The Role of Family In A Substance Abuse Intervention

When a member of a family has a drug addiction it tears at the heart and soul of each of member of the family. Each will have there own unique reaction and way of coping with the problem. But the net result is always the same: withdrawal from each other or co dependant disorders that hide or enable the negative actions.  A substance abuse intervention may be the shock that can save the family, forcing the individual members to all get the same information and get on the same page as everyone else. Very often misdirection and lies hide or enable the addict to continue his or her destructive behavior.  

With a substance abuse intervention the addict is faced with a unified family forcing him or her to face the reality of what is going on: no more lies to cloak the addiction, and it will expose co dependant relationships.  This is just the first step in starting treatment, and is a tool to help the addict or alcoholic decide to stop and fight for their life and for their family.  It is not easy to do, and can go badly if the individual is not sober when they are faced with a intervention as they will need all their faculties to come to the decision to stop and seek services or treatment. 

When I went through my addiction I had over three small interventions from different members of my family over time to finally help me understand the cost my addiction was making them all pay. Because my family understood that a huge gathering of people would make me defensive and argumentative they instead used smaller groups of family and friends to slowly drive home that I was an addict and needed help. 

When thinking about doing a substance abuse intervention take into account the personality of the addict and make sure that the love the family has for the addict is the driving force in the intervention. If that is not the keystone used in this bridge to the addict, it will not work and can often make matters worse. So any member of the intervention 'team' that can not act out of true love and caring for the addict should not be involved at all.