By Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 16:28 EST, 16 December 2012 | UPDATED: 17:31 EST, 16 December 2012

Just days before Adam Lanza would begin a bloody rampage beginning with shooting her multiple times in the head, mother Nancy Lanza confided that 'she was losing him' and that 'he was getting worse.'

An anonymous drinking buddy said Nancy made the remarks in a disturbing conversation over craft beers at a bar called My Place in Newtown, Conn.

The friend asked not to be named by press.

Warning signs: Nancy Lanza told friend that her son Adam was getting worse shortly before his deadly rampage

Gun lover: Nancy Lanza had reportedly become 'obsessed' with guns and taught Adam how to shoot

On Friday morning Adam shot Nancy Lanza, 54, several times in the head before his horrifying

Cold blood: Adam Lanza opened fire on Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School, murdering 26 people at the school before turning the gun on himself

rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and six others.

The friend knew Adam had been troubled, and he rarely came up in conversation, with Nancy preferring instead to talk about son Ryan if she discussed her children.

The friend said they knew Adam was prone to hurting himself.

'She just looked down at the glass and said, 'I don't know. I'm worried I'm losing him,'  the friend told the Daily News.

'She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him.'

It wasn't the first time Nancy told him something was wrong with her son.

'Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something,' he recalled of a conversation they had roughly one year ago. 'It was like he was trying to feel something.'

With Adam now dead and the nation mourning his victims, Nancy words earlier in the week seem foreboding, the friend said.

'It was weird. She never really talked about (Adam),' he said. 'She mainly talked about her oldest kid (Ryan). I knew about the other one but she never spoke much about him.

'She looked disturbed. She was looking down at her glass and kind of talking slowly.'

The friend never met Adam.

'I asked her if she was getting him help and she said she was,' the friend recalled.

Killer: Adam Lanza would sometimes burn himself as if he was trying to find a way to feel, his mother said

Healing: Danielle Slota wipes away a tear during a candlelight vigil in remembrance of Adam Lanza's victims

For Nancy, who was generally a happy woman, the melancholy talk was eerily out of character. 

'You have to know Nancy to know how weird that was,' he said. 'She was just always so full of life.'

The conversation broke up when the friend took a phone call and when they started talking again the subject changed.

The friend remembered Nancy as a die-hard Red Sox fan with season tickets to Fenway Park and a country girl who loved to hunt game.

The friend knew she had 'at least a dozen' firearms most of which were larger rifles. He was unaware of the pistols.

Victims: Jesse, who loved math and riding horses, was among the 20 schoolchildren whose lives Adam Lanza ended

Innocent: Ana Marquez-Greene, 6, was one of the victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School

'Adam learned how to shoot a rifle by the time he was 9 years old,' said the friend. 'They would go to the range.'

Nancy was always careful with her firearms.

'Nancy was a responsible gun owner,' the friend said. 'It was important that she teach her son how to responsibly use a firearm.'

And she had a strained relationship with her ex-husband, Peter Lanza.

'She didn't talk about him a lot. But I knew they didn't get along," the friend said. 'I don't think she ever saw him.'

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