Interventions
When a loved one is suffering from an addiction everyone who cares about the individual is impacted. Our Intervention services are designed to help all of those in need. At East Coast Recovery Services there are several intervention services available depending on the need of the identified person or family. As with any disease process the earlier we begin to intervene the more options we have. Our intervention services are designed to help family members understand a better way to communicate the need for a person to get help for themselves. We do not consider physically forcing someone to go and get help or demanding that someone get help as intervention. If you can do that you do not need our services.
A person does not have to “want” help in the beginning of an intervention process. The nature of an intervention is to help someone who is unable to make a rationale decision because of the nature of addiction’s impact on the thinking process make better decisions about their need for help. A formal intervention is a single event designed for people to share their concerns and help the person obtain the help they need to address addiction and other issues that are hurting them.
At East Coast Recovery Services an intervention is a well developed, caring, and purposeful event or series of actions through which people are able to share their concern and stop enabling a person’s decline into addiction. Intervention is an act of love. It is our experience that successful interventions done with dignity and respect result in the addicted individual continuing to work with the intervention providers and often time being grateful for the intervention.
An intervention as any action or behavior that is done in order to make someone uncomfortable with their use of mood altering chemicals or behaviors. It is often also associated with allowing a crisis to follow it's natural course for the addicted individual. When family members and friends begin utilizing intervention methods, the goal is for the addicted individual to start looking at themselves and get the help they need.
Intervention methods have been developed to help the addicted person not to hurt them. That being said sometimes, because of human nature, people do not learn without feeling the pain or consequences of their behavior. Concerned individuals do not have to create consequences they just have to stop fixing the natural consequences that happen to an addicted individual.
It also means that the concerned individuals have to stop believing that the addicted individual is thinking with a rationale mind. The addicted individual is suffering from an illness that affects their ability to think rationally. Those living with this problem can begin developing their own denial system in order to deal with the pain of this affliction. In these cases they will need to re-evaluate how they are looking at addiction and how they may be inadvertently enabling the addicted individual.
Enabling can be identified
as well intended people trying to help the addicted individual but
in the process they help the addicted person continue their acting
out behaviors.
While
the primary goal of the intervention is to get the addict into treatment
it also leads to positive changes for the other participants who gain a better
understanding of what they are dealing with. Many times in this process the
participants see the need for taking care of themselves and even getting
help for themselves regardless of what the addicted person does. Most participants
find the following benefits:
- A sense of relief that stems from finally addressing their loved one’s problem
- A feeling of unity in having faced this situation together
- New ways of coping and communicating
- The ability to stop enabling the addict and regain control of their lives
- The comfort of knowing that they did everything that they could do
The timing of an intervention is important, waiting too long can have disastrous results. All too often an early intervention could have positive results, many fear utilizing interventions.
Although each intervention has different circumstances, the intervention process is the same. It does not matter if the addict is using alcohol, pot, cocaine, heroin, abusing prescription pills or has an active eating disorder, is addicted to gambling, working, shopping, sex, etc. There is hope.
The first step to a well planned formal intervention is to have an assessment meeting at which time critical information is explored as to the concerns and fears about the identified individual, the family, and the complicating factors that need to be addressed in order to increase the odds of successfully getting the identified individual into the appropriate level of treatment. During this meeting we can identify the most appropriate intervention services to utilize and develop a plan of action to begin addressing the problem.
The next step is to have a meeting with all the participants and rehearse the intervention. To help everyone in creating an atmosphere of dignity and respect, all participants write letters in a certain manner that will allow the addicted individual to see how much people really care about them and choose to take the gift of help being offered.
A formal intervention can be done immediately. For example if someone you care about has been hospitalized for liver problems connected with their drinking. We can work to do a formal intervention immediately to get the person the help they need. Generally speaking a formal intervention can take one to two weeks from the time of the call to the actual intervention day. During this time, many hours are spent in planning and preparing with the family prior to the actual intervention. This preparation time is crucial for the success of the intervention since so much is at stake during this process. Every intervention has it’s own set of complicating factors of finances, logistics, and scheduling.
The actual intervention usually takes about an hour, and often the addict agrees to go immediately to treatment. The goal of the intervention is to get the person's agreement to accept the gift of help being offered at that time. Arrangements have been made ahead of time and when possible the person’s bag is already packed so all they have to do is get into the car and go to treatment provided.