Addiction Intervention Strategies (What Works and What Doesn't)

You guys, just this week, someone in our office told me a story about some friends that tried to intervene on another friend who had a problem with alcohol. But they did it sort of spur the moment, and worst of all, they did it while they were all drinking together. I think I don't need to say this is a bad plan, but just in case there's anyone out there wondering, I'll go ahead and say that is a bad plan. But when you intervene with an addicted loved one, friend, family member, you need to know some certain things. Let's first talk about what not to do, what absolutely will blow up in your face. So for sure, avoid these things. And then I'm going to tell you what actually works better. In fact, I'm going to tell you about three separate, different kinds of intervention strategies that actually do work and when you might want to use each one of those. They all have their pros and cons and are better for different types of situations. Okay, so let's talk about what doesn't work. Obviously, you never want to try to confront someone who has an addiction problem in like, an emotionally heated moment. It's not something that you want to do spur of the moment. You don't want to just get upset and just decide that now you're going to confront the person. I know you've probably been thinking about it for a long time and maybe it's been building up, but you need to have a plan more on that coming. You definitely don't want to do that while you've been using substances. Maybe you and your friend are using together and they just take it a little too far, especially when it comes to drinking. That can definitely happen. You can get frustrated and you might want to call them out on it, but it's just a bad plan because you're all intoxicated, because they're really intoxicated, and because they're just going to call you out right back. Obviously, most importantly, you've got to have a plan. Specifically, you got to have a plan on how you're going to address the situation with the person. And you need to have a plan for some treatment options should they decide that they do want to get help. So one of the worst things that can happen is you could confront someone and they could say, yeah, you know what, you're right, I need get some help. And then you're standing there like, okay, like, let's do that. And you got no plan. Because when a person does finally agree and say, yes, I want to get some help, you need to have some, like, options ready to go. Like, you need to have checked it out. You may need to have checked on insurance, see if the place has beds, make sure it's the right fit. Because all of that takes quite a long time to put together. And it's really difficult to get together in a scramble, like all, you know, in five minutes. And if you don't have that together, what's likely to happen is as you're scrambling, trying to put all that together, the person is going to change their mind. And that happens for lots of reasons. One, they start thinking about it and they get scared. Two, they go into withdrawal, you know, three, they start thinking, okay, I can do this on my own. You know, there's a lot of reasons why someone decides to back out. It's not necessarily because they didn't mean it, but a lot of factors come into play. And that little window, that moment of clarity, as I call it, that window does not stay open long. So you've got to be ready to take action when a person finally does say, yeah, you know what? You're right, I do need to do something differently. Okay, so before we get into the three intervention strategies that actually do work and can be effective, I'd love to hear from you guys. If you're in recovery, I definitely want to hear from you guys. What did your loved ones try with you? What worked? What didn't? What ticked you off? If you are the family member of someone who has an addiction, what have you already tried? Has any of it worked? Has any of it backfired on you? Let's learn from each other so we don't all have to make the same mistakes. So tell me about your experience. Okay. Now, the first kind of intervention and the most commonly known kind is an old school intervention. I call it old school intervention, but it's actually called the Johnson model. And it's like the one you see on the television show Intervention. Like the. A television show. Most of you have seen it. It's pretty dramatic. I've seen it myself. It's a, It's a good show. It's. It's dramatic to watch, but they don't show you all the parts. So the key to having this kind of intervention, you know, this is the kind where you get all the family together and they read the letters to the person and they sort of confront them on their addiction, and then they sort of set these limits. If you don't get help, you know, here's the behavior. Not going to tolerate that sort of thing. You have got to have a trained professional to do this. I've seen a lot of families try to do this, sort of winging it on their own because they've seen a few of the A and E episodes. And I'm telling you, this is a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Because you're about. You're like cornering up somebody who is in a bad state. And sometimes I say it's almost like. And I don't mean this in, like, in a bad way. I just mean this. This is the way I almost picture my mind. It's like if you. If you're walking up on a wounded animal, and even if you're trying to help it, you're walking up on a wounded animal who's desperate, and if you just come upon it quick like that, it's gonna bite you, okay? So you can't just do it that way. If you're gonna do this, you have to hire a trained professional. The other thing about a Johnson Model intervention is that everybody in the family has to be on the same page. You pretty much have to have all the major players. Best friend, the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the husband, the wife, the parents, the kids, Everybody who's old enough that the person could run to. Everybody has to be involved and on the same page in this. Because if there's one outstanding person who's not involved, if everybody else pushes against and they sort of corner this person up who has an addiction, they're going to run to that person who's not there or