Topic: enabling and provoking

Many good interveners—including some excellent professional intervention counselors—started out as primary enablers.

The same people whose “enabling” actions allow the disease to flourish— and who may feel helpless to confront it— are the ones who can be most effective as interveners.

They don’t realize how effectively their actions are undermining their own goal: getting the addict into treatment.

It’s often difficult for family members to see the real extent and nature of the damage addiction has caused to themselves and the family.

If you notice any of these signs, it’s a good idea to make an appointment right away, talk to your group leader before/after a group session, or bring them up in your support or step group.

Intervention can be quite dramatic (that’s why it makes for good TV), but it’s really the intelligent application of leverage that produces the desired result.

Scott McMillin, Recovery Systems Institute Principal, discusses the barriers that keep an addict or alcoholic from seeking help. Learning new ways to communicate can allow a caring family member, friend, or professional to motivate them to get the help they need.

Fifteen-year-old Andrea is out of control. She drinks, abuses drugs, and dances illegally at a strip club. What can Mom do about it? The answer is surprising.

The first step in knowing how to deal with husband, wife, or other person we love who has alcoholism is understanding the facts about alcohol abuse and the reasons alcoholic people resist help.

Doesn’t seem to matter much whether fame is rooted in music, film, TV, sports, politics — there’s this sense of unreality to all of it.