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.