Sooner or later everyone quits…
If you enter into any traditional support group where alcoholics or addicts meet to help each other to recover, you will notice that you start to hear some common things.
“Right before I got sober, my wife left me. I got drunk on my kids birthday party and didn’t even show up. I was so embarrassed. I lost my job. I was arrested and charged with a drunken driving. I reached my bottom.”
Intervention Services has intervened on thousands of clients who were once abusing drugs or alcohol and then, as a result of the intervention, sought out recovery instead. As an interesting fact, almost everyone who has achieved long-term sobriety has achieved it via an intervention. “How can that be? I know many people who sobered up and their family never did an intervention!” you might say. But, understand that there are many different types of “interventions” that caused an alcoholic or addict to sober up.
Life itself is going to Intervene
Here are some examples of Interventions, other than one that is professionally guided, that your loved has already experienced or will experience is his or her life. Some may cause them to sober up…or maybe not.
- Legal Intervention such as arrests, jails, probation or parole
- Medical Intervention such as overdoses, heart attacks, or strokes
- Psychiatric Intervention when the substance abuser becomes suicidal or a danger to himself or others and is forced into an institution
- Family Intervention such as spouses who leave, kids who disown their alcoholic parent
- Financial Intervention such as loss of a job or when there is no money left to continue
What is a Drug and Alcohol Intervention?
Although most people think of a professional intervention as one where a substance abuse counselor or therapist comes out to the family home and guides someone into recovery, it is important to understand that an intervention can and has taken other forms in your loved one’s life.
An intervention is when an individual is engaged in unhealthy behaviors and an outside source comes in and influences that individual so that they change their behaviors and seek out healthy behaviors instead.
In all probability, your loved one has already been receiving a number of interventions in his life. Perhaps a significant other is already complaining or threatening to leave. Maybe the job or the school counselor is noticing the poor performance. The police who “gave them a break” at 2am the other morning when they were a little tipsy. And then there is you…the one who has already tried to speak with them. You have already tried to intervene yourself in dozens of different ways. Long talks trying to understand, offers to help or maybe inspirational books. In later stages it is the begging, pleading and frustrated threats that become the ways many family members will try to intervene. Unfortunately, due to the complex emotional connection that exists between a family member and a substance abuser, it is almost impossible to conduct an unbiased objective long-term intervention on a loved one.
Life itself is intervening on your loved one already. You may get lucky and your loved one decides to change as the result of the drunken driving arrest, or you may not be so lucky with the drunken driving accident. Unfortunately, addiction and life is unpredictable at times.
You can wait until your loved one gets the intervention that life is going to deal him or her. But, what exactly is that roll of the dice going to be? Accident, arrest, job gone, house gone, or overdose? Which intervention will unpredictable life hand out to wake your loved one up from their substance abuse?
If your loved one survives that random intervention, what will his story be when he sits down in his support group and tells them why he got sober and is still sober? With a phone call, you have the power to change his story.
“My family came together with a professional, and showed me how much they loved me. My family had an intervention…”
Although Intervention Services has extensive experience in many different types of interventions, such as gambling, sex addiction, or other process addictions, our primary focus is and has always been to intervene on a person who is abusing drugs or alcohol. Let Intervention Services help your loved one to find sobriety and recovery.
Click here to learn more about our Intervention Services
