How to Help a Loved One with Addiction

With our drug and alcohol interventions, you have the opportunity to gather with other members of your family and express to your loved one how their addiction has affected you and why you want to encourage your loved one to get help.

As part of your interventions, it is important to plan accordingly. When you reach out to our team to schedule an intervention, we will walk you through all of the things that you need, including participants, practice, and professional help.

It might be overwhelming at first to consider a drug intervention, but our professional resources and the right type of practice can make it much easier. 

• Participants: The first stage is deciding who should be present. Not all family members need to be there, and sometimes the best people are close family friends or godparents.
• Practice: The second stage is practicing, writing out what you plan to say, and practicing it not only on your own but with all the other members of the group.
• Professional Help: The professional help you get is the final stage, and this extends to finding the right location and working with a professional to mediate the intervention itself.

Start by considering who might have a strong or trusting relationship with your loved one. If you are dealing with a brother who is struggling with addiction, and your brother has a bad relationship with your father, who kicked him out at a young age, having your father present might not be the best idea. However, if your brother always maintained a close relationship with his godfather, it might be better to have the godfather present.

Your goal should be to convince a loved one that it’s time to get help and connect them with the right treatment center. You don’t want things like sibling fights or estranged relationships to interfere with that goal.

Similarly, you want everything you say to be well-received, but even if it isn’t, you want it to be well-rehearsed. You can’t control how well a loved one will respond to the things you are saying, but you can practice so that what you say is intentional and not spontaneous.

Some families like to practice with one another or share what they plan to say with one another beforehand so everyone knows what to expect. Read what you plan to say over and over so that you know where to pause, what tone to use, and what inflection will get your message across most successfully. Find times when you and other members of the intervention can get together to practice.

Sometimes working with our team of professional interventionists can make it easier for everyone to come together and practice. It also makes it easier to find a neutral location where your loved one won’t be apprehensive about visiting and where everyone else might be more at ease.