Am I too paranoid? Am I really safe?

Okay, so a friend (or should I say a former friend) of mine has recently taken a turn for the worse. In the past year that I’ve known him he had become increasingly antisocial and adopted a paranoid personality that could almost rival John Nash. With his increased paranoia and distaste for humanity in general, most of his friends got pretty spooked and tried disconnecting themselves from him. Over the last couple of months, his roommate had been letting him tag along to the local shooting range. After going a couple times, he had told me and a few of his remaining friends that when he had pulled the trigger on the gun he was using, he felt an instant relief, like all the tension in his head had suddenly been lifted. He really doesn’t have much of a violent history, but he has shown signs of increased anger and an almost warped perception of reality.

He truly believes that he is one of the few people that can see things for what they really are. It doesn’t help that he is without a job, and that he just sits around his apartment most of the time calling people up and talking about how much he hates certain people that he feels have wronged him in some way or another. I’ve tried talking with him about looking for some form of help, but he doesn’t trust doctors at all, and he absolutely detests any form of authority. In the last month he had talked about playing some rather immature pranks on some of the people that had been pissing him off, like calling them to one location and pretending to misunderstand the location of the meeting and intentionally going somewhere else.

Most recently, I’ve grown tired of his repetitive complaints and his unwillingness to seek any form of help and tried to sever any ties that I had with him. I had written out a message to him explaining my concerns and reasons for not being able to hang around him anymore, to which he replied with a sour attitude. A couple of days ago he had added a new poem under his Myspace blog that had mentioned me and another individual that refused to talk to him anymore. He didn’t directly threaten me directly, but he did speak of stabbing the other guy and said things like “you will have a flood of s* rain down in due time”, and “you people are the perfect concoction for terrorism”. Normally I wouldn’t really read into this too much and just pass this off as a poor guy’s outlet, but he does specifically mention that most people scoff at these kind of poems and that no one truly realizes his position.

It spooked me to the point where I had reached for the phone to call the police, and before anyone scolds me for being too paranoid, I’d like to let everyone know that I’m from the same town the Von Maur shootings took place. Most of us are already on edge when people start talking like this. Today I got a call from a female friend of mine that this guy really had a thing for. She sounded pretty shaky and said that her dad wouldn’t let her see this guy anymore. Now I’m no psychologist, but generally when a guy like this has been deprived of friends and a potential love interest, things tend to get a little hectic. Taking into account how rapidly he has been descending on the downward spiral, losing both what he thought to be a close friend and a girl he thought things were going pretty well with, I felt like I was left with no other alternative but to call the police and let them know what was going on.

I went down to the station and explained my problem to a very skeptical officer, but after I handed her a copy of the poem this kid wrote she went to get the nearest Sergeant. I told her all I knew about this guy and the recent events that had transpired and warned her that his roommate had recently purchased a semi-auto and I wasn’t sure if he kept it locked up or not. She said that she’d talk to him, which worried me at first knowing that he would be paranoid enough to figure out or at least jump to the conclusion that I was the one that had voiced the complaint. I’m still waiting on the call confirming that she had talked to him, but until then I don’t feel like I can sleep at night anymore. I feel like he’s somehow escaped and is planning on doing something involving those that have made his life a wreck. Most of it is in my head, but I still can’t shake the feeling that this is far from over, and that both my family and the families of others are in danger because of my actions.

I guess I really shouldn’t do anymore than I’ve already done, and part of me even thinks I’ve overstepped my bounds in terms of what I should have done. Even after the police have visited this guy, should I still be on the defensive? Am I in more danger now than I was before I had called the police? I have no idea.