tough love. Just let him know your disappointment if you feel you can express yourself to him. He may very well be on the fence and needs a nudge off to your side. Don't let his life choices affect your life in a negative way. Sometimes people need to be something they are not enable to realize what they really are.

I certainly don't think anything anyone says will make you feel better about your good buddy. My heart goes out to you in this. Thank you for sharing something so personal! I wish you and your friend the best and hope everything turns out ok in the end. He may come out the other side with a deeper understanding of compassion and kindness in the end. He would not be the first person to change his mind in this way. It is highly possible he can swing around and find happiness in this life.
 
Thank you jamie and DmnStr8.
You know, i don't think politics play a big role in his current state of mind. I realy think something went wrong in his brain neurochemically.

I know that, in spite of his ridiculous views, deep down inside he is not a bad person.
But he is living in a fantasyworld. A sort of 'lord of the rings' type of world, where everything (even literally) is either black or white, good or evil. He sees himself, or wants to see himself, as the knight in shining armour who is going to save the world from evil in this great heroïc battle. There is no room for any nuance. The whole world is caught up in this great, elaborate conspiracy, and only a few, pure and noble blooded men are couragious enough to see the truth. And like in a hollywood movie, it is up to them alone, to save the planet.

I don't even think it matters to him what exactly he believes in, as long as total and absolute submission are required. He could as well have chosen communism or islamic jihad. I think there's so much chaos and insecurity going on inside his head, that he needs something to hold on to, that is that rigid and absolute. He needs something that requires this total submission. Something that leaves no room for doubts or insecurity.

He has been through a phase of religious fanatiscism as well. That's when we lost contact. When he joined some obscure and ironically, eastern, cult. He was as fanatical then, as he is now. But it all seemed a little less malign. It wasn't all about hate and violence back then. But just as rigid and absolute.

I have tried to keep some kind of contact with him. But i think he is afraid. Affraid that his facade will drop. He doesn't want anybody from the past to contact him. He even changed his name twice (maybe more).
Now he's so far gone, that i don't think i even COULD talk to him. He probably didn't have a normal conversation, or any kind of real human contact with anyone, for over 20 years.

And i also don't know if it would be safe for me, if i where to contact him. And i mean physically safe, with that. I couldn't care less if i would be put on some kind of watchlist by intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies for being one of his contacts, because i'm pretty sure he's being watched by some of those organisations, as he is a core member of a millitant neo-nazi group. But i don't want him or any of his new comrades to kill me for posing a threat to their "great cause".

It realy saddens me.
 
Sorry to hear this. :(

A close friend of mine was also turned on to the right in the last year or two - full swing, swastika tattoos and all - so I feel for you. Another friend of mine, since childhood, hasn't yet made the full identification with being a nazi but he definitely associates with the alt-right, and I think entertains the idea.

DmnStr8 said it well, it's not on you to try to think for someone else. The last conversation I had with my friend-turned-nazi was after more than a year of not being in touch, and obviously I asked him about the whole nazi thing. He blocked me and that was that.

I don't really agree with jamie that people blocking traffic is why nazis still exist, but in hindsight I think there's something to be said for how we choose to engage with people who we fundamentally disagree with. In the case of my friend-turned-nazi, he's always been emotionally reactive, and I think he just got sick of the popular SJW narrative. It doesn't change the fact that, ultimately, he failed to really engage and think critically about the things that were bothering him - but if he were surrounded by people who were actually willing to sit down and talk through these issues with him, as opposed to just cutting him off, he might not have felt emboldened to get a swastika on his chest.

I discovered psychedelics with both these guys. They were my lifelines during experiences that helped shape me into the person I am today. I've got no doubt that psychedelics played a role in their ideological shift to the right, and helped to rationalize some of the more extreme ideas that popped into their heads over the years. Psychedelics can open your mind to potentially infinite ways of thinking. The popular idea that psychedelics inherently turn people into happy leftists and liberals with dreadlocks is silly.

