If the Moon were in LEO this process would be reversed; the Moon would be spinning up the Earth while losing orbital velocity.
The situation is not reversible like that. Angular momentum is linear, but energy is to the power of two.
So there is more energy than momentum here. You loose energy from fictional heating on the tides and energy as the rotation of the earth "pushes" the moon away.
But if you reverse it than as the moon slows down, it goes lower, but as it does so it orbits even faster than before, meaning it would have to speed up the Earth even more.
So rather than having extra energy (i.e. heat) you don't have enough, so instead of tidally locking to the Earth, the moon just gets faster and faster and then crashes.
The moon can't move up or down without transferring momentum to the earth.
But the amount of momentum transferred and the amount of energy transferred don't match. The difference is expressed as heat in the tides on Earth.
So in one direction there is extra energy, in the other insufficient energy.
Though to be really accurate you need to talk about the center of mass of the earth moon system ect.