Interventions and Drug Dependency

Interventions are vital to the addiction recovery process first and foremost because drug dependency is a disease. Addicts, it's important to note, don't decide to use drugs; chronic drug abuse isn't a choice, and getting sober isn't and can't ever be an act of will. On the contrary, sobriety can only be the result of intensive drug treatment…which can itself only be a function of an addict's willingness to enter a drug treatment center. To the extent that a drug and alcohol intervention makes that decision possible, it is in an important sense the very lynchpin of lasting drug recovery.

The nature of addiction is such that an addict very rarely understands the extent of his problem until it's already too late. Addicts, in fact, effectively lose the ability to relate to anything besides themselves and their drug habits, with the obvious corollary that addicts are exceptionally ill-suited to conducting any kind of rational or objective self-analysis. Interventions are important, simply put, because they're the only mechanism by which addicts can hope to see the truth for what it really is.

The rehab-oriented thrust of interventions is also vital to the healing process: No addict can get better outside of a drug treatment center, and an intervention succeeds by encouraging a drug abuser to check himself into a rehabilitation facility. It's not enough, in the end, if an individual merely comes to understand that he's an addict in the course of an intervention; he's got to be made to see that he's an addict who needs help, and that his only hope of getting sober lies in competent drug intervention programs.

Remember, no addict ever chooses addiction, and no addict ever wills his way to sobriety. Interventions work when and only when they manage to convey the fundamental and inevitable importance of drug treatment. If you've decided to conduct an intervention for someone you love, you've got to be ready to tell the truth.

How to Make an Intervention Work

Remember, an addiction intervention only ever has one goal: to encourage an addict to enroll himself in a rehabilitation program. With that in mind, the most successful interventions are those which are conducted in a spirit of love and support; addicts need all the empathy they can get, and a successful intervention is necessarily one suffused with compassion and concern. To make drug recovery real, you've got to show an addict that you care about him, and that you want him to get better. Short of that, your intervention efforts won't be anything but wasted.

Pioneered by intervention specialist Ed Storti, the Storti model emphasizes the paramount importance of love and support in the intervention process. The premise is a simple one: Addicts need inspiration from an intervention, nothing more and nothing less. An intervention succeeds when it instills dignity, trust, and motivation in the intervennee; that addict who benefits most from a drug or alcohol intervention is the one who receives compassion and warmth from every individual involved in it.

It should perhaps go without saying, then, that the purpose of an intervention is very definitely not to shame an addict, or hold him accountable for the damage wrought by his drug habit. Yes, if you're conducting an intervention you're bound to be able to cite a whole litany of transgressions committed by the addict you care about…but transgressions aren't the point, not when your only goal is to convince an addict that he needs to get help. If an intervention's going to work, in other words, you've got to be able to put your empathy ahead of your ire.

And, again, it's not easy. An intervention will test the resolve of everyone involved, and only those intervention processes undertaken by stalwart and steel-willed individuals can be expected to effect lasting recovery. The Storti model calls for fomenting a "positive crisis" in the course of an intervention: an edifying but emotionally-charged event that precipitates real growth for the individuals involved. If you can do that much, you're well on your way to where you want to go.

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