Hi all,

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Trying to keep all details relevant without sounding arrogant or demeaning. Sorry for the long read

Backstory:
My (21M) best friend (22M) has been lightly religious since I met him 5 years ago. We have spent 50+ Hours together a week since I met him (we work and go to the same gym together) so I know him better than anyone else. He had a relatively stable mental health up to this point, but I do know he has suffered from suicide ideation (2+ years ago). He is a mechanic by trade, and in school to get his journeyman certificate. He uses cannabis daily, and alcohol 2-3 times a week (3-5 drinks each time). He has never had a phase like this.


Story:
3 days ago him and I were sitting around and he randomly said... “You know? I’m starting to connect the dots, everything in life is a mechanic of some kind” He went on to basically describe the butterfly effect, and I didn’t think much of it- I just kind of thought it was him learning something new at school. 

2 days ago was his day off. He stayed home.

Yesterday, we went bowling with a close friend group. We all showed up separately, and he showed up and acted pretty normal, however as we were talking he’d always end up relating things to mechanics. He mentioned how everything had a principal and how every single process was mechanical. Here are a couple examples:

“You see that? The bowling ball is the principle of the mechanics between the floor, the pins, and the bowling ball” 

“I felt you looking at me. That principle of your eyes looking at me caused the mechanics of the spirits to make me realize you were looking at me” 

Now, of course we (myself and his other friends) weren’t used to him talking like this. We (his friends) gave eachother glances like “wtf?” But not much was wrong and it was more annoying than anything. He was a lot more talkative than usual, and him bringing up principals &amp; mechanics was a once in every 4-6 sentences situation. 

We finish bowling and in the parking lot, another very good friend of his heard him over talking to a mutual friend, who was a Jahovah’s Witness, about how God and Satan are the source of everything. It was clearly a one sided conversation and we saw the JW was clearly uncomfortable. The good friend and I went over to him, and asked him seriously what was up, and frankly told him he was talking nonsense. It was at this point we saw how constricted his pupils were. He gets called out for being on drugs, Good friend takes his keys and drives him to his place, where everyone was going anyway as it was a birthday party. My best friend had no issues with us taking his keys, which seemed off. 

(Side note: Obviously many things in this situation could have been handled better such as not letting him drink, etc... he’s never done this before so we just thought he was being goofy) 

At the house, he immediately started going off about how, again, everything in life is a mechanical process. 
“You see this liquor? The principle of alcohol triggers the mechanical process of me getting intoxicated” 

At the house this jumped up to every sentence, relating to mechanics. It was at the point where everyone was uncomfortable, so I brought him to a room where I asked him, WTF. 

Again, principles and mechanics were the base of the conversation, but then he says something along the lines of “I’m spiritually elevated to the sky because in Life, (OP), everything mechanically goes to Satan or God”. (My goal was to hear him out without letting him get ridiculous, so I eventually cut him off and told him how weird he’s being - to no avail.) He kept rattling off this nonsense about how Satan and God are the keys to spirituality and once we got back to the main group, he went on about it so much that everyone went home and is now asleep. He’s asleep at my place and he went to bed with no problems, but obviously worried about tomorrow as this is escalating and getting out of hand quickly. Should I be calling authorities?
 
I don’t want to assume anything, but my honest guess is that in one of his classes, his professors said something along the lines of everything in life is a mechanical process, and he took that pretty literally. He “flipped” to this pretty damn quickly and his constricted pupils concerned me that he’s on drugs, hence why we took his keys.

TIA.