Common Intervention Steps

Addiction is a disease that often destroys the lives of all involved creating serious problems for the addict and for those who love and care about the individual. Despite good will, and thoughtful intentions of others to help, many addicts are unable to fathom life without their addiction and do not seek recovery or refuse to seek help. When family or friends come together to attempt to get a loved one into treatment, intervention becomes the means by which recovery may actually be possible.

Each intervention is different, but most include similar steps in bringing family and friends together with an interventionist in order to offer help to someone they love. Interventions provide the means for recovery, often pushing the addict to make the right choice despite apprehensions or fears. With the right steps, getting a loved one to accept treatment and get help becomes both a possibility and a likely outcome.

Intervention Steps

Many people recommend hiring an interventionist to help your intervention go smoothly.

The first step of an intervention is to get educated about the addiction that your loved one suffers from. Learning everything you can about the addiction, how it affects the thought processes and how the user feels is important to being able to help the individual accept treatment.

The next step will be to decide who will be involved in the intervention. Most of the time an intervention will include close family and friends; coworkers and employers may also be included but only if they will be necessary for the overall processes of getting the individual to accept treatment.

Remember that the purpose of the intervention is not to point fingers or place blame but to get the individual to realize that their addiction is a real problem and that they need help. It’s important not to include anyone that is a drug user as this can throw the intervention off leaving the addict claiming that those trying to intervene are hypocrites—there’s no room for excuses here.

Each individual involved in the intervention process should be ready to provide the addict with a list of consequences that will occur if he or she doesn’t accept help. The consequences will play a key role in the process of encouraging the individual to accept help and therefore it will be vital that all of the people involved are ready to instill consequences for the actions of the user and to uphold their end.

Those involved will practice the intervention together before they actually meet with the individual and propose their plan for necessary treatment. It sometimes helps to write out a script or to develop a plan of action that will ensure that all are on the same page in terms of how to proceed if the individual accepts treatment or if he or she refuses. It’s also important to have a clear plan of action in place as to how treatment will occur, where the user will go, who will be paying for the treatment and to ensure that treatment is readily available.

According to Mayo Clinic, interventions are an excellent means of getting someone you love to finally accept treatment and get the help that they need to overcome addiction. Considering the fact that without treatment your loved one could die, don’t you think it’s time to seek help?