Holding an intervention can and often is a very challenging and disturbing prospect. It’s not easy to convince someone who is addicted to drugs and alcohol to go to rehab, and the situation is made just that much more difficult by the simple fact that no less than ninety percent of those who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) are not willing to go to rehab and are not in the mind of believing that they actually have a real problem.
Intervention, except for the inpatient rehab centers themselves in the nation today, is the most important aspect of addiction recovery because it is intervention that will ultimately convince someone that he or she needs to go to rehab. This change of mind in an addict is perhaps one of the most important if not the most important aspect to addiction recovery that there is.
How to Have a Successful Intervention
Listed below are some tips on how to perform a successful, professional, and respectful intervention:
1. Choose Your Team Wisely and Make Your Selections Carefully
An intervention is designed and set up to be a persuasive conversation in which people who know, love, and trust the addicted person come together to persuade that person to get help for his or her addiction. The individuals who take part in an intervention should be chosen with care and chosen wisely, as this will ensure that those who have a meaningful and truly important and valuable relationship with the addicted person are present, but people who don’t have a good relationship with the addicted person are asked to stay away from the intervention as these persons will just generally cause more trouble than they can get rid of. One needs to pick people who one think will be successful in convincing the addict to go to rehab.
2. Practice Staging the Intervention First
During an actual, real intervention, emotions can run high and people can quickly and easily lose their train of thought and forget what they had planned to say and how they had planned to say it to the addict. Holding rehearsals and practice sessions might make this kind of glitch and tongue tied situation a bit less likely, as people will have a bit more muscle memory standing behind their statements and their thoughts will be a bit more clear and comprehensible for the addict. Just like memorizing lines for an audition or memorizing school data for an important test, memorizing one’s lines for an intervention are equally helpful. These practice sessions are in fact so vital for the success of the intervention on an addict, that it’s of the utmost importance for everyone to attend it.
3. Have a Backup Plan
No matter how expertly they are performed, sometimes interventions do not work. A lot of it in the end depends on the addict’s overall willingness to hang addiction up and get the help that they so desperately need. No matter how good your intervention is, it will ultimately be on the addict himself or herself to do what is right and get into rehab. Because of this fact, families that develop backup plans for each and every nasty scenario that may take place will be prepared to handle almost everything that comes their way in an intervention scenario. Not all reactions on the part of the addict are so easy to predict. Because of this, on the day of the intervention, family members and loved ones who are involved in the intervention should simply steel themselves for the realization that anything might happen in the meeting, and that they’ll get through it together once and for all no matter what. The family members must keep in mind that no matter what happens and even if they fail, there is always another time and another day to try again.
4. Don’t Give Up on Your Addicted Loved One
Going further with what was said above, not all interventions work on the first try. Particularly for young adults who usually need a few days to process things and let their natural desire to rebel and disagree settle down, a second intervention usually does need to be staged on them. A study in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse found that:
“People who were confronted about their addictions were more likely to stay sober than people who were not confronted.”
The study doesn’t point out the key factor however of just how many confrontations were needed in order for people to see the need to change their ways once and for all. Some people might have been convinced after that very first talk that they had with their family members, but many others will need a second or even a third intervention. The key to remember is to never give up.
5. Be Sure to Keep Tempers Under Control
In an article in the infamous “Counselor” magazine, authors outlined old and now outdated methods of speaking to people who had addictions and trying to get them to accept help for their substance abuse habits. At one point, (according to the authors of the article), people were encouraged to “tear ’em down to build ’em up,” so to speak, and they may have used abusive language or even physical punishments to entice people to accept help for their addictions. It was a sort of instillment of a dominating presence to try and get the addict to do what they wanted.
This method doesn’t work anymore. In today’s day and age, this method is more likely to make things far worse before they ever get any better. In today’s day and age it is far more successful to use love, compassion, calmness, and persistence to get someone to seek out rehab and help for their addictions.
Looking to the Future
In the end, there are a lot of different ways that someone could go about trying to beat a drug or alcohol addiction problem. When someone is not willing to get help then they will have to be intervened with, and that’s all there is to it. With intervention performed artfully and skillfully, then it is likely that even the most dauntless and resolute addicts will agree to seek out rehabilitation. One should follow the tips in this article and other tips too to ensure that one has a successful experience with getting the addict to go to an inpatient, residential, drug and alcohol addiction and dependence treatment center, detox facility, rehab program, and recovery organization.
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