Thanks to all for your replies!
By nature I’m just curious, and that’s why I am here on SR, to learn. It just sounded like a lot of meetings to me. I am very glad he’s working a program; as his friend, I care and want his recovery to succeed!! And as a coworker, his behavior and absence from work has directly affected my job because we are a small company, and one of the things that I do is HR. So the boss sharing information with me specifically is not out of line with that, nor would my friend object to me being the one that asked. But I appreciate the comments on nondisclosure and respect them. I have not repeated anything that I heard from my boss to anyone else, nor will I. The question was for me.