Topic: intervention

The Guide includes a step-by-step explanation of how intervention works and how to plan one for your addict/alcoholic.

Eventually, the fantasy bubble gets popped, and the addict realizes they’ve wasted a lot of time when they could have been making progress.

Eventually, things get so bad that even the minimizer gets frightened.

Eventually, through painful experience, the externalizer recognizes that the secret of recovery is focusing on changing yourself, not others.

Eventually, the rationalizer (through painful experience) realizes that instead of serving as a remedy, drugs and alcohol are actually making problems worse

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.

Eventually, things get so bad that the details become irrelevant and the objections seem unimportant.

If we could reach them now, the process might well be interrupted. Preventing a host of more serious problems — some of them fatal to other people, or the user himself.

It’s not really surprise or shock that convinces the alcoholic to seek treatment. It’s a combination of influence and leverage.