I feel like a good example of this system is in the book/movie Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. As messed up as Hunter and his lawyer got, they seem to alternate who is more fucked up and who is more functional, such that at no point is one of them left alone to completely spiral out. For example, Hunter convinces his lawyer not to kill himself in the bathtub, and his lawyer looks after Hunter when he takes too much adrenochrome. And as a person who once lost his mind on mushrooms on a busy street, the fact that armed thugs are the ones who show up when a person is acting erratically doesn’t help anything.