Birmingham Interventionist

Birmingham Drug and Alcohol Interventions

Choosing a drug or alcohol intervention to help you get a loved one into treatment can be a powerful last resort when other attempts at offering helpful support have failed. However, when an intervention takes place without proper planning and the help of a professional, the situation is likely to remain unchanged or even worse than it originally was. A Birmingham drug and alcohol intervention specialist can help you:

• Understand the intervention process.
• Define clear goals for the intervention.
• Understand your role in the intervention and recovery process.
• Receive the follow-up support necessary for long-term healing.

The Intervention Process

An intervention is a planned meeting between family and friends of an addict as well as the addict him or herself. The entire process can take just a few hours, or it could take days or even weeks of preparation to ensure success. The intervention process general looks like this:

• Research is conducted to define the severity of the individual’s addiction and to clearly understand the goal of the intervention itself.
• The interventionist will work with friends, family members and loved ones of the addict to define intervention goals, treatment location, who will pay for treatment, and what consequences will take place IF the individual does not go into treatment.
• The interventionist will also help the family and friends to understand how they have contributed to the continued substance abuse of the addict and what steps they MUST take to ensure the success of the intervention.
• Following the intervention, the Birmingham interventionist will provide transportation to the treatment center for the addict IF he or she chose to accept help. If the individual did not choose help, the interventionist will provide the family and friends with important information about how they can seek support for those who are struggling as the loved ones of an addict. Many programs exist to help the family and friends of addicts including Al-Anon and Nar-Anon.

What Is An Intervention Specialist?

If you have a loved one who is struggling with the disease of addiction, it can be difficult to know how to handle the situation. This is especially true when the addict is your child, family member or spouse. It’s normal to want to love them as much as possible, but at the same time, this can be enabling their addiction. In opposite situations, some loved ones of the addict shut the person out completely, which can also cause negative effects.

The best way to help an addict decide to go to a drug and alcohol rehab center is to have an intervention. Interventions can be handled in two different ways, but they must be handled very carefully because addicts become very defensive when people confront them about their addiction. Their mind tells them that they don’t have a problem, which causes them to feel attacked when they’re confronted about their drinking or drug use.

Informal Interventions

The first thing you should always try when you want your loved one to enter treatment is having an informal intervention. This is something as simple as bringing up the idea to the addict that treatment may be a good idea. Sometimes an addict is so stuck in their cycle of addiction that they don’t think there is another way to live. It may be enough to change their perspective on their current situation when a loved one tells them that they might have a problem.

Something you can try is motivational interviewing, which is a common method psychologist use with addicts. You don’t need to get a degree to know how it works, but the idea behind it is letting the addicts come to their own conclusions. This allows the addict to not feel attacked and think about how beneficial getting sober could be. You do this by asking the addict how their life would change if they stopped using drugs and what they would get back if they got sober.

Formal Interventions

This is a type of intervention in which the addict has relapsed regularly and they’ve become a danger to themselves or others. A formal intervention is when the loved ones of an addict sit the person down to let them know that they can no longer support the addict in any way unless they seek help. The reality of the situation is that most addicts wouldn’t be able to continue drinking and using if it weren’t for the support of the people in their lives. This can include a place to live, money and transportation.

Before you do this, speak with an intervention specialist to achieve the best results. These specialists understand what’s going on in an addict’s head, and they can teach you the best ways to have an intervention as well as what to expect. In most cases, the intervention specialist will attend the intervention to act as a mediator, which can be very beneficial to ensure that the intervention stays on course while emotions are running high.

Just remember, even if your loved one doesn’t decide to go to rehab immediately, there’s a good chance they’ll change their mind after the intervention.

The Goals of Intervention

Ask anyone who has lived with an addict what their goal is and they will likely say the same thing, “to get my loved one the help he or she needs to get sober so that their addiction can no longer ruin my life.” This is because addiction is a disease of the family, impacting every facet of the lives not only of the addict but of the loved ones and friends of the addict too.
A Birmingham interventionist will help you to clearly define the goals of the intervention which generally consist of:

• Ensuring the addict seeks treatment.
• Ensuring that treatment is available when the addict says “YES.”
• Ensuring a healing process for all of the friends and family members impacted by the addiction.

The success of an intervention is generally gauged by determining whether the above goals and any other goals that are defined in the intervention planning process, have been met. Did the individual accept that his or her addiction is impacting everyone around him or her? Did the individual choose treatment? Did the interventionist provide the family members and friends with access to support for their own healing?

Interventions in Birmingham, as well as throughout the country, have a high success rate when they take place with a professional offering the addict and the family with an outlet to recovery and healing.