not involved or not all the way on the same page. So everybody has to be in agreement. And that is not easy to do to get everybody to be in agreement, to get everybody ready to sort, set, and hold boundaries. Now, let me tell you, when a Johnson Model intervention is probably the most appropriate, best thing to do. If you are in. If you're dealing with someone who's in, like, an imminent danger to themselves, like, they are literally going to kill themselves with their drug use and their erratic behavior any second now. And you hurt. I mean, it is life threatening. You probably. This is the time when you might want to use the Johnson Model. It's the most confrontational of the ways to go at helping someone. And there is a drawback because people can feel really resentful after it. They can feel really traumatized by the intervention because it's like all of a sudden you found out everyone you know and love and care about is talking about you behind your back, and they have this plan to confront you. And it takes a lot to get over that. Some people get over it better than others. I've dealt a lot of people coming out of treatment whose family did a Johnson model intervention. And there was a lot of residual problems, trauma, bad feelings, relationship issues because of it. Now, that being said, if someone is imminently endangered in themselves or someone else, then it doesn't matter. You just do what you have to do. Because we can deal with some hurt feelings after the fact as long as you're alive. So I'm definitely not saying Johnson model intervention is not the way to go. I'm just saying, like, you gotta think about the pros and cons of each one of these. I'm about to tell you now, a Johnson model style of intervention can cost you anywhere between about eighteen hundred dollars to about ten thousand dollars. And the cost of this, obviously is hiring a trained professional intervention interventionist, excuse me, what they don't show you on the television show intervention is that that interventionist comes a couple of days, maybe even three or four days before the actual intervention happens. And they spend a lot of time with the family, educating them about preparing them, helping them get the letters, getting a plan together of who's going to sit where if the addicted person gets mad, they run out the room, who's going to follow them, who's, you know, it's very sort of scripted and planned out and strategic. And so it takes a lot of time. And so because that it costs a pretty good amount of money, not only you're going to have to pay for this interventionist time for usually three, four, maybe five days, but also if they have to travel to you and that sort of thing. So it's not inexpensive, but you are dealing with someone's life. I'm definitely not saying it's not worth it, but I just want you to know all the pros and cons of all these different methods. Now there is another method, a newer type method of intervention that it's referred to as like, it's an intervention by invitation. So instead of everybody kind of getting together behind the person's back and like they pretty much walk in on, you know, this intervention by surprise. An intervention by invitation is where you basically, the family gets together and says, hey, we're concerned, we're gonna, we're gonna have a meeting about this and we would love for you to come to the meeting too. So it's the non surprise way to go about it. The most common way of doing this is called an arise intervention, A R I, S E. So you actually invite the person. This is A much less confrontational way. It's a united way. And there's a lot of work done with the family. And there's a big emphasis put on, hey, you know, we know we're all in this and we're all going to work on this together. Now usually these interventions, this is not just done necessarily in one day. These may be a series of like family meetings that happen over the course of some weeks. There's usually a lot of like family background work, like looking at your family tree and figuring out maybe where this addiction came from and other kinds of ways that family behaviors are playing into it. And overall, I do think this is a very therapeutic type process. Now, one of these interventions is probably going to cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 or so, depending on your situation. The good thing about these is the interventionist doesn't necessarily have to come or travel to where you are a lot of times these meetings, because sometimes family is spread out different places. These meetings can be done virtually. So there are definitely some pros to this. Like I said, I like. Cause it's not this surprise behind your back thing. It is more of a we're all on the same team kind of thing. And if you look at arise interventions, they Boast about an 80% success rate. And what they mean by that 80% is about 80% of the time if someone has an arise, if their family doesn't arise intervention, they will seek some kind of help. Now let me put this in there. Most families, when they hear that, they think, oh, that means the person went to 30, 60, 90 days of treatment. That's not what's included in this 80%. This 80% means maybe the person decides to go to support groups, maybe they decide to talk to a counselor, maybe they decide to seek medication assisted treatment or attend an intensive outpatient. And it's not that those aren't really great viable options. They are. I just want you to understand that that 80% does not mean that the person left. And they said, okay, I'm going to go ahead treatment for a year, which is probably what's in the family's mind when they hear that. So I do feel like this is probably the next best option. I would probably, if you have the time and the resources to do this, I would recommend an arise intervention over a Johnson model intervention. Unless of course, you are in an imminent danger situation. And in that case, I think you should go with the Johnson model because sometimes you don't have the time for these weeks on end of trying to Talk through it. And sometimes someone's life is just so chaotic. Like, if you've seen the show and intervention from A E, you'll see a lot of times you're dealing with someone who's living on the street, who's living so recklessly, like