spiderqueen

Hey good folks - I am still so new here, so no doubt this one has been done to death and I just missed it. But I would love your wisdom, thoughts, musings, experiences on the subject of professionally-led interventions.

stbxABF is still in the midst of the worst binge ever, that I know of. His drinking is progressing, and his attempts at recovery have failed him miserably, again.

He has never been to any formal rehab or treatment center, refusing it like it's the equivalent of being committed to the Loony Bin. Basically, he's terrified. He does have anxiety and depression issues (who doesn't?) and also a neurological component at play - so he may be a complicated case (but who isn't?).

His psychiatrist thinks it's worth a shot and his family is mustering up the courage.

What say you all?

LexieCat

Might be worth a try, if you have a professional interventionist. Doing it the wrong way can do more harm than good. About all it accomplishes is forcing them into treatment. I know a couple of people for whom it worked, more for whom it did not work.

Tuffgirl

You may want to post this on the alcoholism forum and see if others there have some ES&H to share with you.

I don't have any experience with it related to alcoholism, only to mental illness, and it was a disaster. But I've read stories where it was successful.

DesertEyes

No worries. Answering the same questions for different peeps is exactly what SR was made for.

An intervention is _very_ hard to do. You have to find _all_ the people in the addicts life that could possibly, in any form, be fooled into enabling the addict. Then you have to teach them all about enabling and addiction, and make sure _they_ don't have some kind of addict in their life. This includes bosses, co-workers, friends at the gym, the bartender, etc. etc.

The objective is to corner the addict into having absolutely _no one_ who's couch the addict can sleep on for a few days, who might provide some kind of justification or excuse, give any kind of alibi. Then you give the addict only _one_ route of escape ( which is rehab) , and set it up in such a manner that the addict can plan to go back to drinking _after_ rehab.

The only way an addict will go to rehab is if they think it is the only way it will get the heat off their back and allow them to continue their life afterwards.

Getting all those people to agree, and not change their mind later, is a massive undertaking. Any one person waffles and the addict will sneak out that loophole. Which is why it takes a professional, with a solid rehab program bringing up the rear. The general suggestion is to _first_ make a plan for what you will do should the intervention fail, and only after the contingency plan is set up and tested do you even _start_ on the intervention plan.

Mike
Moderator, SR

Woodman123

Definitely not something to be undertaken on your own. I went down this path as my RAW who was similarly unwilling to do any counseling/rehab on her own. I benefitted greatly from getting a professional interventionist involved- he had great vision on how everything would play out, and was the point person to interview each family member and receive letters that each family member writes about how the alcoholic impacted their lives. He would then interview each family member prior to a group meeting right before the intervention. He was going to run the show, so to speak and i took great comfort in that. As a recovering alcoholic himself, he knew everyt trick in the book- again giving me alot of comfort that I was approaching this the right way. To make sure there was 'incentive' to go, he even had me get a letter on legal letterhead stating my willingness to pursue child custody if she did not go to detox/rehab. We were within days of staging the event (which, in and of itself is a logistics challenge to get everyone there and make sure the soon-to-be patient doesn't disappear if they are suspicious), but my wife had a bad acute intoxication episode and actually stated her willingness to go somewhere, so we didn't actually go through with it. I am happy she went on her own, but was really glad i had the intervention and it's leader to fall back on and have no doubt that with all the planning and execution it would have been successful in getting her there, had she not come to her senses just prior. And the letters that family members prepared were taken to the rehab facility, and she had to read them aloud during group sessions- that sure makes it hard to hide the family/loved one issues from the counselors and support group!