Early Intervention
Early intervention is a technique with the goal of motivating a teenager or young adult who is abusing drugs or alcohol to want help for their addiction, rather then simply agreeing or submitting to it. The longer a parent waits, hoping that it’s ‘just a phase’ and their son or daughter will grow out of it, the further your teen slips into a place where perceptions and judgment grow steadily distorted. Compare this to a drowning child. If you leave him in the water for a while, thinking he is playing a joke on you, and then only jump into the lake to pull him out after he has been submerged for several minutes, you may have lost the chance to resuscitate him, and if you are lucky enough to breathe life back into his body, you may be faced with a child with an impaired brain, a child who will never be the child you used to know before he jumped into that lake.
The message here is: It’s no joke. Don’t wait to rescues a child drowning in a lake.
What is early intervention?
An intervention is an organized attempt, usually by family and friends, to help the child face the fact that they have a drug or alcohol problem. No one can ever be helped if they don’t believe there’s a problem. The purpose of an intervention is to snap the child out of denial by showing them the way their problem has affected the people that love him or her the most, and by forcing them to look at the way in which it has affect their own life since the substance abuse began. This can be a frightening experience for the person with the substance abuse problem and can even be potentially dangerous. Working with a Licensed Intervention Specialist can make all the difference between a successful, life-altering step toward recovery or a further retreat into isolation and denial. The success rate for early interventions performed under the supervision of a licensed intervention has been promising.
The risks of delaying an intervention.
The longer you wait to take action, the deeper your teen falls into the seductive and anesthetizing world of substance abuse. As time goes on, perceptions become distorted to the point where users may have difficulty understanding the situations and interactions that are happening around them in daily life. If you go so far as to wait until they hit ‘rock bottom’, thinking this is the only way they can be helped, you may find your teen out of resources and unable to imagine any other kind of life.
On the other hand, some teens realize what has happened, and may experience a sudden recovery without any help. But if they don’t understand the dynamics of their downward spiral and what happened inside them to bring them back, the odds are your teen may find himself caught in a repeating cycle of doing drugs or alcohol until they hit the bottom, believing they will always be able stop using drugs when they’ve had enough. This cycle is dangerous, and the risk of losing your child to the streets or worse will always be present. Each fall brings a deeper bout of depression until it may be impossible to help your child at all.
As soon as you realize you child is abusing drugs and alcohol, and have exhausted all your ideas and attempts to help, it’s time to consider an Early Intervention.
How can I help my child through this process?
Drug interventions are frightening for your child because the teen is unaware that the intervention is going to happen and therefore unprepared. He or she has no time to build their walls or marshal their deepest emotions of fear and anger to fortify their defenses. That is why, with the right guidance, interventions can be so successful. They ambush a troubled teen when he is vulnerable and exposed. The teen is completely unprepared and has no chance to plan an escape. When a teen is taken off-guard like this, it the perfect opportunity to genuinely communicate how you experience the situation, what you have observed, and how the teen’s behavior has affected his/her friends and family. The goal is not to humiliate or embarrass you child; the goal is to make the child feel safe enough to ask for help.
You can help your teen get through the experience by emphasizing what you loved most about your son and daughter before they became involved in drugs or alcohol. Use powerful anecdotes and family memories to force your teen to remember who they used to be. Put your story in positive terms: “remember when you did this or that, and how wonderful that day was.” Then, in contrast to these these memories, tell a story about a recent incident in which your teen disrupted family life, school situations, or friendships. State facts instead of passing judgment.
If you know of any teenagers or friends of your child that have recently died from an overdose, gently work in a conversation about that teen, ferreting out your child’s feeling — and make sure you are not being accusatory or judgmental in your language. Remember, that teen could easily have been your own child. Ask your teen how he feels about this death. Ask if he is surprised by this death or anticipated it. Talk a little about what that teen’s life would have been if he hadn’t discovered drugs or alcohol.
It is much easier for a teen to understand what has happened to them if they don’t feel attacked and ganged-up on. The truth is that many teens are secretly or unconsciously frightened of what they are doing, and are hoping that someone will step in with love and understanding and help them onto the path toward recovery. The goal is to persuade the teen to voluntarily accept the treatment they desperately need. The next step is locating a drug rehab program that will fit with your child’s temperament, has experienced, expert staff, and a solid reputation of successes.
Article written by Jillian Blume
