ethics?

What do we do when someone we know is in distress?
As good friends, we try to walk them through their situation and listen to what's bugging them. As good friends, we drop everything and attend to them because it could be the last call they make.
I was put in such a position yesterday - I dropped everything and attended to this good friend in the middle of a thunderstorm. He was my ex-boss.

I was in such a fix, because being in the mental state that I was in, I should not be attempting to fix another person, but I knew he wouldn't call me unless he's really backed in some dark corner with no way out. In fact, I haven't really spoken to him for months, being busy with work and school. It was an ethical dilemma for me, but he refused to kiv my meeting with him and he sounded very weak over the phone.

Things like these, eat up my sanity - but I made a decision to fix him, because I didn't want to have to tell his mother that I had better things to do (fix myself) and left her son to take his own life, or worse, bleed his body of life slowly.

In the heavy rain with him driving, was traumatic - I had to keep my eyes on the road and listen to him talk to me with tears in his eyes. After 5 hours, I got him back on track and the rain stopped.

Perhaps walking him through yesterday, did something for my spirit - He's functional again, after just weeks of boozing, late nights and just freakking out his health. This morning, he called, and he's working, out there on Deal Street again. I know I went to bed really exhausted and mentally drained - it's just that I'm better at fixing people - I'm not good with fixing myself.
Sure, I may have put myself on the back-burner and allowed another person's emotions to consume me.
This did nothing for my ego, since I know just how effective I am as a therapist/counselor, I just hate doing it, that's all. I probably broke all rules, counseling when I'm mentally messed up, but there just wasn't a choice because it's either I attend to him, or he went off the deep end.

I'm sure my professors would be disgusted that I took this gamble, right after my ethics paper, but there was really no one else and timing was critical, if I hung up and left him, I wasn't sure if he could manage.