Friends of Bozell blamed his increasing devotion to Catholicism, his radicalism, and his dissolving relationship with Buckley (who was reportedly traumatized by the loss of his closest friend) on alleged mental deterioration; Neal Freeman had said "Brent simply started to fade and you could see it happening, but you couldn't do anything about it." John Judis writes in "William Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives": "The breakup of their relationship probably could not have occurred ten years prior or ten years hence. It was very much a product of the tumultuous sixties, which exhilarated Buckley and which lifted him to new heights of celebrity, but in which more troubled, less stable souls like Bozell capsized."