My best friend claims he has a 'touch' of bi-polar. He is educated, very philosophical, 36 y/o, admits to having a drinking problem, is not on meds, and was put into an institution when he was 12 for 'bad behavior'. His mother has been receiving electroshock therapy since she was 19. Both his brother and sister have been in hospitals and/or on meds. I am a female, former army nurse and in my upper 40's.

I have been his best and ONLY friend for about 2 years. I have seen him flip out before after too much alcohol, but this time he scared me. We had a fun day watching football on Saturday, having some beers, laughing and talking. As the evening came he wanted to go to a bar. I ate and he switched to hard liquor. At this point, he was still having fun and happy.

We stopped at the grocery store to buy some wine. He grabbed 2 bottles and went to check out. The clerk was rude and ignoring him as she was counting out change. He suddenly flipped out and yelled at the clerk. He was ranting about the problems with everyone else on the 2 mile drive back to my place. He carried in the bag with the bottles and was still ranting, dropped a bottle which broke on the kitchen floor. I kept telling him to calm down, the clerk was rude but let it go, I will clean up the glass and spill. He kept yelling and grabbed the larger section of the broken bottle and threw it on the floor again, making a bigger mess and yelled , "here's more glass for you to clean up since you seem to like cleaning so much!"

He kept yelling and saying mean things about my kids, my life, my home, and my friends. He started drinking out of the other bottle direct and was expressing hate for everything around me. I kept calm and asked him to please relax and calm down. No one is perfect, we all have flaws, and so on. Suddenly he got up, got into my face, grabbed my glass and held it to his wrist and yelled how many times he would like to cut his wrist and finish it all. I grabbed my glass back. Next he held his finger to his head like a gun and said he would like to blow his brains out. I was crying at this point as he was gritting his teeth as he was yelling and really scaring me. He swung his arm and knocked over a lamp and an end table. I picked it up, stayed calm, never raised my voice through the whole thing, walked over to my purse, turned to him and said, "I am leaving my home. You are welcome to stay and cool down.. if you leave, just close the door so my dogs don't get out." I went to my car, jumped in, locked my doors, and drove away. I passed by my house 10 minutes later and he was gone.

Its now Monday afternoon. I don't know what to do, call him, go over to see him, email? I don't believe he would have actually hurt himself but in his philosophical way, he will say that liquor removes the cultural veil and that everything he said were thoughts that needed to be expressed. He may say a weak 'sorry' for his delivery of his messages but will not apologize for the content. He will also say that the reason he has no friends AT ALL, is because he choses to because humans are so flawed that all of them irritate him. This is the standard lines he has said before when he flips out. It has never been to the point where I was afraid of him or where he talked about suicide. All advice is welcome!