One could also consider hiring someone who was specifically educated and trained and who has years of experience helping people to overcome addictions - such as an addiction counselor, or sending them to a rehabilitation center.
The problem is - fundamentally - that if you remove cause and effect from a person's life they aren't likely to grow or mature or make healthier choices for themselves, precisely because they fail to recognize that what they're doing is unhealthy because you've remove any painful consequences from the unhealthy behavior. People are not usually inclined to learn from other people's mistakes or even *gasp* read books to learn about healthy behavior. They typically learn through the painful consequences of their own actions or inactions, especially if they have some sort of chemical dependency that is driving their behavior.
Sure - supplying a trailer or housing might save them from a life on the street. But this might also contribute to having them continue their addiction for the rest of their life with relatively few painful consequences and thus they don't particularly learn anything or change much.
How much you want to support someone with a drug addiction and how is, of course, up to you, but I would personally be much more inclined to pay for them to go to a rehabilitation center than to pay for them to live in a trailer in the woods.
Absolutely. As I said, I think funding rehab or therapy is fundamentally different than funding room and board (which is tacitly funding their abused substance of choice).
To go back to the example of BIL. His body is trashed. He's in his late 40s and if I showed you a picture and said he was 60, you'd easily believe that. He's also rail thin, and his skin is atrocious. (I'm not convinced that alcohol is is only addition. His mom swears it is, and he so vigoursly denies any other substance that it ends up looking suspicious. And his mom also always swears he's sober, right up until he's hospitalized for either drinking too much or detoxing again. So not a reliable source.)
He's been hospitalized multiple times with seizures, and for the last one, he was unconcious for a while and there's some question of minor "brain damage". His liver is toast. He fluctuates between diabetes and pre-diabetes, neither of which he seems to manage. His joints are trashed. His stomach is trashed, to the point that eating many common foods is problematic. All of this is because of his addition. So all the enabling that has allowed and continues to allow this to happen was not protecting his health or safety. it was not humane. And it meant that every time he detoxed, went to the hospital, and came or, or the few times he was forced to go to rehab (DUI), he returned home to the same life and the same house and the same comforts... and the same habits. No real incentive to change anything, or at least not the kind of incentive that works for someone who seems generally okay not having a job or being self-sufficient.
He is unhealthy, in pain, reliant on substances***, nutritionally deprived, potentially damaging his brain, not moving well, and many of his organs are not functioning well. And that's not to mention the myriad mental health issues--both those that helped lead to the addition and those resulting from it and all it's taken from him. IDK, but facilitating that doesn't seem like the "humane" option to me.
And housing him hasn't kept the chemical issue from being a criminal one. Like so many addicts, he has had a couple DUIs, one of which involved hit-and-run of a car with a 6-yo child in it. Fortunately, it was very low speed and no one was harmed. But i ws a criminal act and dealt with in criminal courts. Housed addicts still drive drunk or high, they still steal, they still buy drugs (in and of itself a criminal act).
And assuming he outlives his mother (late 70s, but thankfully quite healthy and capable), what then? There's likely very little to inherit. I'm guessing he'd walk away with no more than $50k, if that. And remember, he has no savings, not job, not car, no nothing. And his body is liekly to be so trashed that employment will be difficult, even if we wants it, can find it, and can keep it. So, he will likely still end up wherever he'd have ended up if she's stopped enabling him, only without her to help get him into rehab, support him as he established himself once sober, etc. Again, how is that the human option?
I get that it can be incredibly painful and difficult to look a loved one in the face, deny them, and know that doing so likely puts them on the streets on in harm's way. I understand why MIL hasn't been able to do that. But she's still putting in him harm's way--just more slowly, but also with even less chance that he will eventually be out of harm's way.
It's an incredibly sad situation and there are no good answers, or answers guaranteed to improve outcomes. But "if you kick them out, they are on the street" misses a lot of the nuances. BIL is suiciding. He's just doing it very slowly, while simultaneously worrying, frustrating, and annoying his poor mom. And he has no reason to stop--or at least no reason that has yet been enough to stop for any meaningful amount of time.
***I can't say for sure if he's sober at the moment. After the most recent hospitalization this summer, he went to rehab again. I'd like to believe it stuck this time, but I don't see any changes in his attitude that suggest some lightbulb finally lit.
