The troubled person clings to familiar patterns, afraid any change will be for the worse — while family and friends are afraid of what might happen both in an intervention and later to their relationship. Often they try to protect their loved one from the consequences of the condition and enable the deterioration to continue.
Yet if people do not risk the unknown, what is certain is that deterioration will continue; in the case of an addicted person, the certainty is premature death.
(Question: how will I feel in five years if there’s a sad ending and I didn’t take this chance?)