they're. They're so out of control, you couldn't even get them to show up for several weeks worth of meetings and sessions. They just. They literally. There's so much chaos in their life, you couldn't even get them to do that. So there are some times when a rise model is also not the best method. Make sure you're letting me know in the comments and the chat if you. If you have been through either one of these kinds of interventions on the addiction side or on the family side, for sure want to know your experience. It's going to help a lot of people to read firsthand what you thought about this. Now, the third way of intervening is the way that we most commonly teach. And by we, I mean myself and my staff at Hope for families, we teach a model that we kind of came up with. It's sort of a combination of a few other models out there. We call it the invisible intervention intervention. It's kind of like a reverse intervention. So what we do is we start with the family. We teach a couple of things. First and foremost is something called the craft method. That stands for community reinforcement and family training. And so that's all about helping to. Instead of trying to change this person that has addiction, you actually work to change the whole environment. And when the environment and the family system changes, it forces the person to change. So it's a lot of the things that I teach you guys on this channel about getting out of the bad guy role, moving out of the way so the person can see what they're doing for themselves. It's a lot of positive reinforcement for behaviors moving in the right direction. And in addition to. It's not just the craft method. It's also a lot of motivational interviewing and some strategic sessions with our family counselors to talk about, like, the specifics of your certain situation. You know, sometimes we deal with families and maybe they own a business, and this addicted person is actually on the payroll for the business, and we have to deal with some of those kind of things. Or maybe it's a situation where it's one of the spouses who have an addiction problem and they're responsible for the child care, and that puts some certain kinds of, you know, special circumstances in it. So it's It's a lot of things that come together. But the key to it here is most of this happens behind the scenes. The person never really knows that there's an intervention happening. The cons to this one is that it takes a bit longer, so this doesn't happen immediately, you know, all in one meeting where everybody sits and confronts the person. This is a behind the scenes and can take weeks and sometimes even a few months or so leading up. The good thing about this type is that it's very effective. It uses the most proven strategies out there when it comes to what actually works. Not just to get someone to agree to get help, but what I love about this is it's actually doing a lot of the treatment process up front so that when the person actually agrees to go and get some help, whatever that help is, they're actually through the stages of change. They're in the action stage when they decide to do that. So, like, you can force someone to go to treatment, which I'm not against. You guys know, I say, they say they'll go, they go. They don't have to want to go. I'm not against that. But when you do force someone into treatment, you're going to spend the first 30 or 60 days of that treatment just trying to get the person over their anger about being forced and just trying to get the person through those like early stages of denial and bargaining. The invisible intervention really works someone through those stages. And then when the person's ready, then you just open the door and they get the help for themselves. And once they walk through the doors of getting help, they're actually so much more ready. Like they're ready to actually work and make changes. We've had a lot of families go through our invisible intervention process and then when their loved one gets ready, sometimes I'll get the opportunity to talk to that loved one on the phone or something like that, a virtual session. And they're like, yeah, I know I got a problem. Ready to get some help. Like, they're not blaming the family anymore. They see exactly, exactly what the issue is and they're ready to rock and roll. So the benefits of doing it this way are, is just that the person is so much more ready. Once they actually reach out and get help, it does take a little longer, but it is way less expensive. So all of those things in mind, like I said, there are pros and cons. The invisible intervention really works best if the person lives with you because you just have more access to do all that positive reinforce. You just have a lot more access. It can work if the person doesn't live with you, but it's most effective if they do. So like I said, there are real pros and cons to each one of these. There's no right or wrong way to go about it. I just want you to know that there are ways to do it. Now if, if you are getting some benefit from this video, make sure you like it, because that helps me to spread the message to other people who might need it. Now you heard me mention earlier that one of the biggest mistakes that people or families make is that they do some sort of intervention type thing and they don't have treatment options ready. Before you do anything, no matter what kinds of these methods you use, make sure you understand what kind of options are out there. The last thing you want to do is be scrambling. And even worse than that, you don't want to pick the wrong option because it takes so much time and money and energy to get someone to the place that they're ready to get help. You just don't want to. To miss the window and you don't want to put them in the wrong kind of treatment. Like if all you have lined up is detox and then someone goes in for five days and then they're right back out and they're back living in your house. I'm telling you right now, that's a big old waste of time and money. You gotta, you gotta have an idea about what options are out there. What's the best option, you know, does your loved one has it of addiction, with other kind of mental health stuff going on, do they need sober living? And if you are trying to figure all that