Interventions

The Moment of Change and Choice

Ask anyone who has been living a recovery lifestyle for a long time why they got clean or sober.

Their answers may vary, but not much.

“I just knew something had to change. 
I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Then ask them how long they knew that something had to change: 

“I never thought this would happen to me….I mean, I never saw myself as an alcoholic or an addict.  All my family and friends seemed to be doing what I did, so it shocked me when I woke up one day and realized that I was the only one getting into trouble all these years!”

Or: “I saw myself as a social drinker.  I didn’t know what an alcoholic was, really, but I sure didn’t think I was one!  But during the last few years of my drinking, I started losing things — my money, my keys, entire weekends of not remembering what I did.  Even losing my license for a while after a DUI didn’t stop me.  It wasn’t until I almost lost my job and my kids and my marriage because of drinking that I had to face the facts: I wasn’t a social drinker.  I was a drunk.”
Or: “It started when I had surgery after I had an injury.  I took the pain medication, but the pain didn’t go away.  I took more.  And more.  I was so fogged but still in pain, plus I’d built up such a high tolerance to the pills, that I was going from doctor to doctor, just to get more pills.  What started out as my being treated for pain turned into one hideous lie after another…”
Or: “I got sick of hearing people picking on me, yelling at me.  They must have read some pamphlet somewhere and would tell me that I had to give up all my friends, people I’ve known all my life, even being with some of my family, if I wanted to get my life together.  At the time, it felt so extreme, like they just didn’t understand that I didn’t want to be this way.  But I just wasn’t ready to hear what they were trying to tell me!”

Ready to change.  Hitting bottom.  Surrender.

Intervention is not about bargaining.  It’s not about empty threats.  It’s not about begging someone to quit.

Intervention is about telling the truth — first,  to yourself.  Then to someone important in your life who is addicted — and telling that person in just the right place and the right time, with the right people, and using the right words,  so that he or she is invited to see and feel and hear the truth — and sit with it. 

And then choose…

It’s a moment of exquisite clarity and peace.  Something changes. 

And from that moment on, nothing can ever be the way that it was.  For them.  And for you.

But getting to that empowering moment of truth — getting to the door of recovery — is rarely a decision made without first exhausting every resource and person in the alcoholic and addict’s life — by lying, manipulating, hiding, avoiding, screaming, crying, leaving, returning, begging, borrowing and stealing. 

If you’re done with all of that, the time to design an intervention is now.
Not tomorrow.
Now.
To discuss how and when to do an intervention, contact kristin@alliedcounselinggroup.
All inquiries are confidential.