It sounds as if everyone should just give up on helping Robin and attempt to help your MIL. Of course it is difficult to help someone who doesn't want help. Robin sounds more sociopathic than schzophrenic. Many addicts become sociopaths as the drugs disable the functions of thier frontal lobe. Sociopaths are usually quite intelligent and they have no guilt about manipulating others in order to feed their drug habit or to benefit themselves especially financially.

I still wonder about the loneliness issue as an unconscious motivator for your MIL. Another thing I learned about loneliness is that it is based on fear. The fear of being lonely is actually more painful than being alone. Apparently it goes back to the fear of abandonment which is a normal part of the maturation of children.

Fear of loneliness can cause people to fill their every waking moment with activity in order to never be alone. That same fear can cause people to allow destructive people in their lives. Fear of being lonely is also often the motivation for people who use drugs and those who become enablers.

Fear of loneliness is temporarily calmed by the feeling of being needed which can lead to enabling. The unconscious reasoniiing is that if one is needed even if only to enable a drug user, they will never be abandonned and will never be lonely. It's an unconscious, malicous, and unreasonable motivator.

As you can tell, I am very intersted in this subject and view it as the basis for many self destructive behaviors.

Prayer is often the answer. The only real protectin from being abandonned and lonely is trust in the God who is always with us.
smile