A method for talking to someone you love about substance use without calling them an addict or patient. Gather people who care about them, share what you've noticed, then invite them to a family meeting that happens whether they show up or not.
Invitational intervention goes like this. You circle up the group of people that care about an identified loved one. We, I call it the ILO, that person that I'm not going to call them a patient. I'm not going to pathologize them. I'm not going to say that they're the addicted individual. I'm not going to put any label on other than, hey, there's somebody that we all care about and love. Mm-hmm. And then we circle up, we get to know, you get to know the story. So you compare notes with each other. So you're all on the same page. And you know more so that you can speak better and more effectively to a person who's not thinking clearly. If you're talking to me and I'm on methamphetamine, I'm going to be more difficult and challenging to speak with and communicate with in a rational way than the next person that's not impacted by methamphetamine. Right. And so you invite them to their own intervention. How you do this is, you know, you turn to the person and you say, hey, Scott, you know, I love you so much. I've been worried about you. And, you know, your friends and I, family have been worried about you. And so we talked with somebody who suggested we do an invitational intervention. And so we're inviting you to a family meeting. We're going to have it tomorrow at 10:00 AM. You're invited. We're going to have it with or without you. Mm-hmm. And we hope you'll come.
