Friend is turning into a mooch. What to do?

My boyfriend and I have been friends with this guy for years. He’s also my boyfriend’s band member and is very good.

He has had many personal struggles (including addiction in the past) and is currently unemployed and living with his parents and no car (uses his parents). Before, he’d always be VERY thankful if we spent money on him and he’d always give us some money towards expenses if he had some. So it wasn’t a big deal. We were happy he was thankful.

Over the months, he’s changed. And we don’t really know what to do. And this is very relevant to my boyfriend, which I’ll explain later.

-On facebook, he recently posted an article about a guy who is “proud to be a free spirit living off of others”

-He doesn’t thank us much anymore for doing stuff for him.

-He is no longer feverishly looking for employment like he used to and he doesn’t want to talk about jobs anymore

-He started smoking weed again. So if he DID get offered a job, he’d fail the test.

-He now self identifies as “a bum” proudly, not in shame.

-He really pissed me off recently when he came over. He offered me $6 towards food so we could make nachos and then proceeded to try and get me to buy $60 worth of groceries JUST for nachos. He was insisting on expensive kinds of rice and beans and oils and spices. I then bought my boyfriend some nice scotch and then this guy proceeded to drink HALF of the bottle that night.

This is concerning because my boyfriend wants to rent out a bigger practice area for his band. He currently pays the rent but when he gets a bigger space, all agreed that they would split the cost. The other guy makes decent money and is ready and happy to contribute. Moochy friend…..not so much. He used to say that he would when he got a job….now, no job, no nothing.

My boyfriend has told Mooch straight up that he NEEDS to contribute. Mooch keeps changing the subject. The other day, he had the gall to make a joke of it saying “Well I’m a bum and you know I can’t pay, hahahahaha” and that made my boyfriend extremely angry.

They have a long history and my boyfriend is reluctant to kick him out because he has a lot of talent and they share a LOT of material. But my boyfriend can’t really make the one band member pay while Mooch doesn’t pay. That’s not fair.

Part of me feels bad for being angry because this guy has struggled with drug addiction in the past, literally has nothing, and his best friend died this year too. And he used to be SO good in the past, thankful, and looking hard for a job and working hard when he found one.

Now he’s a mooch. And I feel like we’re both being taken advantage of.