My heart goes out to this woman. Mental illness and addiction are as emotionally and financially devastating to family members as the disease is debilitating to the addict.  Help is difficult to obtain, and too often in the public health care system psychiatrists are too quick to make a diagnosis and prescribe medication. Addicts can be charming people whose addiction makes them manipulative, needy and aggressive when they don't get what they want. Sometimes addicts may have personality disorders such as NPR (narcissistic personality disorder) that cannot be medicated and require weekly psychological therapy and a co-operative patient for progress to occur. Too often patients who have other mental illnesses that do respond to medication go off their meds when they begin improving. It's easy for people who haven't lived with such an individual in their lives to authoritatively toss out one of those judgemental  'Just do X or Y' lines, but until you've lived it, you don't get it.