It sucks watching someone self-destruct

Continuing my parade of things I forgot over the last few days

Specifically, a lady I met a few years ago. Never girlfriend, there was something a bit manic about her, but friends. Very pretty, but problem 1 was she was never happy with how she looked. The "I need to lose ten more pounds" bullshit. Losing ten pounds would have made her look a little emaciated, but you couldn't tell her that; she was convinced she needed to lose it.

We'd sit and talk, and a lot of ground was covered. Including that from the time she was about 13 to about 20, she smoked a lot of grass. As in three joints a day many days. Personally, I think half her troubles could probably be traced to that, but that's a different story. I can't remember which happened first but she lost her job and started taking diet pills to lose that 'last ten pounds', and went steadily downhill from there. She started drinking some, too, and at about 5'6" and 110 lbs it didn't take much to get her fairly swozzled, and then she'd drive. Which scared me to death when I found out, for her and for any poor jerk she might run into or over.

This crap went on for a while and she'd make a point of driving past cops and flipping them off, taking walks in parts of town that it's either a miracle or something about her scared off the vultures that kept her from being raped and/or murdered; if she didn't want to wind up dead or in jail, I have no idea what was wrong with her.

She finally crashed, happily into a tree and hurt only herself. Which led to being arrested for DUI and jailed and all that happiness. Which led to counseling which I'd hoped would help matters out. Fat chance. After she was out she did admit that she had problems, but she also bitched about the cops and bitched about how her bosses had been unfair. And she started putting on weight. A lot of weight. Which made her more unhappy, and so on in one of the truest downhill spirals I've ever witnessed. At least she was off the diet pills and not drinking now, but her big plan for the immediate future was getting on disability 'because of her problems'. And since getting a job would hurt her chances at that, she wouldn't take one("It doesn't pay enough, they won't hire somebody with a DUI, I can't live on that!")

So now she's almost my age, living with her mother, taking a couple of prescribed meds that, among other things, make her shaky which makes it almost impossible to get a decent job(she did make it onto disability, after which "If I take this job I'll lose most of the disability and I can't afford it!") She bitches about her weight, but she won't get any exercise, and at this point I have little hope she'll pull out of it.

And I don't know whether to stay in contact with her in case I might be able to help her break the cycle, or whether to stop talking to her and get a sad case out of my life. I hate watching this.