All this just to say, don't beat yourself up. You can't think for other people. If you've genuinely tried to sit down and have a real conversation with him about this, that's the best you can do for him. I know it's rough, but take that anger or sadness or whatever you're feeling right now and do something good with it. Something that nazis would really hate. Make 2018 a really hard year to be a nazi.
 
dragonrider said:
Thank you jamie and DmnStr8.
You know, i don't think politics play a big role in his current state of mind. I realy think something went wrong in his brain neurochemically.

I know that, in spite of his ridiculous views, deep down inside he is not a bad person.
But he is living in a fantasyworld. A sort of 'lord of the rings' type of world, where everything (even literally) is either black or white, good or evil. He sees himself, or wants to see himself, as the knight in shining armour who is going to save the world from evil in this great heroïc battle. There is no room for any nuance. The whole world is caught up in this great, elaborate conspiracy, and only a few, pure and noble blooded men are couragious enough to see the truth. And like in a hollywood movie, it is up to them alone, to save the planet.

I don't even think it matters to him what exactly he believes in, as long as total and absolute submission are required. He could as well have chosen communism or islamic jihad. I think there's so much chaos and insecurity going on inside his head, that he needs something to hold on to, that is that rigid and absolute. He needs something that requires this total submission. Something that leaves no room for doubts or insecurity.

He has been through a phase of religious fanatiscism as well. That's when we lost contact. When he joined some obscure and ironically, eastern, cult. He was as fanatical then, as he is now. But it all seemed a little less malign. It wasn't all about hate and violence back then. But just as rigid and absolute.

I have tried to keep some kind of contact with him. But i think he is afraid. Affraid that his facade will drop. He doesn't want anybody from the past to contact him. He even changed his name twice (maybe more).
Now he's so far gone, that i don't think i even COULD talk to him. He probably didn't have a normal conversation, or any kind of real human contact with anyone, for over 20 years.

And i also don't know if it would be safe for me, if i where to contact him. And i mean physically safe, with that. I couldn't care less if i would be put on some kind of watchlist by intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies for being one of his contacts, because i'm pretty sure he's being watched by some of those organisations, as he is a core member of a millitant neo-nazi group. But i don't want him or any of his new comrades to kill me for posing a threat to their "great cause".

It realy saddens me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel you just summed up some of the more crazy individuals in the alt right.
 
dragonrider said:
Thank you jamie and DmnStr8.
You know, i don't think politics play a big role in his current state of mind. I realy think something went wrong in his brain neurochemically.

I know that, in spite of his ridiculous views, deep down inside he is not a bad person.
But he is living in a fantasyworld. A sort of 'lord of the rings' type of world, where everything (even literally) is either black or white, good or evil. He sees himself, or wants to see himself, as the knight in shining armour who is going to save the world from evil in this great heroïc battle. There is no room for any nuance. The whole world is caught up in this great, elaborate conspiracy, and only a few, pure and noble blooded men are couragious enough to see the truth. And like in a hollywood movie, it is up to them alone, to save the planet.

I don't even think it matters to him what exactly he believes in, as long as total and absolute submission are required. He could as well have chosen communism or islamic jihad. I think there's so much chaos and insecurity going on inside his head, that he needs something to hold on to, that is that rigid and absolute. He needs something that requires this total submission. Something that leaves no room for doubts or insecurity.

He has been through a phase of religious fanatiscism as well. That's when we lost contact. When he joined some obscure and ironically, eastern, cult. He was as fanatical then, as he is now. But it all seemed a little less malign. It wasn't all about hate and violence back then. But just as rigid and absolute.

I have tried to keep some kind of contact with him. But i think he is afraid. Affraid that his facade will drop. He doesn't want anybody from the past to contact him. He even changed his name twice (maybe more).
Now he's so far gone, that i don't think i even COULD talk to him. He probably didn't have a normal conversation, or any kind of real human contact with anyone, for over 20 years.

And i also don't know if it would be safe for me, if i where to contact him. And i mean physically safe, with that. I couldn't care less if i would be put on some kind of watchlist by intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies for being one of his contacts, because i'm pretty sure he's being watched by some of those organisations, as he is a core member of a millitant neo-nazi group. But i don't want him or any of his new comrades to kill me for posing a threat to their "great cause".

It realy saddens me.
Click to expand...

