One thing you'll probably have noticed this Christmas, especially if you watch TV, is he number of charities emphasising that the festive season is a time to remember those less fortunate than yourself while you open a second bottle of red over the Christmas pudding. Well they're right, of course, I wouldn't dream of suggesting otherwise. But I do think it's important, if you're going to be an interventionist member of society, to remember that you mustn't expect yourself to succeed every time you try to help. For all sorts of reasons, sometimes, however hard you try, you just can't help.

I first made this discovery about 6 years ago. We had a friend at the time who was a sort of recovering alcoholic. He was gay and his parents didn't approve, which put pressure on him. He had also, as a child, found his brother hanging from a noose in his bedroom. He always claimed he'd got over that, but my wife and I didn't believe him. We did our best to support him, not really being sure what was best to do. I volunteered to accompany him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Nothing ever came of that. We encouraged him to apply for work, and to simply be honest about the drinking in his past. In due course he drifted from our radar. About six months later I ran into his boyfriend, who told me that he had died in hospital, of liver failure. He never stopped drinking.

I can't say I was totally surprised. He'd never really moved away from drink. We'd only had a peripheral involvement in his life so all I could reasonably say is that we hadn't been able to do enough, but then neither had anyone else. His boyfriend is a lovely chap and, as far as I know, his parents were totally happy with his sexual preference. Still, if you've ever lost someone on the edge of your life in a fashion like this then you may be familiar with the feeling of…. not blame, really but, I don't know, regret, maybe. A sense of failure. It's a blow.

I'm bringing all this up because recently we lost another friend of ours. We'd put a lot of work into him. I don't think I'm unduly blowing our trumpets here when I suggest that we were probably his most genuine friends. Most of the rest were somewhere between not much help and actively criminal. We did our best to avoid most of his friends. He had family. His mother and sister were good to him but lived a long way away. His relationship with his kids was complex and I know too little of the history to go into that.

The trouble we had is that nothing we put in got replicated. We had him in our spare room for about 3 months after he'd been through hip surgery. Once I went to go and take care of him after he'd been attacked by a couple of 'friends'. Several times we intervened after epileptic fits had left him badly hurt. My wife once worked sufficiently hard to staunch the flow of blood from his head that the paramedics reckoned she'd probably saved his life. She also got him in touch with adult social care, so he got his rent and benefits sorted and was able to stay in his flat. We tried relentlessly to persuade him to get a pill-pot to sort his considerable quantity of medication so that he took the right quantities in the right order the right number of times. He didn't do that, so god knows how often he took the same medication more than once or never took it at all.

Well anyway, we don't know, not yet at least, what he actually died of. What I can say with reasonable certainty is that for all the considerable work we put in, we couldn't fix the underlying problems he suffered from. I won't detail them here, but they were deep seated and substantial. I'm not saying we shouldn't have tried to help. I'm not saying that, if you see someone who needs you, you shouldn't try to help them. All I am saying is that if and when you stick your neck out and try to help – and HUGE credit to you for trying- – don't take it too hard if you don't succeed. It's making an effort that makes the difference.

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