When people want to help someone with dependence or an addiction to drugs or alcohol they will need to intervene. Attempts by those closest to an addict are notorious for failure. Trying to tell a son, daughter or a spouse, or someone in the workplace that they need addict help is likely to lead to rage and anger, complete denial and sometimes physical violence. The destructive presence of addiction in the home or workplace can become more intense as a result of an individual trying and failing to make a successful intervention.
The key to success with intervention to provide addict help is in the preparation. The best way to prepare for an addiction intervention is to seek professional help.
So what exactly is a professional intervention. You will be supported by others, using tried and tested methods, to enable the addict to see the truth about his or her addiction and the damage it is causing.
It is important to choose for the intervention a professional who understands that an intervention is only to be conducted for the benefit of the addict. It is not an opportunity to fly in like the caped crusader in a game of shame and blame. Moral reproof and judgmental remarks have no place in intervention intended to provide addict help. Shock tactics can make a person feel defenseless and compliant, but when the effects wear off the person is likely to return to addiction and be more resistant to any further intervention.
There are several types of intervention that professionals can be trained in, and in every case they will need to make variations to suit the individual case. However, there is a difference between traditional intervention and intervention in a holistic style.
System based interveners use some of the tactics of an interrogation style – although they say that their intervention is non-confrontational, because they don’t raise their voice or become impolite – the confrontation is real. The addict responds with meek compliance not because he understands, but he sees no other option because of the way that it has been set up. Indeed he may very well feel deep down that he has simply been set up.
Holistic intervention creates a confrontation but it is not of a forcing kind. Holistic intervention does not create a confrontation between anyone other than the addict and himself. There is always a small part of the addict mind that wants to be set free – given a choice between the slow death of addiction and life –the intervention works, not through brute force, but from the will to live – real life energy.
Needless to say holistic intervention must be followed up by holistic detox and rehab. You fail at first base if you give a man emotional hope and then put him into a system of “care” that merely replaces the drug of abuse with something legal and safer, that doesn’t address emotional issues except in terms of compliant behavior.
When you choose to make an intervention into anyone else’s life – you take on a responsibility for that action, you need to get it right. The best one to trust if you are looking at beating addiction is someone who has been there and done it, and at very least the intervener should not support further drug use in detox or rehab. Do you want to recover from addiction or be in recovery and addiction management for the rest of your natural life.
Author: National Addiction Resources
America's Best Treatment Directory
Leave a Reply