Drug Addiction Intervention - When You've Had Enough


by Julie Wellsworth - Date: 2007-05-22 - Word Count: 523 Share This!

Drug addiction is not a problem only for drug addicts; it reaches into the lives of everyone who cares about, or has to deal with the addicts, and can throw their lives into turmoil. If you are one of those people for whom someone else's addiction is becoming a life-altering--and not for the better--experience, it may be time for you to consider a drug addiction intervention.

Drug addiction interventions confront addicts not to heap them with verbal abuse, but to give them a clear look at how badly their lives have careened out of control. Drug addiction interventions are appropriate no matter the type of addiction involved; they will be equally effective with abusers of alcohol, speed, heroin, crack, or even prescription meds. All they are intended to do is give the addicts the impetus they need to get help.

Drug addiction intervention avoids use of criticism and judgmental language; it simply and clearly explains to the addicts how their getting help will bring positive results not just to the addicts but to all those who care about or have to work with them.

Preparing For A Successful Intervention

If you are considering a drug addiction intervention, there are steps you must take to ensure the success of your effort. They may be very difficult steps, because they will require you, and any one else who cares about the addict, to examine how your behaviors have been enabling the addict to continue with his or her addiction.

Once you have identifies your own enabling behaviors, you must summon the courage to stop them; no matter how painful that thought may be, it is the only way you can impress on the addict the seriousness of the situation. Let the addict know that you are not abandoning them, but be firm about your refusal to rescue them from any future trouble their addictions cause.

This will require you not to offer them financial support; nor bail them out of jail; nor go out and share a drink with them when they are feeling lonely. If you and all those who have been assisting them in the past are ready to make that commitment, wait for a time when the addict is neither drunk nor high and can focus on the conversation. Then start talking.

Prepare a list of instances in which their addiction has harmed either them or someone about whom they care. Let them know that, because they are important to you, you are worried about what their addiction is doing to them.

If Others Are Involved

If more than one person is involved in the drug addiction intervention, it's important that the addict not feel as if they are being ganged up on. One individual, preferably the one in whom the addict has the greatest level of trust, should to the talking, with the others limiting themselves to nods of affirmation.

The only way a drug addiction intervention will succeed is if the addict both realizes the determination of those intervening, and feels reassured that they aren't being abandoned, but only asked to take responsibility for their both for their addictive behavior and for seeking the help they need to overcome it.


Related Tags: drug addiction treatment, drug addiction symptoms, drug addiction centers

You can also find more information at Drug Addiction Symptoms and Drug Addiction Treatment. Drugtreatmentinfo.org is a comprehensive resource to known more about drug addiction.

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: