Is A Loved One Of Yours Struggling With Substance Abuse?
Are you worried about your loved one’s drug or alcohol habit?
Has their addiction begun to affect the whole family and cause confusion and hurt?
Do you feel like your family is living in crisis mode and struggling to maintain order?
Maybe your loved one has slipped into patterns of deceit and manipulation to try and conceal their addiction. Perhaps they are extremely isolated, manic, disoriented, or sickly in appearance. They might be missing family events and spending (or even stealing) lots of family money. As a result, the rest of you may feel anxious and uncertain about how to handle their issues. You might find yourselves scrambling to do damage control, trying to maintain appearances and pretend that nothing is wrong. Yet the more your loved one struggles, the harder it is to hide what’s going on. For the first time, you may be thinking of holding an intervention for their substance abuse.
Your Family May Feel Torn Between Supporting And Stopping Your Loved One
Addiction is a family disease, since it impacts the whole family unit. Your loved one’s addiction may have created a moral quandary that you don’t know how to navigate. This is especially the case if you’re the parent of someone with an addiction. On one hand, you probably don’t want to cut ties or kick them out of the house; but on the other, you don’t want to enable them and feed their habit. Yet if you provide for their basic needs and give them shelter, food, and money to supply their addiction, you may find that you’re inadvertently feeding their habit.
This is an incredibly stressful situation to find yourself in, and you and your family shouldn’t have to navigate it alone. At Pinkerton Psychotherapy in Houston, Texas, our therapists have helped lots of families of addicts experience relief and restoration through the power of therapy. We’re confident that we can do the same for you.
If A Loved One Of Yours Has A Substance Problem, You’re Not Alone
With the rise of fentanyl and the increase in overdose deaths, intervention to assist those struggling with addiction is literally a matter of life and death. Severe substance use disorder typically requires inpatient treatment. The truth, however, is that most people with an addiction are unlikely to enroll in treatment without strong boundaries and guidance from the family. This puts many families between a rock and a hard place, as they often have a tough time convincing their loved ones to seek treatment.
What’s more, many families struggle to set boundaries and provide guidance in a healthy and caring way. Oftentimes, they end up enabling an addict’s behavior by not taking measures to help them stop. The relationship becomes codependent and the needs of the addict begin to swallow up the time and energy of the family. This is why intervention is so crucial. It can provide resources, contacts, and a structured recovery plan for families who haven’t been able to motivate their loved ones to get support.
Most People Don’t Reach Out For Help Until They’ve Hit Rock Bottom
All too often, people in the throes of an addiction neglect seeking help until their habit has created serious consequences. The same is true of many families of addicts—they usually don’t see the need for intervention until their loved one’s substance abuse is no longer something they can brush under the rug. It often reaches a point where the addict is frequently lying, avoiding social obligations, or even stealing money to fuel their habit.
You don’t need to wait till things get out of control to reach out for support for your loved one. And even if things have spiraled out of control, that doesn’t mean you should give up hope. Our clinicians know how to help addicts and their families get support, psychoeducation, and referrals for therapy.
Substance Abuse Intervention Can Give Your Loved One The Help They Need
At Pinkerton Psychotherapy, our specialists will give your family ongoing social support, skills training in communication and setting boundaries, and psychoeducation about substance abuse disorder. This is a chance to learn about what substance abuse really is and get answers to all your unanswered questions. After all, addiction is often confused for a moral issue. People wonder “Why is my loved one lying to me?” and take their loved one’s addiction personally. Our intervention process can educate you on how addiction works and why it drives people toward tactics of deceit, manipulation, and isolation.
Beyond that, our family-based interventions can equip you with referrals to therapy, resources for substance use and misuse prevention, and various programs that can guide your loved one through the recovery process. We’re here so that you don’t have to walk this journey alone. Our addiction intervention specialists have lots of experience providing counseling for parents and families of addicts and we believe that you and your loved ones can come out stronger on the other side.
How The Addiction Intervention Process Works
The process for substance abuse intervention varies depending on the needs of each family and the number of people involved. Generally, we will start by having an initial consultation with you and the other family members involved to answer your questions and provide some structure on how intervention will be carried out. We’ll go over any facilities we recommend as well as the long-term goals for treatment.
When the consultation’s done, we will meet with each family member either individually or in groups of three, depending on how many members are involved. We will help each person prepare for what they’d like to tell their loved one during the intervention. Then, with the loved one present, we will facilitate the intervention process and give everyone a chance to talk about how their loved one’s addiction has affected them. We will be there to mediate and ensure that the process goes smoothly and peacefully.
The intervention can take anywhere from an hour to three hours and goes for as many sessions as needed (although it’s usually done in one). If it ends with the desired result of pursuing treatment, we will go over potential programs and get in contact with facilities that can help with substance abuse recovery.
In the end, it’s important to remember that recovery is always possible—people can and do get sober, and there are many support networks and addiction resources all over the world. Our goal as a practice is to give you the best possible assistance in getting help for your loved one, bringing peace and tranquility back into your home.
You May Have Some Questions About Substance Abuse Intervention…
What if my loved one doesn’t want to do the intervention?
We will do everything within our power to assist you if this is the case. We’ll give you the tools to help you guide your loved one to treatment, teaching you to communicate lovingly and gently about why they should seek support. Ultimately, whether they agree to do the intervention is their decision, but there is so much to be learned and gained from this process. We would be happy to talk to them about any questions or concerns they have prior to the session, ensuring that they, too, are prepared for the intervention.
Will our family’s information be kept private?
We will always honor confidentiality to ensure that your privacy is protected. No one else besides those involved in the intervention needs to know about your family’s time here. Although we can’t guarantee that your family members will keep things confidential, we can guarantee that we will.
What if the intervention doesn’t result in my loved one getting treatment?
Even if your loved one decides not to pursue addiction treatment, this can still be a worthwhile process. It can give you and your family skills training and psychoeducation so that you are more equipped to understand and deal with a loved one’s addiction.
Bring Peace And Tranquility Back Into Your Family
Your loved one doesn’t have to go on suffering, and neither does your family. Pinkerton Psychotherapy is here to lift you and your family up and help your loved one break the power of addiction through our intervention process. To learn more about our family interventions for substance abuse, you can use the contact form or call 713-800-6999.