out, a good place to start is you can download my free treatment options guide. And it really just explains to you every single option out there. What kinds take insurance, what doesn't, what they cost, what's free, what works best, in what situation. Because it's a lot to take in and understand. In fact, one of the most difficult things that even I do is try to find the right treatment for someone. And I'm in the system. I'm telling you. It's complicated. So you need to wrap your head around what's out there, what's the best option and get some plans in place before you do anything else. I like to say it's like, it's like having them in your back pocket, ready to go when you get that moment. Because you will get your moment. Now I want to go through here and see what you guys have to say what you what's your experience with interventions, good, the bad, the ugly, and also answer your questions that you might have about it. So if you are here with us live, go ahead and pop them up in the chat because it does take a few seconds and I will try to get to them. Let's see here. Hey, Mr. And Hellraiser. Let's see what Kimmy Hellraiser says. Definitely be prepared with options. Kimmy says, my son wanted help on Monday evening, and I went to pick him up on Tuesday morning. We went to check him into detox. He tested positive for Covid, and now he's going through a draw here. Oh, no. I thought you were going to say, I went to pick him up on Tuesday morning and he, he's like, never mind. But now I had Covid and that puts another complication. Oh, goodness, what a mess for you, Kimmy. But at least it sounds like it's happening. Hopefully you're getting a little medical supervision for that. I know that can be super tough. And Elisa says my daughter was home after four days in detox when someone tested positive for covet in November. They did not have a, like a contingency plan, I think is what you mean. Terribly and completely. SOL your. So you guys are really talking about the way the COVID thing is impacting and oh my gosh, if it's not difficult enough on any regular day to get someone in to get help, like, quickly, this whole Covid thing is really, really put a kicker in it. The good thing about it is a lot more treatment services are available virtually that used to not be. And so for those of you who live in, like, smaller towns or sort of out in the country and you don't have access to a lot, you may actually have access to more virtually than you ever would have before. So mostly it makes it more difficult, but in some, in some ways, it does make it a little better with the virtual help. Let's see out here. Mr. Says, I called locations and found places that accepted high doses of methadone detox. Then I let them know what I found. That's perfect. I love what you're saying here, Mr, because you're doing the leg work and some of you may have heard me say this on other videos before, but a lot of even addiction professionals will tell you, like, you need to let them do the research. You need to let them do the calling. But I disagree. Just my professional opinion. I think if you do the legwork and you give the person a few options, you're going to do a lot better. Because calling these treatment centers, figuring out insurance benefits, answering 20,000 questions takes a long time and a lot of energy. And if you're dealing with someone in active addiction or in withdrawal, they're just not in the state of mind to do this for hours and hours and hours and hours over the next three or four days. Like so. Yes, if you talk to a treatment center, especially if it's inpatient, they're going to want to talk directly to that person. But if you can have done everything else before that and sort of weeded out the bad options, you're really going to expedite the process and greatly increase the chances that they're going to actually take some steps because otherwise they're just going to get frustrated with the process and give up. See, Tanya says ARISE is a minimum of six months with the individual and the family. I'm a certifies ARISE intervention and comprehensive care. It's a life giving process. It is a life giving process. And I think it's good to hear from you, Tanya. As a, as a certified Arise interventionist, I'm guessing when Tanya says six months, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's six months before the person gets some help. Because even if the person gets help, the ARISE interventionist continues to work with the family along the way. Support the process before they get help, after they get help. So some of you may be reading that and it may. That six month thing may be scaring you, but I want you to know that that doesn't necessarily mean six months before anything happens. Tell me if I'm wrong, Tanya. I think that that's correct though. Kirsten says I'm working with an addictions counselor in my province. I do have a lot of education around. Probably here. It looks like we're missing the rest of that. Oh, here's the rest of it. Let's see here. I work with addiction counsel in my province. I do a lot of education with clients and families. Your way of system and counseling is also a type of treatment too. That's right. Smooth says I. I would like to have found people to help pay their treatment. That would be cool. There are some low cost and or free treatment options out there and I talk about that in the treatment options guide. And there are pros and cons to that. There, there are some situations that fits better than others. So definitely take a look at that. And what you guys are saying is exactly on target. There are so many options out there. You need to understand them because you're going to be pouring in a lot of time, energy and money, so make sure you make a smart decision. If anybody's interested in learning more about the Invisible intervention, there is a link in the description as well as a link in the description for the the Treatment Options Guide, which is a perfect place to start just wrapping your head around what options are out there. Thank you everyone who joined us. And up, I've got my playlist for you all about how to motivate someone to take steps toward recovery. How do you have those conversations, what to say and what not to say to get the whole ball moving in the right direction?