Drug Intervention Program

Families dealing with a loved one hooked on drugs often do not know where to start in order to get help. Pleading and raging and loving kindness have not worked. The drug addict is tuned out to anything but his next fix. It may, therefore, be time to call in professional help in the form of a drug intervention program. This is not the “kidnap and detox” process so beloved of Hollywood melodramas, but a calm, objective confrontation which results in further, coordinated treatment for drug abuse.

A drug intervention program is more than just deciding to confront someone with the fact of their drug abuse. They already know that. They don’t want to hear it. Perhaps the family has enabled the abuse somehow, by making excuses for it, or avoiding the abuser, or picking up after him in the way of paying his rent or sheltering her after she lost her job. Thus rewarded for bad behavior, the abuser is not likely to listen to a sudden turnaround on the part of the family, or will dismiss it as sour grapes. Intervention by a third party trained in drug treatment and drug intervention is far more likely to produce positive results.

Intervention for drug abuse is part of a larger overall program aimed at identification and treatment of an individual’s particular form of substance abuse. It begins with forcing the abuser to acknowledge his or her self-destructive behavior and to admit the extent of the problem. Drug intervention is not effective if all it does is put the individual on the defensive, reinforcing his “me against them” view of the world. A drug intervention program seeks to remove the individual’s barriers against seeking help, to get him away from “friends” who enable his habit and help him think of his behavior as normal or even better than theirs, and to make him understand the consequences of his continued drug abuse.

A drug intervention does not have to be threatening or scary; in fact, it should be conducted as calmly, coolly, and objectively as possible. The person conducting the intervention should not seek to trap or humiliate the addict, but simply point out, in irrefutable ways, the facts of the abuse and the damage being done to the addict and others around him. Once the abuser acknowledges these facts, the groundwork has been laid for the rest of the program: drug detoxification, treatment for physical and emotional damage, and behavior modification.

24 Hour Addiction Treatment & Intervention Assistance

A comprehensive drug intervention program begins with the confrontation and ends with the addict walking away from drugs forever. Getting clean and staying clean should be its goal, but it begins with that phone call to a drug treatment center to find a professional interventionist who can do what, often, a family member or friend cannot—get the addict to listen. If you feel that you are beyond talking to your drug-addicted friend or loved one, it may be time to embrace the concept of a drug intervention program for getting the eight-hundred-pound gorilla out of your house.

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