Closest friend suddenly pushing the wrong buttons

Arg, this is getting annoying. My closest friend and confidant has been stressing me out lately. A bit of background to start: the guy counts for 50% of the people in my city who actually know of my mood disorder, and he's the one who usually passes for the better listener. (Not that I like imposing tales of my BD on people.)

What's irking me is that he's been acting hyper-critical of people lately. Before it used to be he's just joke about bad drivers and cultural faux-pas with me, but now he's been pushing that to racist, fascist and sexist levels. To make matters worse, he now gets hyper-defensive if you try to challenge him on any of these points, usually beginning his arguments with: "in the animal kingdom..." or "according to natural selection...".

Then it hit a breaking point. This friend of mine has managed to lose about 50 lbs since the end of spring, and all our friends are nice and happy for him. That said, our one mutual buddy made the mistake of jokingly addressing him as 'fatty' the other week. We were in good company, and everyone knew that this buddy of ours just said it as a playful way of acknowledging my friend's hard work, but my friend apparently took it very personally. He claims that our buddy said it as a means of suppressing his Will and asserting dominance over him (as in, on an alpha-male level). From my perspective, this is a flat-out paranoid thing to think. The buddy of ours has only ever been a loyal friend, and there is no alpha-male/sexual dimension playing in to this at all. I never even see either of these guys chasing women.

Well, the way it's worked out, the buddy of ours has no clue he's even in conflict with my friend (he calls my friend regularly to get him out of the house, and my friend just brushes him off with an excuse), and my friend has forbidden me from trying to patch things up. (I've got ideas of how.) Before he's always trusted me to say the right things for him when he was feeling too introverted to pipe up. And even if he has always been opinionated, he's known me and my ethical convictions for 10 years, and I no point would I have ever laughed along with him at obese people just to stroke his ego.

It just doesn't make sense. He was such a timid, well-to-do guy before the last month. The only change that I can think of in his life is the loss of weight via diet.

Has anyone here experienced something to this effect? Any input is welcome.

Hmmm.....lost 50lbs in 3 months just by dieting? Are you sure he didn't take diet pills or any other street drugs to accomplish that? That's a lot of weight to loose in a fairly short period of time. Just a thought.

Depression.....has your friend ever suffered from depression? This could be something to consider. How about major changes in his life (aside from weight loss). Family issues, money issues, has he moved recently? Anything that could be causing him some stress and anxiety might be playing into his moods and comments.

I would be asking questions....as a concerned friend and of course validating how he's feeling. Maybe he's scared of something and he doesn't know how to discuss it or how to bring the subject up?

It's hard to say exactly what could be causing his issues. I hope he is feeling better and back to himself soon. I'm sure you will be a good friend to him.

Take care!
_sabby_

My very first thought was "hmm wonder what he's been taking" there is no natural way to lose that much weight in that amount of time. I know someone who took speed to lose weight in that amount of time. She became an alpha ****** and ended up losin all her friends until she became a dealer then she was the most popular wman in town

Her personality changed and she went from a really nice person to being someone who is nasty, mean and doesn't care about it either. I couldn't trust someone to be honest and telling the truth if they were to tell me & insist that they had lost weight by diet alone, there's no reason to stress the "diet alone" part

Megan

My first thought is the same. Something is off here.

Hah, yeah, I can't see him tracking down some speed. He has nothing when it comes to street smarts. Another member of his family has gone through a procedure involving weight loss injections though, so he might still have access to such things.

He's always had Seasonal Affective Disorder, but this is summer.... I'm even getting him out of the house. The again, he's in a similar boat as me where we're both going back to college in a year's time, and only have part time work to distract us. It's kind of a big wait, and the act of him hanging around his house seems to see him volunteered for plenty of menial jobs he has no desire to do. Depression or not, I can see that frustrating him.

Also, We were both groomsmen in another mutual friend's wedding recently. Whereas I went through the whole thing with a huge smile on my face, my friend seemed pretty detatched from it all. By the time it was over, he needed a period of five days before we could even coax him out of the house.

Thanks for the help so far!