The LBS watching all this nightmare happen can work on themselves all they want.. It won't do much good. In fact I would argue its just reinforcing the addiction and adding fuel to the fire - the comfort of a well-maintained home and having your dinners made for you doesn't exactly motivate someone to quit a bad habit...
You're describing classic co-dependency. The approach of programs like Al-Anon (as I understand them) are to focus the attention back to oneself and help grow healthy boundaries (among other things). That is, "working on oneself" seems to be precisely the way through.
I do know that you can't change another person, only oneself (MWD seems to claim otherwise, but if what she writes is closely examined, it still starts with oneself). This seems especially true with addiction. Working on oneself instead of trying to change the addict does not mean continuing to enable them, however.
