The situation he was in, you have to realize he is the only person capable of taking himself out of it. His friends were powerless over his decision making, either they are making the same decisions or they are separated by distance from having met him over the internet. Think about someone being stuck in a hole. To offer sympathy is to say, "Hey man, sorry you are in that hole there. I know you are a great person and don't deserve it". When someone is in a hole, you either help or you don't help. You either do the work and pull them out, or you tell them there's nothing you can do.
In the case of substance abuse, I've seen people think it was appropriate to go into detail about how great the person was. Sometimes people complement the behavior that comes about during drug use; by doing that you encourage them to distance themselves further from who they really are. When people are under the influence they are barely human; sorry if everyone loves the behavior, but it's not that person doing it. The person they really are is becoming more and more miserable because everyone likes the pretend person better. I also don't think sympathy helps someone who is trying to stay in denial over his/her current situation.
Drugs are not a case of stupidity; a person may be naive about their own mastery over the substance because of the impairment or the person may be doing it on purpose. I believe that most people of intelligence try to find things out for themselves, and the stupid believe everything that they are told or do not bother to check anything out. He checked his risks vs benefits before doing anything; if the overdose was done by accident, the statistics he received were not helpful. It does not indicate learning disability to be lied to about the facts. But that is life; there are those who will capitalize on those who stay naive.
Most people do not have developed abilities of detachment to objectively criticize their own behavior. They think that criticism is wrong because it made them feel bad. Without criticism, we fall into self-sympathy. The truth is that there is no 100% certainty that your understanding of someone else's emotions are correct; you can only 100% know your own emotions and you can assume someone else has similar ones and similar causes. I've always felt like sympathy did more for the giver than it did for the receiver.
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