Talking to Your Loved one About Entering Treatment

It was once believed that an individual struggling with an addiction had to "hit bottom" before being motivated to seek help. This is not always true. An intervention is an action taken by family, friends, employer, and/or concerned others. Intervention is the most effective strategy families can use to help the individual suffering from addiction.

If you know someone who is suffering from addiction, please contact one of the interventionist we have listed for you. A family intervention begins with one person.

One out of three people is living with or related to someone with an alcohol or other drug problem, and intervention can get these people into treatment. Alcoholics and addicts are also our family members and friends. Although we see their problem, they cannot. When we offer help, they refuse. When we talk to them, they blame us or someone else. It begins to feel hopeless, but it is not.

Intervention teaches families and friends a language the alcoholic can understand. It organizes love and honesty in a way that breaks through denial. It creates a moment of clarity for the alcoholic.

Text written by Jeff and Deborah Jay

FAQs More FAQs

How do I know if the person I love has an alcohol or other drug problem?

Ask yourself, "Is my relative or friend experiencing repeated negative consequences due to alcohol or other drug use and still continues to use anyway?" If you answer yes, it is likely the person you are concerned about has a problem. Click here to take a quiz to further assess your situation.

Isn't it true that you can't help someone until they want help?

This is not true. Alcoholics and addicts don't spontaneously decide to get help for their addiction. Something happens in their life that causes them to want help.

Ask yourself this question: "If an alcoholic won't get help until she wants help, what will get her to want help?" It can be years of personal tragedy or the loving intervention of family and friends.

Don't addicts have to "hit bottom" before they can recover?

An addict's bottom can be divorce, arrest, health problems, financial ruin, child neglect, loss of friends, domestic abuse, jail, insanity, death. Typically, an addict can suffer several or all of these consequences. When the addict hits bottom, the family does too.

We can "raise the bottom." Families do not have to endure years or decades of personal heartbreak and suffering over a loved one's addiction. Family intervention is a loving and honest way to raise the bottom.

I've been told that treatment doesn't work when someone is forced to accept help.

It is not how someone gets into treatment, but what happens once they are in treatment. Hazelden conducted a 25 year study which shows that the success rate in treatment is the same for people ordered into treatment by the courts and those who entered treatment on their own.

William Bennett, former Drug Czar under President Bush, writes in the Washington Post: "One clear fact about drug treatment is that success in treatment is a function of time in treatment. And time in treatment is often a function of coercion -- being forced into treatment by a loved one, an employer or, as is often the case, the legal system. People who are forced to enter treatment under legal sanctions are more likely to complete treatment programs and thus more likely to get well." Click here to read more.

In intervention, however, we do not force someone into treatment. We ask them to go. They make the final decision for themselves. We do, however, make decisions to no longer do things that make it easy for the alcoholic to stay sick, and this often convinces reluctant alcoholics to get help.

Faq's written by Jeff and Deborah Jay

Intervention Services

• Love First: Intervention for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction
• Intervention with Care - With Intervention there is hope