Addictions

Numerous family members are scared that if they do not give the addicts what they want she or he may leave and they will not see him again. Now where is the line? Am I enabling him or her? Am I not being a good mother? The persons that enables are persons that do not know what is going on in the abuser’s head or they do not care.

An addict will take any opened doors to use drugs. They will try to stay at ease while they are using drugs and alcohol. The addiction is putting a lot of pressure on the abuser. Family members have to put more pressure than the drug is putting on the individual. You possibly have heard statements such as: “He is not ready”, He has to hit rock bottom”, “and ” I cannot take the decision for him”.

Let’s look at this in an additional point of view, if your children are putting a firearm to their head. Would you try to convince him or her to not kill themselves? Would you say that you cannot take the decision for them or they are adults and there is nothing you can do? This an extreme example but what is the difference? The distinction is one will take longer to kill himself but however the user will most likely hurt a lot of persons on their journey to hell. How many mothers, fathers, children, wives and husbands have been hurt by an addict or an alcoholic? Everybody has multiple examples of themselves being hurt or suffering from a person who had a problem with drugs and/or alcohol.

One of the reasons of long term addiction is that the person was enabled by an individual. I am not trying to take accountability off the shoulder of the abuser. He is using the drug. I am just trying to tell family members and relatives that they do something about it. They just need to phone a expert who can guide them in the right path.

There are two ways to get someone the recovery he will need.

First, family can do an intervention by themselves. In normally needs a leader that will get the intervention coordinated with the rest of the family and also to keep the control of the events. There are a lot of prerequisites that has to be in place before the intervention is actually done. Someone is also needed to lead the intervention when it is actually happening.

Secondly, the family can hire a professional interventionist that will perform the intervention from A to Z. Professional interventionist have success rates of 70 to 90 %.

An intervention with suitable planning and carried out precisely will result many times in an abuser agreeing to receive help. But you must agree to the reality that ultimately the abuser may for whatever explanation say “NO”. This scenario needs to be thought out in advance so that the family consistently moves to the memorable -plan B.

The author is an expert in intervention to drugs and alcohol, with a team of counselors who coach families on how to get their loved ones to get the proper help. You may find also useful information on his blog, Why drug intervention is so important.