Choose your friends carefully. No friends is better than bad friends. The wrong friends will seriously hold you back in life, and even harm you. The Bible says in Proverbs “The companion of fools suffers harm.” And you may not even consider that your friends are fools. But if you keep finding yourself getting into trouble, if you feel your friendship is affecting your mental health, and all you do is drink alcohol and take drugs then these friendships are harmful.
Whenever I was at university my friends and I smoked weed literally every single day. For years I was addicted to weed. It was virtually all we did whenever we were hanging out together. That addiction lead to me having a full mental breakdown and being put on anti-psychotic medication. Over 12 years later, I am still dealing with this issue of mental illness. And it was all because I chose to continue to hang out with my friends even though I knew that it was doing me harm.
I’m diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. That is directly the result of hanging out with and being influenced by my friends. I was vulnerable after being bullied in school and getting my heart broken and I put myself in a situation where getting a mental illness was almost unavoidable. Weed can be extremely harmful for certain types of people. If you always find that weed makes you feel “paranoid”, stop smoking it immediately because you are heading straight for a mental illness.
I suspect that my years of depression prior to starting to smoke weed is a factor. Also it could be genetics. But I have a serious mental illness now and I’ve been in hospital 7 times. It’s only recently that my mental health is starting to improve and I’ve gotten my doctor to agree to stop my injections. Anti-psychotic medication makes you feel quite bad. It’s sedating and groggy and feeling like a zombie whenever you are medicated. It also leads to weight gain and its very hard to lose weight. However my goal is to get a six pack sometime later this year.
Learn from my mistakes. If you find yourself in the same kind of situation, you need to eject yourself immediately and end those friendships. Trust me, I haven’t had any friends for 6 years now because most people are just so toxic. I haven’t found anyone yet worthy of being called my friend. Nowadays I am very choosy regarding who I want to allow into my life. Most people are not worth my time. Most people will lead me down the wrong path in life again. So I have learned to be alone.
However I am an introvert by nature so I actually enjoy spending time alone, which is good. I don’t constantly need to be around other people. I don’t crave social stimulation. I am perfectly fine on my own. And I will stay on my own until I come across someone who fears God and is trying to make something of their life. You only really come across people that would be good friends to have online. On YouTube and what not. Because I don’t really have that many options at the moment.
Choose your friends carefully. Avoid toxic people and end those friendships before they destroy you. It pays to be wise in life and even though I’ve been diagnosed for almost 10 years now, wisdom is still very valuable to me in helping me to live a good life. And I am slowly fixing it, bit by bit. If you are bored and have nothing to do, try getting a book on Stoicism from Amazon and read it. Stoicism is human wisdom and there’s many golden nuggets I’ve acquired from it. The Bible says to seek wisdom and you will find it.
I have learned from personal experience however how important it is to make sure that you have good friends. Friends that support you, motivate you, challenge you to be your best. Friends that are interested in entrepreneurship. Friends that have faith in God. Those are the types of friends that I want in my life. And until I find them, I will walk the road alone.
-Aaron
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