If someone you know needs drug or alcohol rehab, how do you approach this? With the T.V. show about interventions showing now, a lot more people are calling and asking about doing something like this for a family member, loved one or good friend. An intervention may be a good thing, but if handled improperly it may simply add to a bad situation, or end up with a client heading of to one of the various drug rehabs out there with the attitude of “this won’t work”. The problem with this is someone arriving at a rehab with this attitude is very difficult to work with. They usually stay just long enough to “prove” to everyone the program is lousy and then they leave, “justified” that everyone was wrong. This is a huge waste of time, emotion and money.

The purpose of an intervention is to shed truth and fact to a difficult situation. It should not be, to get a client to say yes to a pre-chosen rehab in one long dramatic tear filled conversation. By bringing out truth and facts about the addiction and the drug or alcohol use, we hope to assist the client to choose something different. The person who is the focus of the intervention, must during the process feel like they have some choice in something if you ever hope to have a client arrive at rehab wanting for the treatment program to work.

During an intervention several things may be of assistance. When describing the past and it’s consequences, be sure to stay on the behavior, not the person. For example, if you say, “When you lied to me repeatly about still using drugs, you hurt our family deeply.” The person with the addiction is going to feel like they have to “justify” their behavior. A better option may be, “Last Friday when you said you were not using drugs and it turned out you still were was an example of something that is not you. I know you value the truth and this family. Lying behavior is against your core values and I know it. So when this lying behavior occurs I know this drug addiciton has a powerful hold on you because that is not who you really are.” By focusing on the behavior and not the person, you allow discussion about the real problem, the drugs and alcohol. At the same time you re-inforce the value of the person.

Many times a client is so beat-up mentally during an intervention, they may feel worthless and what would be the point of trying to save themselves as the are “to far gone”. Remember the point of an intervention. We want a client to willingly choose to change their life for the better. We want someone going to drug or alcohol rehab filled with hope and a belief in their core that the rehab program they have chosen will be successful. Tomorrow I’ll discuss some suggestions on how to bring up boundaries during an intervention.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 10:24 am and is filed under Drug Rehab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.