This resonates with my experience. When a friend is having their first manic episode, it’s hard to get them to recognize that and get the help they need. But after the aftermath of a couple manic episodes, my friend wanted to get help. Even when he had a hard time complying with meds, he was able to recognize when he was heading into another manic episode and get help proactively.
My friend’s family do a few things to mitigate some of the bad decisions that a manic episode brings on. 1) the family has location tracking, 2) the family can pause credit cards, 3) the family can take away car keys.
I don’t expect any of those mitigations will be able to be implemented today in your case. But if your friend is currently going through a bad manic episode then they will probably want to prevent future manic episodes from spiraling. Having a conversation about how to achieve that, and having a mutually defined set of warning signs, will help address the problem.