Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
*Sunshine* I’m glad the post was of help to you. I sort of expected to see lots of addiction/treatment/recovery stuff posted here for informational purposes to family. Ive been doing a lot of reading the last many weeks since my boyfriend decided to enter treatment, and Ive found a lot of interesting articles. Maybe I will continue to share some here in case they could benefit anyone else.
I've been impressed by the intervention stories that I've read about. The key appears to be using professional interventionist who can work with the family in advance on defining family dynamics, determining key points of connectivity to the addict, educating and training family on their own behaviors, and teaching them techniques to support the addict in their choice to choose treatment. Addicts are directed into treatment as a lesser of two evils all the time. The legal system, employers, and even family who define their own methods like creating boundaries that say things like I wont have an active addict in my house, but I will have one that is going to meetings, or working some program.
But from what I read, the interventionist helps develop a "package plan", where the addict can get fully evaluated and the type of treatment can be mapped out based on their needs, then family is directed to sources of support, and during this whole process, aftercare and the role of family support is also identified. Several people have confirmed this by what they have shared. Thank you.
Addicts are all at varying stages from what I can tell. Like my boyfriend seems to be at an early stage, but it's obvious his drug use has affected him. Without it he has suffered depression and anxiety. And now that he is in treatment, he is seeing how the drugs were allowing him to ignore his values, and he didn't even see it, or the drugs made him feel it was ok. I can only imagine what prolonged use does, or combinations of many drugs. How irrational, depressed, hopeless some people become. I'm don’t think they are all capable of making the decision to turn to treatment, and then following through without help and support. This is why I can appreciate the idea of intervening by family. For some this would be rock bottom, mixed with a jolt of hope, love, encouragement from the people who mean the most in their lives. For others maybe it would do nothing. But what would be lost in that case.
I guess I have thought more about the role of family, and what influence they have since interactions with my boyfriend’s family. He has always had a good relationship with his parents (mom and stepdad) but the drugs caused some problems. He has been distant from them. But he has known they are a source of support for him, he knows they love him, and want him to be healthy. After he had been in counseling for a few weeks, he wanted to tell them. They responded positively, and he was happy. But the power of that interaction also caused him a lot of emotions and at that point he wasn’t able to deal with those emotions without a one time slip back to cocaine. But it is the power of the interaction, the almost silent influence they have on him which I find most interesting. If he were to go end up in a bad place, worse place, then I could see how the use of a professional intervention with their involvement could persuade him to accept available treatment. That would be the ultimate goal, regardless of the benefit to me or his parents.