A question

I don't "date" anyone, but I always have friends to go out with, when I do go out, but this puzzles me, and I hope someone will have some sort of an answer for it.

My sister is now 50. She has been married, raised three kids, the youngest of who is 19 now. She takes care of my mom and brother in California. She has been a drug addict, and is an alcoholic. She's had a multiple run of guys in her life, most of them not so nice.

So she said a few weeks ago that she now has a new boyfriend. She said that he looks out for her, and buys her everything. He takes her to bars and clubs, and buys her drinks everywhere they go.

All well and good, were she not an alcoholic. How can anyone actually think someone is "being good" to them, when they are exploiting an inherent weakness in her basic make-up? I don't really know how to look at this kind of situation, because 1) I don't have addictive tendencies, and 2) While I go out, I don't need to worry about drinking. (It's been years since I last had a drink.)

Is someone who is "looking out" for that person's welfare going to allow that person who they're supposed to care about do the very thing which is harming that person in the first place?

Again, I don't understand this kind of situation because I've never been through it, so if someone could clue me in, I would like to understand better. It just appears to me that your addictions are the things that are killing you, and denying that they are problems is just another way to make things worse for yourself in the end.

Just as an FYI-my sister's very best longtime friend died in March of 2010 from cirrhosis of the liver, at the age of 49.

Another reason I ask is because it was often the same kind of thing in the 60s for my biological mother, who I knew as my aunt. She, too, was an alcoholic (it runs in the family) whose boyfriend took her places, but always took her to bars and clubs. I know it's not an unusual phenomenon, but it seems to me that someone with a deadly addiction doesn't need any more reasons to keep doing something which is essentially killing them.