I find that people who talk about the red/black pill suffer a lot from this:

15-styles-of-distorted-thinking.jpg


I hope your friend can heal from whatever it is that's causing this lack of empathy towards his fellow humans or possibly himself even.
 
You feel "guilty" for having somehow creating this? Im sorry but you lost me. I bet my bottom dollar the fact people have changed politically has no correlation to LSD or really any drug use.

Peoples politics comes from their environment.
 
Cactus Man said:
You feel "guilty" for having somehow creating this? Im sorry but you lost me. I bet my bottom dollar the fact people have changed politically has no correlation to LSD or really any drug use.

Peoples politics comes from their environment.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's usually the case. But i think my old friend is actually psychotic. There are several reasons for me to believe this. The most important one: people normally don't become a completely different person in just one day. People do change, but never that fast. Wich DID happen to him. He went from "normal" to "religious fanatic" in just a day, when he was 18.

He has also been a member of several cults. I think a sane person might join a cult once, when being under great stress or something. But several cults? That seems at least a bit unusual to me.

And then, he also started to believe that he had telekinetic abilities.

I must say that i did actually tell him to quit using LSD at some point. That was about a month before he joined his first eastern cult. But he ignored my advice.
 
LSD seems to be different on this point from other psychedelics, IMO. It seems to be more mailable. Whereas it feels like the Mushroom, for example, has a distinct agenda that seems to guide most people in the same direction. This could be untrue, but I don't know any right wing nut jobs who have done any serious explorations with the Mushroom or Ayahuasca.


By the way, I'm terribly sorry about your friend. Though not nearly to the degree of severity, I know what it's like to have former close friends go closer to the fringe and alienate themselves. My dearest childhood friend is like this. We haven't spoken since I told him I'm "not a fan of Trump". That's all I said, and all he needed to hear apparently.
 
Cactus Man said:
You feel "guilty" for having somehow creating this? Im sorry but you lost me. I bet my bottom dollar the fact people have changed politically has no correlation to LSD or really any drug use.

Peoples politics comes from their environment.
Click to expand...

And taking LSD as a teenager, more than once, is not ones environment? That to me is pretty reckless behaviour and playing with fire. At that age you're not even finished developing physically, let alone neurologically, emotionally, mentally. It takes maturity and inner strength to deal with what a powerful psychedelic throws at you - 15 is way too young.

I'd feel pangs of guilt in OPs position too, though in the end you can't let it cut too deep. The important thing is have you actually learned from the mistake by examining your thought processes in the lead up to that episode in your life? We make stupid decisions when we are young and unfortunately some people end up becoming a particular statistic - mentally incapacitated, down and out, or dead. It happens.
 
I find that people who talk about the red/black pill suffer a lot from this:
Click to expand...

I think that's a bit of a generalization. Many people suffer from these traits. And this is an easy way to dismiss ideas - basically categorizing a whole group of people as "crazy".
 
And i feel terribly guilty. I obviously should have prevented him from taking LSD. But i encouraged him instead.
Click to expand...

Guilty for what? Are you his father? I don't see how you "should have" prevented him from using LSD. You are not responsible for him. Whatever his views are, and yes they do sound very extreme, but he is a human being and completely able to take responsibility for his own actions and beliefs.

It is no-one's job to prevent someone else from using LSD.
 
dragonrider,

Firstly, I think that addressing this matter is going to be a healing experience for you. Maybe, it will work out for him, too.... but, may I make a suggestion?

Sometimes people become so absolute in their belief that they're unwilling to consider any other perspective. You are not responsible for his choices. He would have taken LSD, or some other drug, no matter what. It's unfortunate when a person that we care about moves into a state of radical thought. I have a few friends that have gone completely nutty over all the Poly-Ticks and the madness that they represent. No matter what I've said, no matter how much "reasoning" that I try to offer - they will only change their views if they want to.

I've recently been dealing with a friend who has substance abuse problems. I've tried so many different ways to try to help the guy, yet he doesn't want to help himself. So I've decided to stop trying. It's not that I don't care about him, rather I care TOO much.

I can relate to feeling guilty when a friend goes off the deep end. Especially if I had some role in enabling the choice to take that path. Even if I'm very emotionally invested, I try to take a step back and allow time for them to consider their position. If they persist, then I begin the process of closure.

