she'll never forgive me

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Question: Recently a friend had been messaging me about this and that and she would slip in hints that she had been cutting herself and using some heavy drugs, I think crystal meth. I got really worried about her and I contacted her parents. Since then she has not contacted me but I don't think her parents even did anything about it. I'm sure they asked her and she denied it and now I lost a friend and I'm wondering if I did the right thing.

Answer: You did the right thing. The sad truth is that often doing the right thing, the hard thing, doesn't work out. If that was why you did what you believed was right then you have failed.

The end does not justify the means. This is what we say when we are explaining why it isn't okay to do the wrong thing if it gets the right result. You are now standing on the flip side of that coin.

My lacrosse players often use poor technique to score goals against bad teams. When I get pissed they point to their results. Then they go up against a good team and only the boys who have worked on proper technique score, and sometimes even they don't score.

Just because you do something the right way you might not get what you want, but if you do the right thing all the time, that becomes who you are. That identity is its own reward.

We don't do the right thing because it will lead to the best results, we do the right thing because our identity is the sum of our actions and in order to be the right person we must live the right path.

You may not have lost this friend. She will probably be pissed at you for awhile, but she knows that when push comes to shove she can trust that you will do the right thing. If you want to keep her in your life, let her rage at you, be honest about why you did what you did, and do allow her to have her anger.

I wish I could say I would be surprised if her parents do not follow up on this, but in my experience most parents just want to believe everything is okay so badly that they will swallow any lie their children are willing to give them. They don't know what to do so doing nothing is often the default choice.

If she eventually gets the help she needs she may feel ashamed to come back to you, just keep steadily reminding her (when you do have contact) that you care and let her come at her own pace.

She may never forgive you, but if she died of a drug over dose and you said nothing, you would most certainly never forgive yourself and that is a burden there is no escape from.