Posts Tagged ‘drug treatment’

Interventions Initiate Recovery; It Takes Diligence To Complete It

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Sometimes interventions don’t go the way we initially envision. What with all the visual aids on TV regarding how they’re done, how they look and the reactions they incite, our minds are generally inhabited by a vision of the event before it happens. So, naturally, when the time, place and reactions are a bit different than expected, we feel it’s ‘gone wrong’ and didn’t work.

The most important thing to remember about interventions is to not expect immediacy. Chances are the intervention will not suddenly make the intervened see the light, become sober and turn back into the person you once knew and loved.  Interventions are done to establish boundaries rather than incite immediate actions. The person will likely have to acclimate to the new rules and ways by which he or she has chosen to live without treatment, continuing in the self-destruction completely on one’s own.

Most times this proves impossible and he or she accepts help, beginning the real process. A prime example of this kind of outcome for an intervention had a family come together hoping to finally help Susie – a daughter, sister and friend – recover from her now crippling addiction to crack cocaine.

As the family assembled the interventionist reiterated how the event would go – the family members had each prepared something to say explaining how they care for her, how the drug addiction was affecting both her and the family around her and the means by which they would free themselves of helping her sustain this disease. After the ground plans were understood everyone headed over to Susie’s apartment.

Refusing to come out from behind her chained door the family managed to coax her out onto her balcony – an intervention under circumstances unforeseen. After relaying their good memories of the girl lost behind the crack-induced facade, how her addiction had consumed their lives with fear, concern, sadness and debt, and telling her calmly they would no longer support her in any way other than assisting her in receipt of recovery, Susie walked back inside her apartment, leaving a stunned and hopeless family behind.

While it may have seemed to the family a completely wasted attempt, failed and fruitless, this intervention was a complete success. Results are rarely immediately observed, and by putting forth their new plan to regain their own lives they’d already won half the battle.

Addiction truly is a family disease, by helping those affected receive the counseling they need and regain their own life directions half the disease can be conquered. Additionally, without assistance from others rarely addicts manage to survive on their own and do eventually ask for the help offered, if only for a comfortable place to sleep, good food and a warm home.

In this case, Susie did call her family a week later, apologetic for her reaction at the intervention and requesting the help and support offered. Susie’s now been in recovery for nearly five years, went back to school and found the strength in both herself and her family to lead a healthy lifestyle.

The full, detailed story is laid out in more elaborate and eloquent terms in the AiR book It’s Not Okay to be a Cannibal: How to Keep Addiction from Eating Your Family Alive, written by AiR founder Andrew Wainwright and friend, Hazelden’s Robert Poznanovich.

Tags: drug abuse, drug addiction, drug intervention, drug treatment, drugs
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