When you have a loved one who struggles with addiction, it can be challenging to understand what you can do to help. From the outside, it may appear that the individual doesn’t realize there’s a problem or, in many cases, that they don’t actually want help. In reality, though, intervening to help a loved one overcome their addictive behaviors is the best thing you can do for their mental and physical well-being. At Addiction Recovery Institute of America, we strongly encourage conducting an intervention when a loved one struggles with drug or alcohol abuse.
What Does Conducting An Intervention Involve?
Before we outline the steps involved in conducting an intervention, it’s important to understand that an addiction intervention is not an opportunity to make accusations. It is not designed to place blame, shame someone, or force someone to attend therapy or realize the error of their ways.
Rather, an intervention is a carefully planned process conducted with a singular goal: to get someone to understand that they need professional help for their addiction. The process should always focus on the positive. It should highlight the fact that addiction causes undesirable changes in a person’s normal behavior.
What intervention should not focus on is the fact that undesirable behaviors are specifically someone’s fault. Instead, the individuals conducting the intervention should focus on the harmful nature of the substance or substances in question, not what they’ve caused an individual to do.
If you need to intervene to help a loved one but are unsure how to conduct an addiction intervention in FL, consider consulting with a professional at a substance abuse treatment program. An expert can guide you on the appropriate steps in the process, educate your intervention team, and govern the actual event. Below, you’ll find the basic steps involved in conducting an intervention.
Gather Your Intervention Team And Formulate A Plan
If you know you’ll need professional assistance with your intervention, contact the appropriate professionals before you begin gathering your intervention team. Professionals at a drug addiction treatment program can help you determine whom you want to include in the intervention and give you pointers for gathering the necessary information.
It’s important to have support for the intervention process before you begin putting together your entire team. Conducting the process alone can cause far more stress than necessary, which can lead to agitation during the actual event.
Once you determine which family members, friends, coworkers, and professionals will be involved in the process, it’s time to formulate a plan. Determine the day, time, location, and full guest list for the intervention. It’s also helpful to outline what everyone will say and how you’ll conduct the actual event.
Collect Information On The Recovery Process And Help Centers
To successfully conduct an intervention, you must understand the detox, recovery, and treatment process the individual will undergo. You’ll also need to know which detox and treatment centers are appropriate for the individual you’ll be conducting the intervention for. At Addiction Recovery Institute of America, we specialize in multiple programs designed to help those struggling with addiction, including:
- Detox programs
- Partial hospitalization program
- Residential treatment program
- Outpatient treatment program
- Intensive outpatient program
Create Individual Statements And Offer Support
One of the most important steps in conducting an intervention is helping the affected individual understand how substance abuse has deeply impacted their lives. This is why creating individual impact statements is so important.
To create statements, have each person involved in the intervention draft a brief personal statement that details how addictive behaviors have harmed the person in question. Statements should be honest but should also focus on love, not blame or accusations. Each individual will then read these statements out loud during the actual event. Or, depending on your plan, statements may also be given to the person in writing.
Communicating the harmful nature of addiction to the struggling individual helps that person understand that their addiction does not solely impact them. This is an important step in helping the person to understand that they truly need help to overcome their struggles.
Have A Backup Plan
In addition to statements, you’ll also need to decide how to handle the situation if the individual refuses to get help. While offering support throughout the recovery process is paramount, it’s also important to set boundaries. Setting boundaries helps the struggling person understand the consequences of refusing treatment. It also allows those conducting the intervention to set clear boundaries surrounding enabling behaviors that must cease if the struggling person fails to agree to get help.
Rehearse Conducting An Intervention
Conducting an intervention can be highly emotional, which is why rehearsing the process with the help of an alcohol addiction treatment center is so important. Before the day of the event, be sure to rehearse with your entire team. This process helps everyone involved get a better understanding of what they will say, how they will act, and how the process will play out.
The rehearsal is also a good time to identify any potentially blameful or harmful statements and make necessary adjustments. Again, an intervention is never an appropriate time for personal attacks, blame, anger, or negative emotions in general.
Follow Through And Follow Up
Conduct the intervention as planned. Be sure to follow through with any consequences or boundaries you and your team have planned. If the struggling individual fails to realize they need help, it can be easy to fall back into enabling behaviors or patterns of codependency. Though it can be painful to watch a loved one continue to struggle, it’s imperative that you and everyone involved follow through with the statements made during the intervention.
If your loved one accepts the need for professional help, be sure to follow up frequently. Offer support throughout the detox and recovery process. Be as encouraging as possible and communicate clearly. The rehabilitation process can be long and challenging, and it’s important to provide a strong anchor that your loved one understands they can rely on indefinitely.
Reach Out To Addiction Recovery Institute Of America
At the Addiction Recovery Institute of America, we deeply understand the individual nature of addiction. That’s why our team has carefully designed drug and alcohol treatment programs that specifically cater to each individual’s unique needs. If you have a loved one who struggles with addiction, please understand that help is available; you never have to go through the process alone. To learn more about how we can help, call us today at 844.973.2611 or reach out to us online.