Originally Posted by
Learn2Live 
At the point where you are doing for someone else what they are capable of doing themselves but cannot because their own choices and behavior have caused them to not be able to manage their own life. But often we can "handle" continuing to do this for quite a while, and do not even notice there is a problem until WE reach the point where we are doing so much to help someone else manage his or her life that OUR life then becomes unmanageable, chaotic, dramatic, stressful, etc.
This is a common codependent excuse for continuing to enable. The fact of the matter is that our loved one may have a disease, but there are very effective treatments and behaviors they can use to halt the illness. They CHOOSE not to.
I dunno, I see the point here but to me it is a leap from helping someone with a ride to say someone is outright enabling and in denial of that it kind of extreme. If you think that ride will open the door for you to start doing all kind of things at your expense then yes, that is a slippery slope (I'm talking about someone in recovery, not an active drinker who lost their license.. etc).
An active drinker who wants to drink over finding recovery to straighten their lives out should never be enabled.
But if someone can't drive because they did drink and paid the price and now they are in recovery, rebuilding their life and making an honest effort at it, I truly don't see that as enabling. Just as it isn't my job to enable while actively drinking, it isn't my job to teach them a lesson now that they are recovered. It is still trying to control the situation. They aren't criminals.
If someone is taking advantage of you, recovered or not, that is never a good thing and that is what this boils down to for me. But it is still ok to help people who are trying to help themselves. Help does not always mean enable just because someone has a past with alcoholism.
By the way, I like this discussion because I know there are different ways to look at it so I am not disagreeing, I just see it differently.