Have you ever driven on a country road in the dead of night, no other cars around, no street lights, just you behind the wheel, your eyes peeled on the road, your headlamps guiding you through the twists and turns in the impossible darkness. Pretty eiry right. But really, most people are on this road there whole lives, they are just oblivious to it. The small beam of light that is their only world, extending  forward and onward, like the moth to the flame, nothing else exists, just the beam of light. Follow the beam of light Dorothy. Blissfully unaware that if they could somehow brighten the beam, or modify it to ignite the surroundings, what would open up to them could blow their minds. Possibilities that they could not in their wildest dreams imagine, are now reality. I urge everyone to do whatever it takes to modify your light. If it takes five years ten years to build your device, when you finally finish and flick that's switch. It will be worth the effort.

Just focus on your own objectives and what you know is healthy, and the rest will take care of itself. Unhealthy stuff and people will fall away naturally as you get more involved in your own work.

As far as your second problem goes, the solution there, more realistically, will be to ditch those friends and make higher quality ones. Lifting everyone up around you as you try to develop yourself is a huge uphill battle. You gotta get a bit cold-hearted and just have the courage to go your own way. In the end it will all work out great. But in the short-term it will feel like you're being disloyal or selfish.

Yes, this is called the Upper Limiting problem. You actually do have an upper limit for how much happiness you allow yourself to feel in a given day/week. Anything over that limit feels uncomfortable and even scary. Because fundamentally you haven't developed your psyche enough to open yourself up to being penetrated by love. Deep down the ego FEARS love and it fears life.
What to do?
Gradually practice expanding your ability to feel love and joy. Be very mindful of those moments when you have more love than you can handle. And stretch yourself a bit to stomach just a little bit more than the last time. Tell yourself, "I have the courage to open myself to more joy and more love."
Being happy is actually like a muscle. If you haven't used it for a long time, it's very weak. You gotta flex it gradually over the weeks and months and years to build it up to the point where you can wear a shit-eating grin on your face all day long for absolutely no reason. << That's not easy to develop to. You gotta really work out many of our inner demons.

Putting up defenses and a thick skin is actually quite neurotic and damaging to your well-being.
Following the One Simple Rule For Acing Life video: do the most emotionally challenging thing. Which in this case is being FULLY open and vulnerable!
Being vulnerable is counter-intuitively the strongest position to occupy because then nothing can harm you. It's like defeating hate with love.
Gandhi is the perfect example of how to do this, and how powerful it really is. It really works! Unshakable openness and vulnerability is a very rare human quality, mostly reserved for the wisest sages and saints. Any fool can be defensive and put up a thick skin. But openness takes real balls and self-awareness to execute.

It's in our nature to be lazy and to prefer theorizing versus taking massive action. No matter what the tool, or course, or book, or seminar, only about 20% of people using it will get shit done. The rest are slackers.
Yes! People will definitely use this forum for mental masturbation.
Resolve to not be one of them.
The best way to use a forum is very selectively. Find the golden nuggets, ignore the rest, and focus on building up your life instead of yapping all day. Contribute your own golden nuggets back into the community once in a while.

I like Lizi's stuff. Zeitgeist. A few standalone videos as well... also diddly.  ASMR must be done with headphones, if you are not familiar with it... the higher quality the better, such as a pair of Sennheiser open back or equivalent.
 
Here is one of the older ASMR videos that really started it all...