Here’s some background on the situation. About a week ago, my friends and I signed up  to perform at a Battle of the Bands competition.  The day of the competition is March 27(about 5 weeks from posting this) and we need to learn 5 songs for a 20 minute performance. Our band has performed twice before for small crowds but If we do win, we get to perform at an even bigger gig and would be the step in the direction our band wants to go in before we graduate.

Our rhythm guitarist is one of my best friends and has been in the band since day one. But due to a head injury in his childhood and some shitty events in his recent life, he’s been depressed and anxious. I talked him into getting the band back together for battle of the bands and he agreed.

But then he texted me that night saying that he had an anxiety attack about the performance and said he wanted to get out of the band. The next day, I was able to convince him to stay.

Two days ago, I asked him if he was coming to practice and he couldn’t because he was working on a project for school but he would be able to come to the next practice.

Then, the guitarist texts me that night essentially saying that he needs to quit because he’s been relapsing into a deeper depression and with all the stress in his life right now, he can’t handle doing this and that it’d be better to meet in person the next day to discuss it face to face.

Yesterday, we met up and he apologized for the long text saying that he has been bipolar recently due to his medications and that he is willing to go past that to perform with the band. I told him that I was sorry but we couldn’t let him come back. I told him that the reasons why:

-He’s been known to get out of things last minute and make up excuses to not go to things. We can’t deal with that because every practice counts and we can’t trust if he is busy or lying.

-Quitting the day before made everyone mad at him for a bit but we got over it. If he were to quit later on though, it would put even more stress on all of our friendships than if he just left now.

-If he did end up quitting last minute, he would leave us unprepared and make us lose.

After I told him that, he argued that most of my points rely on him not performing and that he swears that he will come to the all of next practices and that he needs this to get out of his rut. I said I just cannot trust him enough to put in the effort. He didn’t take too kindly to that and called me a “selfish prick” and got up and walked away.

I informed the band of my decision and two of them thought that what I did was probably the right thing to do while the other guy said “That was a dick move man. We’ll work around it but cmon man, you didn’t have to do him like that.”

I’m not sure if I did the right thing or if I was being selfish and inconsiderate. AITA?