I've been friends with this guy for probably 13 years, but really over the past year, we've really drifted apart. He has a lot going on in his personal life, but he also started taking adderall at the beginning of last year, and he's slowly been morphing into kind of an asshole ever since. I tried to talk to him about how it affected him a few times last year, but he got extremely defensive and dismissive.

Anyways, he is not doing well at work. He and his wife had a child last year, there were complications, and they didn't think he was going to make it for the first few months. There's obviously damage, but nobody knows what to expect long-term. So I cannot stress how much this dude is clearly going through.

But he's also become... difficult to work with. Our work has been pretty generous in giving him complete flexibility, and it kind of feels like he does what he wants, when he wants, if he wants. It's been just over a year since his baby was born, and I can definitely tell upper management is frustrated that he's become pretty inconsistent (he's supposed to be manager of our department).

When the baby was first born, I stepped up and took control of our department, making sure everything was getting done, and taking over his workload while he was out. I think since then, the president of our company has begun to lean on me a little more.

Well, I'm running into some issues with my friend now. Because he can work pretty much whenever he wants, he often bitches that the rest of us "put in the minimum effort", because we only work our 8-hour days, whereas as he is often waking up in the middle of the night and doing more work (of course, nobody can verify if he's actually working 8 hours a day, but he definitely does log into work late nights/early mornings).

Well about two months ago, I had a pretty major job scare out of nowhere. I mulled it over, and I also asked others (friends and former coworkers; nobody current), and everyone seemed to reach the same conclusion; my "friend" probably said something to our boss to try and throw me under the boss. I have no way of proving that, though, it just seems to make sense.

Well just this week, I'm talking to a different coworker, and she's telling me our department needs to make sure we're checking something at work (basically making sure our disclosures all have the correct legalese; VERY important stuff), and I just decide I'll take care of it for the whole department. In the time it would take to explain it to everyone what they need to do, I could probably handle it myself. Seems easy enough, right?

Well after I send an email around our department (which includes both my friend, and my boss), my friend sends me kind of a pissy email, suggesting this might not be necessary, wondering if I even researched it, and saying I should've spoken to him before sending an email.

I replied back, basically just saying yeah, he's supervisor so I should've gone to him first, I just figured it would be easier to handle it myself, but apologizing all the same. I asked if he wanted me to proceed; that was Monday, and I still haven't heard back.

Okay, that was a SHITLOAD of text, but I really felt context was important here. This crosses lines of personal AND professional life, so I cannot stress the importance of not acting brashly.

My friend usually comes into work 2-3 days a week, and is usually swamped when he does. He's a pretty aggressive personality (pretty much the definitive "chad", for better and for worse sometimes), and I've increasingly gotten the impression he doesn't want me to succeed at work, because deep down I think he knows other people are questioning if he's actually working when he's not in the office.

I have a pretty good relationship with the company president, since we work together on a couple of projects. So part of me is tempted to just speak with her, not about my friend, but maybe just saying "I'd like to be doing more for the company, to feel like I'm really building a future here, and just want to make sure I'm not stepping on any toes".

As for my friend, I honestly don't think I can talk to him. I feel like my best bet is to just continue trying to keep Work-life and Personal-life completely separate, until one of us eventually finds work elsewhere (however long that might be), just to preserve our friendship. To be honest, I haven't seen him outside of work in probably 3-4 months, save for picking him and his wife up from the airport (from a surgery for their baby, so I was more than happy to help).

Again, I know this is a ton of text to parse through. But this is a pretty touchy situation, and I'm not looking for some "how an Alpha male should handle it" bullshit.

I'd appreciate any insights you guys might offer.