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if he cant do more work for himself, help others, social work is a great way to help yourself
Weightlifting/exercising/sport are some of the best replacements for drugs/alcohol. They eat up time, they make you feel good, they make you look good... They do pretty much everything.
And like you say, social work is another great form of self-help.

One of the things that made me realize just how bad it can get when I was 19-20 was volunteering at a community centre kitchen on the downtown eastside in Vancouver. You see a lot of really messed up people and hear a lot of stories about people who started in the same places a lot of us do.
I mean, none of this is going to help with full-blown alcoholism/drug addiction, but our Bolivian friend seems to be suggesting something a little lesser on the scale, so filling his time with other things that make you feel good should help him.