What's the worst change you have seen in a person?

[OneUmberJoker]

Two friends who spent all of high school saying they were anti smoking immediately started smoking when we got to college.

She had a teenage DD too, poor girl.

I used to have a massive crush on this boy when I was at school. He was a few years older and he was so gorgeous. Quite shy and aloof. Anyway he got into drugs in a big way in
his mid teens and never really came back from it. I ended up working with him, when I was home for the summer holidays whilst at university, in a bar and we became friends - he still took drugs but because we were all late teens/early 20s it wasn’t seen as an issue plus he was able to function. However he never stopped smoking weed and it affected him physically and mentally. I used to see him about and he looked broken. The last time I saw him was about 10 years ago on the train and he looked terrible. It was a shame.

Close friend who, when we worked together (teachers) was as left-wing as you like.

In the past five or so years she's done a 180 degree turn and is now pro-Reform and all the ancillary views that tend to go with it.

A former friend and colleague was very lovely kind. Then she turned racist. She said nasty and untrue stuff about our Hindu colleagues. Then went to a retirement do for another colleague about four years after she retired. Former friend didn’t say a word to the retiree of the do. Then spurt some untrue stuff about me and other colleagues.

Nobody is in contact with her since

One word...cocaine

What changed after their 18th birthday is that they were legally allowed to drink?

Thoughts and prayers at this difficult time.🩵

I've seen someone suffering from acute psychosis and they aren't even acting like a human being. Having been totally normal a few hours before.

Dfriend joined an mlm. Spent a year getting more and more fanatic about it. Tried to manipulate many close friends into buying it. Sad 😔

You can drink before you're 18, just can't buy it.. This person used to go to house parties with all of us and not drink.

The thing is was this really a shocking change in him or a shocking discovery by you as to what he was really like all along. I think there is a difference in finding something out about a person that is shocking and someone actually completely changing in front of you.
I knew someone who was the most competitive person who would' and did, screw anyone over to get what they wanted, change in their mid 30s to a quiet life in the Country looking after loads of animals and doing amateur dramatics. They never explained the change. Just said they always loved animals and gave no further explanation.

LTB. It doesn't get any worse than this.

Someone I knew posted on SM that they were dying. Obviously got lots of responses. I hadn’t seen them in a few years but was so sad for them as they weren’t old. Later I came to know they were mentally ill and it wasn’t true but still sadly they ended up in a mental institution thinking people were trying to poison them. Really sad.

DH has dementia. Been a roller coaster. First changes were significant paranoia. Accusing me and DCs of hiding stuff. Then that we were trying to harm him. We tried to get him to see the Doc, but the paranoia made him think that this was part of our plan to harm him. He left for some time, then returned. He then had a very severe incident where he was threatening to jump from a second floor window, so we had to call the Police and he was sectioned. Medication has helped a lot, but his mental decline has been very quick and he now cannot navigate around the house without help and needs help to dress, wash and feed himself. It is a very big change.

My ex (Welsh) started speaking with a Scottish accent, bought a big bike and had an affair with a woman who wore a belt for a skirt. It was fast too. In the space of nine months he had gone from telling me I was the love of his life to leaving, being a dick, asking to come back (declined) and leaving her too and moving to Australia.

This 100%.

I had the most lovely boyfriend in my late 20s who started out on cannabis and that gatewayed to everything else under the sun. Dead at 31. He was the image of Tom Hardy and one of the twinkliest and nicest people I knew but he just could not leave it alone. I bloody hate drugs.

Apparently lots of people on MN all did drugs in their teens and 20s and now have fab careers and are completely unaffected.

What a shock this must have been. It just goes to show that we can never truly know people - we just think we do.

My sister’s ex who got so high on cocaine he turned really funny and then battered my mum and went to prison for GBH.

I mean yeah most people dabbled in their 20s while living it up in the City etc. It’s to be expected that high flying young people fly… well, high. Work hard, play hard was a thing.

I never touched the stuff despite FOMO and temptation.

Competitive and ruthless in the work sense? Maybe that was the plan all along - make enough money for the place in the country with room for animals as quickly as possible and then go and live the quiet life?

Otherwise, maybe burnout / breakdown, but too proud to say?

My colleague murdered his wife...

Yeah FiL, went from Liberal Tory to Reform who now thinks towing Dinghies out to sea and sinking them, would stop the boats, when told "thats murder" he said "No we'd only sink the boat"

I knew a strong, confident, independent career woman who completely changed with post partum depression. She wouldn't talk, or meet your eye. Would try to hide behind her DH and was paranoid. Really sad. She happily recovered but took a few years.

My ex had a nervous breakdown which was awful to see too.