It sounds like you had a visit from someone who needed his friend.
A couple of months-ago, I lost one of my fellow firefighter/paramedics. He was 61, he looked about 80. A drinker, he stopped for over a year, and then he decided he wanted to live life his way, so he gave-up being sober. He needed a liver but he wouldn't get one because he began drinking again. It took him about 7 months to drink himself to death.
One day, before this, another firefighter/EMT friend and I took a visit to his home. He came to the door, and he could barely stand. It wasn't because he was drunk, which he probably was, it was because he was filled with excess fluid (ascites) and was about to die. We called fire-rescue (not our jurisdiction) and the officer who came w/his crew said he had been there before for issues related to this guy's drinking. It took us an hour to get this retired firefighter/paramedic onto the rescue gurney (cot) for the trip to the hospital. The fire/rescue unit could have said, "you don't wanna go, sign this release and we're gone," but they didn't.
My friend and I went to the hospital and waited to speak w/the ER doc, who told us that he probably would have been dead from septic shock within a short period of time (only days) if we hadn't gotten him to the hospital. After that, the patient began a series of hospital and recovery inpatient stays, until about a year + later, he signed himself out and resumed his alcoholism.
Substance abuse is a killer, it robs you of your future while ruining your present and that of your friends and loved-ones.
A neighbor of this guy tried to check-up on him every week. He'd offer to go to the store for food for him. The recluse would shove some twenties into his hand, and told him what to buy, The Good Samaritan would return w/the groceries, and the guy wouldn't let him into the home, he would tell him, "leave the groceries on the doorstep, I'll bring them in."
When my firefighter co-worker and I stopped-by to get this guy to the hospital, we went into the home. It was like one of those hoarder shows you see on TV. Filthy, crowded with debris, and no clear floor space. In the center of the living room was a moldering pile of plastic bags, and I took a look in them, it turned my stomach. Maggots, evidence of rats, putrefying food...I pulled out a receipt from a bag and it was a year-and-a-half old. He'd been taking the groceries his neighbor brought him and he just abandoned them on the living room floor. The bugs and vermin were happy though.
While our friend went to the hospital, my friend and I, w/the help of the neighbor, filled three-five-foot high rollaway garbage containers to the overflowing with the garbage from the house, and we barely put a dent in the mess. I decided to clean-out the refrigerator, and it was filled with food having expiration dates two or three years-ago. Really-disgusting.
The neighbor went over on his own to do some-more housecleaning, and he stopped counting after 20 rat carcasses. They must have been there for a long time because with all the debris, I really couldn't smell them. Some were inside the couch the guy had been sleeping-on, because his bedroom had so-much crap piled on the bed, there was no-place to lie-down.
While this guy was in the hospital, his friends got together and sold-off his vehicles to raise money. His house was stripped to the bare walls. A contract for the rehabilitation of his home was done, and while he was in treatment programs, his home was totally rehabbed, the walls and trusses were about the only thing left when the rehab was begun. He gained a totally-rehabbed home w/a barrier-free bathroom, a second bathroom which he never had, and a porch was torn-out and replaced w/a CBS construction. New HVAC, new roof, new waste lines & potable water supply, new windows, tile throughout, new kitchen. It really turned-out beautifully. Then he checked him out of the residential facility, returned to his new home, and drank himself to death in less than a year. He had no family, parents and a sole brother already dead.
He died on his own terms, but he didn't need-to. He chose to.
If you know someone who needs help, do everything you can to help them help themselves. I wish we could have gotten this guy to turn things around but he just didn't want-to enough.
unk:
