How to Stage an Intervention

Any kind of addiction, be it to alcohol or drugs, can prove to be very detrimental to one's physical as well as emotional health. An alcohol or a drug addict's whole life, including his personal relationships, suffer a great deal due to his addiction. Sometimes, it is up to the family and friends of the addict to make him realize that he should give up his addiction and start taking therapy, which will help him in addiction recovery. Arranging an intervention for an addict is one of the counseling techniques used by people close to him to motivate him to seek professional help. However, to stage a successful intervention and to ensure that it does not backfire, one should always conduct it under the guidance of a trained professional. Scroll down for some useful tips...

Tips for Staging an Intervention

Any addict's family or friends come to realize that it is time that he gets professional help when his whole life goes out of control. An addict whose physical health is suffering a great deal, who starts lying or stealing from his own immediate family members to buy or take drugs, these are all signs that he needs to be pulled out of his addiction.

Initiation
The first thing to do is to get in touch with a trained professional who has successfully staged interventions in the past. Next, get in touch with all the persons close to the addict, including his spouse, parents, siblings, close friends and explain them that you are going to together plead and request with him, to take treatment. The group which stages an intervention should comprise only those people who are extremely close to him. No outsider or acquaintance should be involved. Plan a meeting with the professional, of the entire group, and discuss on how to go about your plans to confront the addict about his alcohol addiction. Also, inform the group that they should not tell about the intervention to anybody, as it is essential to keep it a secret from the addict.

Preparation
The trained professional helps in choosing an appropriate treatment center for the addict. When the people close to the addict meet the trained professional, they should plan to stage an intervention for drug addiction or alcohol and even rehearse it. Each and every person should know exactly what he has to say, how he has to say and when. This way there are very few chances of the intervention going wrong. Another thing that should be discussed in detail with the professional is the reasons why the addict has refused treatment for drug abuse in the past. This will help the professional to understand the psyche of the addict better and thus, he will be able to suggest more appropriate things to be said to him during the confrontation.

Staging
The venue to stage an alcohol intervention or drug intervention should be a safe place to which the addict is familiar, preferably one's own house. The confrontation should be planned at a time when the addict is in his senses and is expected to be calm. During the intervention, the family members should deal and talk to the addict in a very loving manner. At the same time, they should very straightforwardly tell the addict how his alcohol abuse is spoiling his life, health and relationships. The purpose of the intervention should be to make him realize that people close to him are concerned about him. At no point should the addict be made to feel that he is being blamed.

Each member of the group should prepare an ultimatum for the addict. In circumstances where love, support and concern do not convince an addict to take treatment, ultimatums work. He should be told that he will no longer be financed by others. His habits resulting from the addiction will not be tolerated. In extreme cases, giving ultimatums like nobody will speak to him or see him in future if he does not take treatment have to be given too. The main goal of all these ultimatums is to make the addict realize that his addiction is affecting everyone's life around him, so he should get rid of it.

Usually, during the intervention, the addict displays a number of emotions like fear of leaving drugs, anger that his close ones are discussing him behind his back and denial that he has a problem. However, all these objections can be handled very well by a trained interventionist. There can be two outcomes of an intervention i.e. either the addict agrees to check into a drug rehab or he does not. If the former happens, help the addict pack his stuff and immediately accompany him to the treatment center. However, if the addict refuses treatment, you will have to actually implement the ultimatums. Once the addict realizes that he is going to lose his close people to addiction, he will be convinced to take treatment.