Insanity made it impossible for him to have a life.  He could not sleep, he could not function.  Every day was an endless living hell.  He was in physical pain every moment and in mental and emotional torment.  He would call every half an hour describing hideous scenes he'd see in his mind.  "I'm seeing faces in the shadows that my lamp puts on the walls."  When he sent me an old picture of himself telling me to remember him that way I finally resorted to calling his sister.

     "Hello Jackie?"  This is Cassia.  "Alex is not doing well.  It's serious.  I think he's in danger of taking his own life."  I did not describe to her the things he told me about seeing and hearing things but she took me seriously.  She had seen how he was acting around the house.   He didn't look normal.  He walked with an irregular gait and awkward movements.  He would spend all day and all night in his bedroom only coming out to smoke.  He barely ate and wouldn't even shower or shave anymore.  

    Maria even told me, "I don't know who that is, but it's not my brother.  He's just not the brother I knew."   Jackie was a Muslim, but even she knew that this personality wasn't truly who Alex was.  She knew something had taken him over.  She decided to talk to her Psychiatrist about Alex.  The Psychiatrist found what she told him to be quite alarming and urged her to call Social Services to intervene because Alex was unwilling to go to the doctor.

    I really did not want Alex to end up in the hands of Psychiatry but each phone call was worse than the last.  Alex was now rejecting everything I would do to try and help including prayers.  He refused to pray with me and told me not to pray for him.  He kept telling me that it was over for him and that he was going to leave and no one would ever see him again.  

    Jackie called me one day telling me, "Social Services said they'd come to our house and try to talk him into coming with them.  The ladies coming assured me that they have a way of making people agree to come.  They will tell him in a nice way that if he doesn't come with them that they can make him come by force by calling the police.  But, we don't want to do that.  We don't want to scare him."

    I knew how Alex had all kinds of fears in his imagination about being caught in a psychiatric unit and being abused.  So I knew I needed to be there when these ladies arrived.  I didn't tell him that I knew that social services was called and was coming to the house.  But, at this point, for the sake of saving his life, I was willing for him to be taken, even it if was against his own will.

    That day as I came and spent the morning with him I felt somehow like I was a traitor.  I knew that people from psychiatry were coming that day and he didn't have a clue.  Suddenly Alex was called from upstairs.  "Alex, someone is here to see you."  No one usually came to see Alex so he was immediately alarmed.  He was in his pajamas and walked only up to the top of the stairs stopping after he saw two strangers standing in the kitchen.

    The ladies questioned him asking him how he was doing.  They told him that his family called because they were concerned about him.  They asked him to come and sit down and talk with him.  Then he reluctantly sat at the kitchen table.  He talked about his physical ailments.  He told the women of the pain he was in and how his side hurt and his back hurt along with his joints.  He mentioned that he wasn't sleeping well either.  Of course he hid all the other things that were going on with him.  But, he had a weird look in his eyes that was apparent to everyone.  The women then told him that they wanted to take him to the Emergency room to be looked at to see if he was okay.  He was very suspicious and refused to go.  So then they said they'd give him more time, that they'd come back in a few days.  I was pretty upset because I had to go home and I knew that if I wasn't at his side he wouldn't go anywhere with anyone.  I changed all my plans and stayed the extra two days so that when the ladies came back he would go with them.  It was all to no avail because in the morning he called them on the phone and told them that he would not go with them, that he needed more time.  

    His sister and I were very upset with the women.  "What does he need more time for?  More time to plan to kill himself?! "  Jackie said in exasperation.  Meanwhile, when Alex was out of sight from the rest of the family he held a razor blade up to his arm right in my presence as if he was going to use it on himself right at that moment.  I had to threaten him, "If you do something I'm going to call your sister, you put that down right now!"  Then he put it down only to later grab his belt and fasten it around his neck as if he was going to use it to hang himself.  I took his belt from him and scolded him.  When he left the room I hid all his belts.

    The ladies decided to not threaten to call the police and basically told Jackie that they did all they could.  Apparently Alex had talked to them on the phone so calmly and assuredly that they felt that they didn't need to pressure him.  Jackie kept calling and complaining and demanding that they intervene.  They said they'd give him more time.

    His family doctor had given him a prescription of Apo-Diazepam for anxiety and to help him sleep a few months prior.  He had never taken these pills because he remembered his last encounter with such drugs and didn't want to go through that agony again.  I had hid these pills too because I didn't like Alex's threats of suicide.  But finally I gave them to his mother because I feared that Alex would find them.  Unfortunately he would later sneak into his parent's room to get them when they were out of the house.   Not knowing this, I had prayed that God would keep him safe, even from himself,  and reluctantly, I went home.​