Irene Hoffman soon took a second trip with her son — again on a private jet — to West Palm Beach, Fla., where Hoffman entered a rehabilitation center, Behavioral Health of the Palm Beaches. Randy Grimes, an interventionist and community liaison at the center, had reached out to Hoffman after reading about him.

Grimes, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers lineman who had battled painkiller addiction, told me that Hoffman remained in the program for two months before being discharged. The first month was free. The second was paid for by North Carolina alumni, Grimes said, at a discounted rate.

Hoffman was a model client, Grimes said, and quickly became a mentor for younger men there. He participated in group sessions, opened up about his problems and recognized that he needed to escape from his enablers. Grimes said Hoffman “embraced the structure” and enjoyed being accountable for himself, for the first time in a long time.

After those two months, Hoffman left the center to go home to Jacksonville so he could obtain a government identification card. The plan, Grimes said last week, was for Hoffman to return to West Palm Beach, where he would live in a halfway house and receive intensive outpatient treatment three times a week, four hours a day. That treatment would not be free, Grimes said, but there were ways to pay for it — if only Hoffman had asked for financial help.

“I think he had enough people here who were behind him and who invested in him that Ryan didn’t have to worry about money or about paying for his treatment,” Grimes said. “But it just never got to that point because he just never came back.”

Hoffman and his mother told me that he was released from treatment with five days of prescription medication to stabilize his moods. Soon after, Grimes called me to say that Hoffman was ready to start another chapter in his life.

“Ryan has all the tools he needs to succeed,” Grimes said. “Now it’s got to be up to him.”

Hoffman, too, told me after his stay that he felt as if he had a chance to rebound from his years of struggling. But the conversations always turned bleak.