Sorry to hear about your son. Opiates are a very tough addiction to kick if not impossible.
Do what you can for your nephew but DO NOT become his enabler, ever. Codependence is insidious.
He needs to get into treatment and make that decision to do so himself. He needs to experience the consequences of his addiction himself. An addict will look to transfer those consequences on to others at the first opportunity.
You will not love him into treatment.
Do not bring it into your family again. Your responsibility is to them first. You are still mourning the loss of your son and are very vulnerable to someone like this.
I’m speaking from experience.
Best of luck to you.
Yours is the best advice here.
When you give an Addict something - anything (I’ve even found that an ear is too much) then you are hampering their recovery.
They need to lose everything. And I mean everything. Nothing. Not a stitch of anything. Shirt, pants. Maybe not even socks and shoes.
This is step number 1. Without this, the addiction will win every time.
My ex business partner is living under a bridge in Detroit. No shit. He’s under a bridge. his parents spoke to me recently that they wanted to get him into a program. I advised against it. You see, his stay at the program is “something”. He will do it because it will gain a bit of trust. When he gets out he’ll have another shot to get money from his parents and he’ll use it to buy pills.
He’s not a bad person, he does bad things. Addiction is like that.
But the addiction is not coaxed out of him. It’s not lead out of him. It’s not negotiated and it’s not argued with. In order for this to go away, it needs to be “exorcised”. Look up the meaning of that word. Addiction must be exorcised.
Like Chemo treating cancer. What it does is destroy the body. In it’s whole. To get the pirates off the ship, you sink the ship.
This is your process. God bless the OP for his loss, may you gather the strength and share that strength with those who are dealing with this.