Intervention
Intervention is a meeting that happens between family and friends, a specialized counselor trained in dealing with substance abusers, and the addict. It can sometimes be hard to get the addict to come to an intervention if they know that is the purpose of meeting. It may be necessary to keep things between family, friends and the counselor.
Some people find that they are uncomfortable with lying to someone they love. But remember, these are extreme measures. An intervention happens when all other avenues have been exhausted. Most likely, the person who has the problem is already lying to you as much as they are lying to themselves.
The reason an intervention works better than one-on-one reasoning is that you have a group of people confronting the addict at the same time. Remember, a person who has an addiction becomes crafty in playing one person off the next. But if all the people who love them are in the same room and saying the same thing, it’s harder for them to manipulate the situation and harder for them to ignore.
Can the people in the room be just anyone the addict knows? If that were the case, then therapy would help everyone. Unfortunately that’s not the case. The people who are present for an intervention must be people more meaningful to the addict. They need to have some kind of impact on the person so they can show how that person’s addiction has affected everyone around them, not just the person who is the addict.
An intervention that is controlled by a trained professional and that focuses on changing the addict’s behavior, at least for the moment, can be highly effective in helping the addict seek treatment. It is done in such a way that the counselor and the family and friends who attend control the meeting, not the addict. The counselor will schedule a meeting with the people who will be part of the intervention ahead of time. The council will then discuss how the meeting will take place, go over what each individual will say to the addict, and give them an idea of what is likely to happen, good and bad.
The goal is to have the addict leave the meeting and go straight to a treatment program to begin recovery. It doesn’t always happen that way, so all the people involved must be prepared so that the meeting does not get out of control. Most likely when the addict knows that the meeting is an intervention, there will be anger and tears. The person having the intervention will most likely feel betrayed, hurt and angry with you.
But remember that in doing an intervention, you are trying to help the person you love help themselves because their addiction prevents them from seeing how they can help themselves on their own.
The counselor who runs the intervention may suggest that one or more members of the family not be present. If that’s the case, don’t be alarmed or upset. If the counselor feels that you will coddle the addict or cave-in if the scene gets too difficult, or you won’t be strong enough to deal with how stressful the intervention will be, they might suggest that you not be there. Try not to be hurt by the counselor’s suggestion.
Your goal in an intervention is to make sure that the addict seeks treatment immediately. Everyone in the room must be committed to working toward that goal and to learning what it will take for the addict to succeed in the goal.
Often times, a family member or friend will believe that it’s only the addict that needs to take action. The fact is that everyone participating in an intervention has something to learn, something to do. Intervention is a way for family members or friends to vent their emotional feelings about the addict’s behavior and learn ways to deal with it as well as open the eyes of the addict enough to let them see they need help.
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