Yeah true.. it's not an easy problem. And how they dealt with them those days is much different from now, did they even have rehab centers back then?
There's an interesting interview with Guy Pearce about Andy here
http://www.movieweb.com/news/NEcWlddjWKfMfl
I liked this little tidbit of information:
(Guy Pearce speaking about what Brigit Berlin shared with him) "Oh, November 16th, 1971, go to the box and you'll find I tell Andy Edie died.' And sure enough, I go to the box and there's a tape, I tell Andy Edie died. And their conversation is just so heartbreaking.
What was Andy's reaction?
Guy Pearce: He had a number of reactions, the phone conversation goes for five minutes, and there were a couple of moments, he's clearly shocked and stunned by what's happened. And his very first reaction is to go, 'Who, what, where, how, why, who,' and he does an incredible job of evading the actual information. Then there's a huge long pause - they end up talking about her husband for awhile, Michael Post, and then there's this huge long pause and Andy says, 'Does he get all the money?' And then they get back into it again, and Brigit's clearly not happy with that response, and then there's another big pause, after they talk about some other stuff, and Andy says, and you can tell he's about to cry, he says, 'Gee, I just thought she was going to pull through and get well,' or something like that. So in typical Warhol fashion, I think he didn't want to attach to the emotional response and tried to evade.