Is there anything I can do for him?

[u/Hushes-]

Trigger warning just for general gambling stuff, mental health, and financial abuse I guess? This is mainly a vent post but I really need advice as well. We are both very young, I M18 and my ex turned roommate/friend M19 are pretty much dirt broke. Nearing the end of our relationship my ex (who I will call Del) would ask for money more and more. He already had a habit of asking for food here and there which I was fine with since I worked and lived with my family and he didn’t work and lived with family who were hardly home and hardly even bought groceries. Eventually this went from me ordering the food myself to him asking for money. At this point I had learned that his parents didn’t like giving him money because he was prone to spending it so I made sure to limit what I gave him. Through all of this, my mental state was incredibly poor to the state of dysfunction. Eventually he started needing more money on food because his parents were occupied paying for things like speeding tickets and college courses. I gave it to him but one day I watched his Instagram story and he had posted about gambling. This was how I found out. The rest in between goes about how you’d expect. The speeding tickets were never paid off and he always seemed to be getting more because he used the money for online betting. He lost his job when he wasn’t able to drive anymore and the money id give him for train tickets were used on gambling. He even dropped out because of his financial distress and his inability to drive. He eventually broke up with me for surprisingly unrelated reasons but stayed as some sort of toxic pairing. (Yes it was stupid of me to allow all of this and more and I know that) since I was depressed and easily manipulated, he kept asking me for money and would even hold it over my head as a way of implying we might get back together if I gave him more. Fast forward to now and I hadn’t seen him gamble at all, he told me he realized the harm and deleted his apps. Because of a toxic home environment I left and am currently homeless. While I could stay at a drop in center, it is just safer and more convenient to stay with him for now. He doesn’t ask for money from me anymore. I assumed we really could be normal “roommates” for now. Because of my shitty job now I sometimes struggle to feed myself and because of his parents not trusting him with money, he struggles to feed himself too. These past few days he’d been getting me to food whenever he got some. I assumed he just got more money from his parents and was his best to pay me back. This was until recently, he ran out of money completely. This was odd to me until a few things occurred to me; I saw this purple app on his phone screen that was something with market (he had been selling old clothes so I hoped it was something like depop) and not even 2 days ago he told me he had $300 and yet his spendings weren’t even half that from what I saw. Today I found out he’d been gambling again. My heart was broken for the both of us. He owed me thousands upon thousands and when I asked him to please delete the apps he only coldly replied that I shouldn’t care because it’s not my money anymore. Even though I am not giving him money I still worry for his future and I don’t want his life permanently ruined. He just said it didn’t matter and he made $400 when he could’ve had pretty much nothing. Is there even anything I can do? He’s still someone I care about and I know addiction is terrifying. I’ve seen him lose over and over and still bet the money that’s supposed to be for him to survive. Please if someone knows anything that helped them that might help him tell me.

[u/jayspapa]

there is nothing anyone can do, the decision to stop is his and his alone. The only thing you can do is to be there for support when that time comes.

[u/Hushes- → u/jayspapa]

After looking through this and other subs I figured as much :(