Dear Prudence,
My husband and I’s best friend is now a DEEPLY alcoholic NEET bouncing from place to place while we financially fund him to keep a roof over his head. This arrangement continually blows up in our faces—he’s gotten kicked out of a generous offer from my father-in-law because he trashed the place, he’s being denied other housing now due to his past actions, and we have him safe with a brother-in-law for now since he has no one/nowhere else to go (his family connections are blown up as well). He is states away and refuses to room with us. He tends to spend some of the rent money on alcohol and frequently closes us out of his life.
We would like visibility into his job search, we want him to go to AA (he stopped after two weeks because it was “too religious” and rejected the non-religious alternatives), and we want him to be able to thrive—but we aren’t his parents, and we don’t have the jurisdiction to demand these things (asking with “I” statements didn’t work). We gave him notice that we’ll cover the next three months of rent/food and then stop in hopes he can find his footing on a generous time limit… but now he’s angry at us. We are trying so hard to have compassion for him and struggling to get him the resources he needs, but when we hand them over, he tends to drop the ball and then spit misery and vitriol at us. For example, he consented to letting me help him find jobs to apply to and after I spent a week finding 100-plus eligible jobs tailor-fit to his resume, he applied to three and gave up, citing the job market is too hard and nothing matters. I gave him an easy lay-up recommendation for a job at the company I work for and he was “too nervous” and never applied.
We have begged for (and been willing to pay for!) therapy, rehab, medication—anything that can help him feel stable and sane. He rejects all of it and then sinks lower. He’s wrapped deeply in our friend group, so if we wrote him off, we would still hear from him and be in the same virtual room with him every day! I know this is selfish, but I feel miserable watching him sink. I don’t know how to help anymore and my compassion is starting to hiccup now that he’s moved to actively rejecting any help we try to give (or wasting the money we give—we aren’t rich). How can we help? Should we extricate ourselves? Should I contact someone on his behalf? Normally I would live and let live, but he is no longer functioning (dead mice in the house! Maggots! Not eating for days in order to buy more vodka!) and I’m genuinely scared for his health and safety.
—We Love You, Please Stop