My friend refuses to acknowledge her drug use is a problem, I’m feeling so lost and frustrated

Going to try and keep it short-ish, but essentially after dancing around it for months, my friends and I finally confronted our friend about her excessive use of drugs, which she is in total denial of.

For months she’s been isolating from us, saying she’s been sick for 8 months straight. She has consistently not shown up for important events (a funeral, birthdays, etc.) and claims it is due to this illness, but her partner has told us otherwise. She simply does drugs all night and sleeps all day.

To summarize the relationship part, her and her partner are both active in addiction but he is aware of his issues and acknowledges that they are enabling one another and wants out of the relationship but feels stuck due to financial strain (of blowing all their money on drugs). He has told us that together they have blown through $20k in less than a year.

I have tried to get her to at least admit she’s using drugs, and she refuses, deflecting and telling my friends and I we are stigmatizing drug users and have been horrible friends to her. For context, I’m a social worker who has worked in addictions and mental health 10+ years.

Despite my work background, I’m at a loss. I worked in harm reduction and most of my clients were beyond intervention (25+ years using), nor was it my place. I suppose it’s not technically my place here either, but she’s one of my closest friends and seeing her waste her life away in drugs in less than a year is fucking heartbreaking.

At this point I’m considering contacting her family. It’s the last thing I want to do but she needs help and she needs to get away from the city and her partner, and her parents live on an island, away from all this. I’ve been in touch in the past with her mother due to me having to send her to the psych unit for suicidal ideation / intention to complete suicide, so I have prior connection with them about her health.

Do I do something? Do I just sit back and watch her kill herself? She’s been hospitalized multiple times now for infections, but denies her drug use has anything to do with it, or that she has been using drugs at all. But we know it is connected.

Also if this is considered inappropriate for this subreddit I totally understand. Just feeling so sad and frustrated and lost.

Thanks for reading. xx