Shadowstar38 said:
All of his friends are only slightly better addicts than he is. So they feel they're really not in any position to say anything. My brother told me he's talked to him over and over and consuled him as best he could, but it's not sinking in. I'd feel horrible if the worst were to happen. But I don't know what more I can do without being up his ass all the time.
Unfortunately, I think watching from the sidelines is about the best you can do at this point. It sounds like he is not going to accept any sort of help unless he is completely game for it, and being on his ass all the time will only make things worse. You should never hope for the worst, but sometimes you have to wait for people to hit their rock bottom (wherever that might be) before they are ready to start digging themselves out. I had a cousin who this happened to. She didn't get too far into drugs, but five years ago she had a kid as a teenager out of wedlock to a man who would turn out to be abusive. Over the next four years, she proceeded to take advantage of most members of our family including her mother and father, lie repeatedly to us about what she was up to and where she was (lying about jobs and job hunting was her favorite pastime), and got a bit into drugs and way into partying with friends who would tolerate this behavior from a single mother raising a young child.
But finally, in the last year, things have finally started to turn around. Her daughter turned 5 and entered kindergarten, and I think that's about when she realized that wasn't going to work anymore. She tended to regard her daughter as her "little buddy" and used caring for her all the time as an excuse for not having a job. But now that she's at school all day, she doesn't have anything left to do. So she's gotten a job, settled down in one place, and broke it off with a relationship that was destined for failure. She was "going out," if you can call it that, with a guy who was an inmate at the same jail her abusive baby-daddy was going to. Apparently, he was going to get out soon, and at first she was excited about this. But then we think he began asking her for money or saying he should move in with her after he gets out, but whatever the case he asked for something she was NOT going to give, so she dumped him. And as far as we can tell, ever since she hasn't been so desperate to find some guy who she thinks will support her and make her life all better.
Throughout all those years, we made it pretty clear to her how we felt about her behavior. We didn't shut her out by any means, whenever she came around at holidays we were nothing but nice to her. We'd be encouraging about her job hunting, even though we often knew it to be factually untrue. We did draw the line at being outright taken advantage of--when my grandparents found out she had used $2000 of money they put away for her to use for higher education in order to buy a Jeep she didn't at all need, they made it to where she could no longer draw the money out freely. They said if she wanted to take more money, she'd have to clear it with them and prove with paperwork that she used it for college. And if she didn't end up using the money, it would pass to her daughter to be used for the same reason.
We told her we worried about her and wanted to see more of her, but we knew from her dad's failed attempts that if we tried to confront her signs of drug use or her excessive drinking directly she'd just blow us off and deny everything. But now she's grown up and she's learned more about what really makes her happy.
I know things can be more complicated when harder drugs are involved, but I still think if your friend is that stubborn then it seems your game will have to be one of waiting. Be ready to offer a hand when he's ready to grab it, but don't be shoving it in his face all the time until he gets to that point.
