If you naively try to do this with merely the power of your love and your smarts and your will, you will fail and he will die. I am not being overly dramatic.
During the process of quitting booze many years ago, I came to know many young people who were addicted to opiates. Merely being involved with AA means I regularly hear the stories of relatives, sons, nephews dying of drugs.
The booze usually takes 10's of years to kill people. The drugs take a matter of a few years or less.
Getting a job is the least of his worries.
Your role is to do whatever you can to get him into serious help, but you are almost certainly not that help, other than facilitating him getting that help.
Get in touch with N.A. and/or a treatment facility (I would call Hazeldon,) tell them exactly what the situation is, and do whatever they tell you. Some of it may not seem to make sense to you, or it may seem extreme. It isn't.
I am very very sorry to hear about your son.
You said a couple time in your note "my thinking" and "my thought was" etc. This is not a put down: The addiction will not respond to your thinking, has no respect for your thinking, is bigger than your thinking, no matter how much love is in it.
You need advice from experts and to follow that advice.
Give him your love and your spiritual support, but leave this to experts when it comes to the drug and the addiction. If you don't, the statistical chances of recovery before death or for all purposes ruining his life are not not good at all. If the right people with the right expertise are brought into his life, he has a chance.
Here is Hazeldon's website - number is on the page you'll land on ... call them now ... Hazeldon.org 1·800·257·7810 and for the sake of your nephew just find a way to do what they tell you. I don't believe they will try to 'sell you' on Hazeldon itself - rather I think they will help you do whatever needs to be done first - probably they will recommend treatment - but there are many great treatment facilities.
If and when the time comes, it can be decided where he should go - I just refer you to Hazeldon because they know what they are talking about. There are a ton of resources available who know what this is all about. Tap into them and learn from them, do what they tell you, unless of course it goes against your ethics, which is unlikely. Get as much information as possible from people who know about this.
And ... none of this will amount to anything until he chooses it, but you can be ready, and you can support him towards it. Do not enable him with money or helping him get jobs etc. It's sad - unfair in a way - because they have no idea what they are getting into. To some extent - booze gives fair warning and is usually more gradual.
Summary: Get in touch now with people who know not just 'how horrible this disease is' ... but who actually know what can be done in the real world, what works, what doesn't, and how people who have actually made it through did it.
The Hazeldon phone number is the best answer.
I’ll just answer the why.
Serious drug addiction victims feel intense emotional pain worse than life itself. The drug stops the pain. Their immediate choice is between suicide and a drug.
The war on drugs, or criminalization, changes the choice to suicide and prison. Now an addict’s choice is between screwed and more screwed. Far better to let them have a cheap drug until they get better. But like alcoholics, some do not.
Imagine your feet are forcibly held over a red hot stove, your privates are getting high voltage electroshock. It is more pain than life itself. Imagine an illegal drug on the nearby counter. If you take the drug, all pain ceases.
You are presented with two choices to halt the pain. You could suicide or take the illegal drug. Or the pain continues with people’s endless hallow advice.
QUESTION
Would you take the drug??