One of the most common questions asked is ”is it to early to do an intervention”? The answer is, it is never to early to help get someones life back on track. When researching early intervention, the question you would need to ask yourself is, how long would you want your friends and family to wait if you needed help? Early intervention is highly effecti
ve and are almost always a better alternative than waiting for the addiction to correct itself. The problems families face when deciding on early intervention, is whether or not the substance abuser will change themselves. The reality is, most all addicts and alcoholics need help to stop. It is amazing when we counsel families how they almost talk themselves out of confronting the situation with early intervention because they want to believe that the drug or alcohol abuse is just a phase. If a family is looking for treatment centers or early intervention advice, chances are your looking at a substance abuse issue that is past “just a phase”. Early intervention is effective because it allows the interventionist and family to put the substance abuser back on track before large mistakes are made. The goal of early intervention is to help your loved one get back on track and avoid negative things like a criminal record and/or graduation to harder substances, if they have not tried them already.
Early Drug Intervention
Addiction has a gradual progression of getting worse, not better for the substance abuser and the family. The longer we wait instead of turning to early drug intervention, the higher the risk something bad will happen to the substance abuser. DUI’s, drug charges, and criminal records can all make it difficult for anyone to get a job or even a loan in the future. Early drug intervention increases the opportunity your loved one will avoid the stigma that can come with a negative background from a past of substance abuse by getting clean and sober early. Because early drug intervention is a much safer alternative than waiting. If someone had cancer would you wait for it to just go away, or do we call a professional to help treat it? However, unlike cancer, addiction is a fatal problem that is 100% treatable. The problem usually is, instead of early drug intervention when the addiction is new, families wait to have a professional interventionist help treat it because there are hopes the addiction will get better itself. Families must remember the addiction is not the families fault and they have the right to intervene early. If early drug intervention is not performed on the families terms, a later stage drug intervention will be done on somebody else’s terms.
Early Alcohol Intervention
The facts are in the progression, if everybody could just stop when they wanted to, we would live in much safer and less drug and alcohol dependent world. Many families think that because it is just marijuana or alcohol that it is not that bad. What happens when the alcohol turns to 3 DUI’s or a 20 year prison sentence because of a fatal drunk driving accident? What about the pot that turns to cocaine that turns to crack that turns to $10 tricks for a fix. What about the vicodin addict that takes twelve pills a day? Is it okay to avoid early intervention until that same vicodin addict becomes a heroin addict sharing needles with someone who is HIV positive. The sad part is, somewhere along the line families are being told that waiting is a better option than an early alcohol intervention and that addicts and alcoholics have to hit bottom in order to get better. The truth is, the 3 types of bottoms for any substance abuser is death, with the other 2 being a prison or an institution if they are lucky. Would you want your family to wait for you to get to the bottom?