The Weight Of The Crown

This morning I got a phone call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a few months.

(The names of the people involved have been changed to create some privacy.)

I picked up the phone, “Hey dude what’s up?”

“Nick, do you remember Michael?”

“Yeah of course dude, from high school?”

“He overdosed last night. He’s alive, but he had to go to the emergency room.”

It seemed random that he was telling me this, I hadn’t talked to “Michael” in years. It was sad to hear but, to be frank, it wasn’t someone who I was really concerned about.

He continued, “I was with him last night, we were doing blow, he started seizing up, I got him on his side and kept him alive until the ambulance came.”

I had to ask, “Did you sell him the stuff?”

“I have in the past. I talked to the cops last night. I don’t know what’s going to happen like if he presses charges or confesses to the cops, I’m calling you because I think this is it dude.”

I had been saying to myself for years that my friend who called me was going to end up either dead or in jail before 30.

The life he was living just had no other options.

Dealing drugs all the time, abusing drugs himself, constantly around absolute idiots on those drugs, getting in fights, drinking like a maniac, the list goes on and on.

This friend of mine, let’s call him Stan.

Stan and I lived together at the age of 17.

After graduating from high school, I took a “gap year” and moved in with him, which really was just an excuse to smoke weed all day long, sell it to friends, and do psychedelics on the weekend as a cheap form of entertainment.

I lived that life for maybe 4 or 5 months until one night Stan slammed open the front door, he clearly was drunk and was stumbling all over the small one-bedroom apartment.

He started being destructive, trying to punch holes in the walls, banging his head into the doors, and he kept falling to the ground.

So I did my best to try and get him to bed, but while helping him to his bedroom, he put me into a headlock and wouldn’t let go.

I kept trying to get out of it, but he wouldn’t budge, I told him to let go, but it only got tighter.

I picked him up off the ground and slammed him off of me, I could tell whatever I did hurt him, but I had no other option otherwise I would be unconscious.

He got up with full-blown rage in his eyes, looking like he was about to try and kill me.

I didn’t feel like fist fighting with my best friend, so I just started yelling at him with my hands out to try and calm him down…

“Stan! Stan! You’re drunk dude! You’re drunk! You need to stop!”

I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he stood there, breathing heavily, looking like he was possessed by the devil.

He ended up turning around, closed the door, and started trashing his entire bedroom.

I drove home to my mom’s that night and told her I can’t watch my best friend destroy his life anymore, and decided to move back in with her the next day.

Stan and I grew up together, we lived across the street from each other and spent a lot of time together in our childhood.

His mom tells me all the time how I didn’t know how to speak English, so she just had a crazy little Russian toddler running around the house who she couldn’t understand.

Everything was simple back then, we started from similar roots, but here we were, on the opposite ends of a phone call…

I was sitting outside in my backyard, getting some work done before I headed out to church…

But Stan was crying, confronted with the reality that he could’ve killed his friend, and that he may be heading to prison soon, facing some very serious charges.

How did we end up in such different positions?

Environment.

After seeing him slowly start to ruin his life by abusing drugs all the time and having these chaotic drunk episodes, I decided to separate myself from him.

I believe around that time I got a job at a screen printing shop and spent almost all of my time working and saving up money to get my own apartment.

All of my free time was spent consuming personal development material because I wanted to make something of my life by myself, without college.

Eventually, I discovered copywriting and started spending most of my time learning that skill set because I knew it was the ticket to me controlling my income.

I got pretty good at it and at the age of 18 or 19 I was able to quit my jobs and go full-time into it.

I eventually met my friend Kyree and moved in with him at age 20, because I wanted to learn from him. At the time, Kyree was the smartest person I had met in my life and had tons of experience in the digital marketing world.

From there I kept surrounding myself with mentors and high-level people who always called me to be more and to be more.

I stayed focused on work and becoming a better version of myself, I had a few trips to rock bottom, but overall I maintained steady and consistent improvement.

Stan on the other hand maintained a steady and consistent downward spiral…

The friend group got worse and worse…

The alcoholic tendencies increased further and further…

Guns started getting involved…

The drugs got harder and harder…

And that’s what brought us to where we were at now, two very different situations in life.

He said he would call me back because the friend who overdosed was calling him and had just gotten out of the hospital.

Within a few moments I heard back from him, the friend was fine, he didn’t talk to the cops and wasn’t going to press any charges on anyone.

“I’m so fucking lost dude, my life is so fucked up. I don’t know what to do.”

Hearing his voice break as he kept losing it and crying started to get me emotional, it’s never to hear your friends suffering in the pits of hell.

“Nick you’re the only person who’s ever real with me, you’re the only person who doesn’t judge me for how fucked up I am.”

And he was right, I never lied to him, we always kept in touch even after I moved out of his place.

I loved him but I was never hesitant to tell him that he was messing up his life.

He was looking for guidance so I gave him some advice around distancing himself from his friend group and most importantly getting sober.

He kept saying how he had tried so many times but he kept waking up with night sweats, and couldn’t sleep unless he used.

“That’s the consequences you’re going to have to deal with. The next 2-3 weeks are going to suck, and either you push through it or you’re going to repeat the cycle dude. It’s your choice.”

He replied back, “I need something outside of myself to commit to.”

I don’t think I’m in a position to try and convert my friend to Christianity on the spot, this is a new chapter for me and the church I go to is definitely not for everyone.

“Dude how about you do this for your mom and your dad. You’ve been so fucking selfish your whole life, they’ve put you in god knows how many rehab camps, they’ve tried so hard to fix your life up and you keep doing everything to mess it up.”

He was crying harder than before, I was being aggressive, but love ain’t lies.

If I didn’t say it, no one would.

“You’re right”

I had to get going otherwise I’d be late for church, we wrapped up the call, and I told him I loved him, and that he could call me anytime.

“I’m so happy you answered Nick, I love you dude.”

And that was that.

I went inside and broke down crying on the couch.

A few months ago I wrote on a piece of paper…

“I want to be the man other men come to when they need help in life.”

And the universe delivered exactly what I asked for.

When I told Kyree about that goal, he said that it’s heavy, it weighs on you and the pressure is a lot.

He wasn’t wrong.

I was crying because it was really hard to have someone I loved so much in so much pain on the phone calling me begging for help.

It hit me that it’s only going to get more intense from here.

The situations are going to be more intense.

The calls are going to get heavier and heavier.

The pressure to be the man I want to be is only going to build and build.

And what most people don’t understand, is that my journey of documenting everything means I have very little room to mess up.

If I walk this path I have to walk it fully.

But I can’t imagine taking any other path.

I have to accept the consequences that come with it.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”