If you have a loved one with a drink or drug problem an intervention can be a successful way to encourage them to seek recovery and support them by showing that you care. However, people are not always willing to admit they have a problem making interventions a delicate process.
What are Addiction Interventions?
When a loved one is suffering from an addiction issue and their life is becoming more and more unbalanced it could be time for an intervention. An intervention involves a planned encounter with friends, family, loved ones, and therapists. It can occur one-to-one or as a group, these encounters have the aim of getting an individual to address the issue and seek some support.
Addiction Intervention: Pros
Resolve Denial
When confronted with addiction issues a person can become very reactive and deny there is an issue, this is something to be wary of during an intervention. However, when the intervention is carried out correctly – with each member of the group relating their personal experiences of the problem – it makes it more difficult for the individual to deny the issue of their substance abuse.
Encourages Help
In order for an individual to take their addiction issues seriously, they might require an ultimatum. An ultimatum is a form of stakes that threatens to remove some form of comfort from their life. If it’s a young person, a parent might tell them they must leave home or seek help for addiction. However, if you give someone an ultimatum, you must be willing to follow it through.
Escape Addiction
Addiction issues are very hard to break, but so much of the addiction is based on living conditions. Someone addicted to substances might have a particular lifestyle that supports the habit. Sometimes, convincing a person to change their environment helps them to change their mind about addiction issues and start to move toward a self-determined attitude.
Taking Action
Sometimes you care about someone but don’t know how to help them, this is very much the case with addiction issues. While an intervention might not resolve the issue it is a form of taking action that is necessary and should have positive repercussions in the future. Although difficult, taking some form of action indicates to loved ones that you care for and support them.
Addiction Intervention: Cons
Recovery Resistance
An intervention is a delicate process that needs to be managed correctly in order to lead to the right outcomes. If your loved one feels embarrassed because the intervention is happening in public, or feels overly criticized because the intervention members are using it as an opportunity to attack their character, it can have the opposite effect and can lead to recovery resistance.
Credibility Issues
One intervention strategy is to offer the individual an ultimatum, something along the lines of addressing an addiction issue or finding somewhere else to live, which can be effective, but only if the interventionists are willing to follow through with the ultimatum. If the subject calls your bluff in some way, you can lose credibility in their eyes and lose any leverage that you once had.
Action Plans
It’s not enough to have an intervention and allow a person to think about it over a period. If you are serious about an intervention you need to have a plan of action depending on the outcome. If an individual says they are willing to enter recovery, it’s best to have somewhere pre-booked, like the Intensive Outpatient And Outpatient – Telemed – Multiple Pathways Treatment centers.
Bad Behavior
When people are confronted with addiction issues they can be very reactive, it takes a lot to admit you have a problem and sometimes intervention can be premature – but that doesn’t mean it is ineffective. Even if an individual reacts by going on a drink or drug binge, you have planted the seed in their mind and shown that you are aware of their addiction and you care.
In Conclusion
Interventions are never easy, but when conducted correctly they can be very beneficial. The last thing you want is for your loved one to react badly to the intervention and harm your relationship, and while this is always a risk, the threat can be diminished with careful planning.
Always plan an intervention thoroughly, you need to consider the place where it will happen, who is going to be there, and what your plan of action is based on the outcome. The Impact Outpatient Program is a one-of-a-kind outpatient drug and alcohol treatment center that offers a path to lasting, sustainable recovery.