22 yo Aspie friend left suicide note and fled 2500 miles

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Hi everyone,

I will be forced to change details for the sake of anonymity, but this is a true ongoing story.

I have a 22 yo male friend from Europe, he went to Georgia (USA) for his studies.

In the beginning he was ok, then he started getting depressed as he was alone, lacked motivation ( he's a brilliant student though ). He started cutting himself from us and telling less and less.

Then he retrieved some motivation after he met with close friends in Philadelphia, who were passing by for holidays. It lasted for a week.

Then they left, and again he was on his own. He got really worse.

A week ago, he left apparent suicide notes on voicemail to some of his friends, then he took off, leaving no known address.

At first, we believed the worst.

But he surfaced up, two days ago, his excentric behavior put him under local cops watch in Colorado. Indeed, he reached Aspen.
Legally, cops can't do nothing.

Our friend won't answer our phone calls and messages, he just sent us ambiguous emails where he asks to be left alone, suffering strong depression.

We don't understand at all. He's usually very kind and caring.


Did any Aspie, bipolar, or "TED" ever experience running away from home ?

Sometimes we just want to go out and see things and explore new places without any sort of barriers and these barriers could consist of other people knowing of our existence or known whereabouts.

This definitely seems like something I would do. Cut off contact with all and just go and wander off on my own. I'm an aspie who wants to explore the world privately. I'm more comfortable that way. Perhaps that is how your friend is too. Whatever he is depressed about he thinks that going out and just wander to wherever alone will help him feel better. I wish your friend the best.

Ever seen the movie "One Week"? It's about a guy who finds out he's got a deadly cancer and might have only a week to live so he goes off on his own across Canada without telling anyone. It's that sort of mentality I think that gets the better of all of us. I think lonliness and stress combined become motivators in "wandering off" to get rid of some of that depression. Who knows?

Personally, if this were my friend I'd fly out to help him.

You both are right.

First, we understand his need to privacy, but do I have to recall the dangers to travel alone on a country you don't know ? Besides, he has only one credit card, and he has a student visa. If he skips more classes, visa will be terminated, and he will be considered as an illegal alien. And experience tells me than even for an autist or Asperger, the more you keep things for yourself, the more you get worse. At some point, you have to talk to someone to relieve yourself from the pain and depression.

Second, he's constantly moving, we can't trace him, so flying would be counter productive...

Thank you for your concern, lets keep discussing.

Could you send him an email, explaining how afraid you were that he had committed suicide, detailing the effort that you put into tracking him down. Trying to guilt him into to send an email at a regular interval, to verify that he is ok (at a bare minimum), and possibly where he is. Some concrete interval describing it as agreement/rule to make it an obligation. Then next maybe try to get something 2-way but still text based like MSN or Gtalk.

in times that I'm trying to escape from the people that I know, I can relate that a phone call is just too much, having to face people and dealing with questions about why you disappeared. I had a friend cut off contact, with family and everyone at university in a similar way, but much less drastic. The days that I though she had (...) were hell.

I wish I had better advice.

I personally went through something similar to what your friend is going through almost exactly a year ago. I didn't actually end up wandering off like your friend did but I was literally less than 24 hours from doing so. Basically my plan was to just take my pack I use for hiking, my hiking shoes and just start walking the little amount of cash I had. I was literally all packed ready to go, went to the bank and cashed a $100 savings bond before maturity (got around $75 for it) had my passport, constructed a lighter weight tent out of a tarp, constructed cooking equipment from cans (I still use some of the equipment camping at least), etc. So really I was quite serious about just wandering off, leaving the rest of my life behind.

As luck would have it my sister called me the night before I was going to leave and said she wanted me to come visit her. I hadn't seen her in a while and I guess I felt like maybe I should visit her before I took off. I think that kind of cleared my head a little bit and I kind of saw that what I was doing wasn't really the greatest idea.

I don't know that I really have advice for you, but I guess the best I can do is try to describe how I felt and what I was thinking. I had just failed all my college classes that semester (for the 2nd time) and hadn't really contacted any of my (very few) friends for months. I was certainly depressed and felt kind of hopeless. I probably never have had a stronger sense of just feeling like I really and truly didn't belong and above all I really wanted to just be left alone.

Wandering off to me was the only real solution at the time. I thought that I would just be kind of starting a new life... I am not really sure I considered the idea that I would really come back at any point. To me wandering off meant I could be alone, be myself, and live by my own terms.

I'm not really sure what the point of me writing all this is but maybe you can make some sense of it. My sister has no idea that in a way she kind of saved me from wandering off, I think just having a 'normal' interaction with someone really helped. The only people I was really talking to at the time, my parents, were just telling me 'ABC is wrong with you, you need to do XYZ'... very confrontational sort of conversations.

He probably doesn't want to talk or be confronted about it. I really don't know how you should go about it but just being able to have a neutral, easy going, 'normal' conversation might really help him much more than trying to dive straight into the issue.

I've kind of rambled on here but really your friend kind of sounds like me from a year ago... heck I was even 22 years old at the time. Feel free to PM me.

It's all right,, thanks.

I have run away many times in my life. Some as a kid, some as an adult. I have always thought that somewhere out there must be a place where I fit in. It took 40 years to realize, it doesn't exist, so I quit running.

That is sort off encouraging.

I'd be looking for him.

I'm thinking of doing a semi-runaway, in the form of a holiday where I don't tell anyone where I'm headed beforehand but where if a friend needed to know where I was & made the effort to figure it out before I reveal, they'd know. I'm well above age of majority so it wouldn't even technically be a runaway.

yeah i have thought about getting a plane ticket and flying to the east coast and calling back home and say hey im in ______ ______ and no im not joking. other than my immediate family, i truly believe no one would notice, care, or even know or want to do anything to f*****g understand, accept it, etc. i believe i could disappear and only 2 people in the world would truly give a s**t. everyone else...no they would be too busy updating their facebook and texting stupid s**t and living their great busy successful lives and not have time to put up with any negativity, weirdness, or unsettling event from an insignificant person (to them) as me. and not to sound like a cold-hearted as*hole, but lets say hypothetically a friend of mine did what your friend did, well i would be concerned and want to help, but in the end you can only do so much if the person doesnt want help from others. you can hope for the best and hope that with whatever decision/action they commit to, they will be happy and at peace with it. good luck, hope it all works out positively for all involved.

[quote="Adam917"]I'm thinking of doing a semi-runaway, quote]

Where to?

- skysoar

to most people i have been "disapearing" since age 15

my father always knew where i were though, ususally i would be gone for 2-6 months working as a windturbine technician and enjoying myself.