Many times I have found myself carrying other people's burdens. I don't know why, maybe I just genuinely want to help them, or maybe I'm only trying to stroke my own ego by helping another. Nonetheless, I've come to realize that I can't carry the weight which others have brought onto themselves and refused to let go. In these events, I try to to direct the person towards professional help, and then I begin to place distance between myself and the other person.

Since your friend is involved in a hate group, I would suggest maintaining a healthy distance. Some people may suggest informing the authorities, and if he becomes violent/dangerous that may be the best option.

However, guilt will only bore a hole in your soul. If you feel responsible (even though you are not) then try to forgive yourself. We all make mistakes. If you cling onto the notion that you created this person, then it will be very unhealthy. He created himself. Maybe he's easily influenced - yet, again, that is not your fault.

So, in conclusion - separation, closure, and forgiveness. That's my suggestion.


Take care,
ACY
 
Well, i very recently came to the insight that i am finally over this great loss by now.

It has cast a shadow over my life for quite a few years. In the first place maybe because of the fact that i lost someone i realy loved like a brother. And also because i felt guilty. And there was the cognitive dissonance caused by someone i knew very well, realy becoming a completely different person overnight. But i think it also had such a big impact because it was a sort of watershed moment in my life. The way i was living my life was fundamentally careless and unsustainable. And though i realy wanted to deny all of that, it was simply the truth. And i realy had to swallow that one, so to speak. I had to change the way i was living my life, and my perspective on it.

I was also kicked out of school around the same time, for skipping classes and being under the influence of drugs a bit too often.

From then on, my life became a struggle. To make sense of it all. To regain some respect for myself. To build a different kind of life. And then i develloped a realy severe kind of insomnia as well.

At the time it all seemed too big to swallow. Strange to suddenly realise i made it through.
 
dragonrider said:
Cactus Man said:
You feel "guilty" for having somehow creating this? Im sorry but you lost me. I bet my bottom dollar the fact people have changed politically has no correlation to LSD or really any drug use.

Peoples politics comes from their environment.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's usually the case. But i think my old friend is actually psychotic. There are several reasons for me to believe this. The most important one: people normally don't become a completely different person in just one day. People do change, but never that fast. Wich DID happen to him. He went from "normal" to "religious fanatic" in just a day, when he was 18.

He has also been a member of several cults. I think a sane person might join a cult once, when being under great stress or something. But several cults? That seems at least a bit unusual to me.

And then, he also started to believe that he had telekinetic abilities.

I must say that i did actually tell him to quit using LSD at some point. That was about a month before he joined his first eastern cult. But he ignored my advice.
Click to expand...

You didnt make him what he is.

IMO this is all you need to accept to feel at peace with things.

Its not your fault. And honestly its not LSD's fault either.
 
Cactus Man said:
You didnt make him what he is.

And honestly its not LSD's fault either.
Click to expand...

And it's that level of denial that causes situations like that of the OPs in the first place. 15 year olds have no business using a powerful psychedelic, multiple times, in a hedonistic fashion. What world do you live in man, seriously.

The guy may have turned out just fine without LSD spinning him off on a tangent. Give it ten years and he may have even had some positive affect from using a psychedelic sensibly. It really rubs me up the wrong way when people just focus it all back on the individual, "oh, he had latent mental tendencies" or whatever, especially if that person is only a teenager. How do you know it wasn't the LSD? He wasn't even close to being fully matured physically or neurologically.

Sorry, but I have a disdain for people who opt to protect the holy status of a substance over another human being they've never even met using the flimsiest of psychology rationalisations.

If the OP wants to reconcile the pain he feels he needs to hear the truth, not excuses. The ego might accept it but his mind won't, not on a deep level.
 
Not sure if anyone reading this thread has ever heard of a guy by the name of Christian Picciolini. I wanted to mention this guy because sometimes we just don't understand what drives the hate. It is hard to comprehend why someone would lead such a hateful life.

Christian Picciolini is a former neo-Nazi but found his way out of the hate. It is my hope that your friend finds his way out someday just like Christian did. It is possible!


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