The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Depends on what you consider an intervention. I did one with my husband but it wasn't like one that you saw on TV, I had a family friend who has been in AA for over 25 years travel to my house while I was out of town to talk with him. He spent the day telling my AH his story which was very similar to his own. The family friend was too late getting sober and ended up losing his family over it. By the grace of god, that was the day my AH found sobriety. I am not sure if an conventional intervention would have worked for him as he really needed to have a private conversation with someone who knew the struggles he was going through. I think the key is, that you have to talk to them when they are at their lowest point. Unfortunately, you never know when an A has hit his bottom.
-- Edited by Jazzie18 on Wednesday 7th of December 2016 03:38:39 PM
What Jazzie said resonates with me .. The A has to be at a place where the pain of addiction out weighs the physical pleasure of getting high. There is always a trap door to recovery which is why it's one day at a time. My x would have the my a$$ is on fire and I need to stop moments .. As soon as the fire was out he went back to what he was doing. It was very very fast. He didn't want to talk to anyone in AA because he wasn't like them. I think it depends where they are at in the process of finding their bottom. Hugs.
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Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you've got all the answers, then don't call what you do "faith". - Brene Brown
"Whatever truth you own doesn't own you" - Gary John Bishop
Although I don't have experience with interventions, I agree with those above me here. My AH, despite alcohol-related health issues, is still in denial about how bad it is. I think he would sit there laughing, or by the end of it.....having everyone in the room thinking they were the ones with the problem. He would feel defensive and ganged up on. At least, that is what I imagine, as I can't read his mind.
The one on one that Jazzie described might make more of an impact, but not if the A isn't really ready to make changes.
All my opinions, of course. I bet everyone here has either gone down that road, or at least considered it. I know I have! However, after my time with Alanon, I don't think it's effective. We are powerless.
ooh boy. I just got off the phone with my STBXAH, who brought up his intervention 2.5 years ago for about the millionth time. He has a lot of resentments about it. These days, he says things like "you probably saved me life" and "I know I can't be mad at you", but then he says more stuff showing me he is still resentful. It was humiliating for both of us.
Back story: he was secretly drinking, and his behavior was getting increasingly bizarre - I thought he was going crazy. A friend on the street one day told me that he was stumbling around the soccer field, sitting in his car drinking during games, etc, and that the parents were worried, and watching. I was getting ready to leave him within the week, so when I found out the cause of his behavior, that other people knew, and that he was a danger on the roads, I was relieved to know it wasn't just me any more - I had kind of lost my grounding of reality at that point. Friends offered to share their observations and background with him, so I gratefully accepted. I believed that if I confronted him alone, he would deny it, be mean, and we would get nowhere.
It worked in the short-term - he did stop drinking that day, for about six weeks. But he was humiliated. I think the humiliation outweighed the message. He felt completely ganged up upon. He was nowhere close to his bottom, so it was easy for him to focus his resentment on the message-bearers. I think he also felt forced - one of the participants (a recovering addict) gave him 2 choices: go to an AA meeting tonight, or get on a plane (and go to rehab). I was relieved someone was providing guidance, because I didn't know what to do or how to conclude the intervention. But he felt forced, like he had to go to AA. He didn't do it for him.
I would do it differently if I did it again. But I think the fact that I did not know his problems were caused by drinking drove my decisions. It wasn't like I watched for awhile and knew what the culprit was. I was pretty desperate, and pretty relieved to find out what the problem was, and that other people knew about it. I was going to leave, so to me staging an intervention was a desperate measure to hopefully buy us some more time. If I did it again, I guess I would have waited a few days, planned it a bit better, and included a trained intervention specialist to guide the conversation, and to follow up. Maybe involved my kids. Shoulda, coulda, woulda...
I wish you luck with your decision.
-- Edited by oceanpine on Wednesday 7th of December 2016 07:31:24 PM
I would like to answer this question with my Double Winner hat on.
Would an intervention have worked for me? A resounding no! I needed to wait until I was ready to be able to quit. I would have been furious and resented an intervention. I would not have gone along with it, instead I would have walked away and cut all people concerned from my life.
In my alcoholic thinking patterns I would not have seen it as people doing it trying to help me, I would have seen it as people trying to take over my life and tell me what to do. I would have been outraged.
When drinking I saw it as my right to do so. How dare anyone try and stop me.
Hope this helps. To quit I had got to a place of utter despair and desperation. I then quit. I was done. But it was in my own time frame. No one else.
Nope......not here for mine. I am one who believe that each exposure to help, treatment and/or recovery does plant a seed though for when/if they hit their bottom. I often believe the intervention benefits 'us' more than the drinker - in my own world, I felt I had to do, try, suggest, etc. EVERY POSSIBLE SOLUTION before I could detach. (((Hugs)))
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
No I had two official interventions with my son. He drank either the same day or the the day after he returned from the rehab each time.
My qualifier also went to rehab twice.
I don't think we ever had a formal intervention but definitely confronted him a few times about his drinking. He would sit there and say " uh-huh....okay...yup...sorry".....That night he'd be at the bar. His workplace even paid big money, and I mean BIG money to send him to a very prestigious rehab centre. When he got home, he called me and cried about how 'hard' it was in a tone that implied he passed some sort of endurance test, and began to drink like he'd never gone......They fired him a month later.
Today I say that the only qualifier I bring to a meeting is myself.
I was in Alanon for over 30 years and still attend this Alanon meeting here.
I was in Florida three years ago and attended AA meetings with my sil who was still drinking. And still is.
I got sick of sitting there like a stuffed dummy and at a meeting I got up and admitted to having an alcoholic mind. I stopped drinking hard licker when ah were 17 years of age. After a black out. I drank a quart of whiskey.
I wasn't a regular drinker.
My first drug of choice was petrol- gasoline. I loved the smell of it and still do. I recall sitting on the bonnet of the tractor and taking the cap off. Before I was going to school. It made me drunk.
I realised at that age that it was poisonous. I saw the elders drinking. drinking was supposed to be a party thing- a fun thing. But as a kid I could see it was not a fun thing. There was no fighting or arguments in our home- or down the road at the pub.
The arguments came later... because we had no money, and nothing ever really got done. It was a dump.
I worked my first 8 hour day when I was 12. Our foreman was the local policeman. He got his beer and whiskey for free. This meant that he was nicely tucked up in bed when our parents were out drinking.
I was the one in our family who decided 'enough is enough'.
This created more than ripples in the family. In our town of 1000 people there were five pubs. No-one ever had to drink alone.
To call anyone an alcoholic was a deep insult. A bum.
I have no experience participating in intervention.
But we had a group member organize an intervention for her daughter. Months later, the daughter was still furious, still refused to speak to her. Mom was suffering because daughter could not see it as an expression of her "love."
Reminds me of something my sponsor used to say, "If you want to make an enemy, try to change someone."
I don't think we ever had a formal intervention but definitely confronted him a few times about his drinking. He would sit there and say " uh-huh....okay...yup...sorry".....That night he'd be at the bar. His workplace even paid big money, and I mean BIG money to send him to a very prestigious rehab centre. When he got home, he called me and cried about how 'hard' it was in a tone that implied he passed some sort of endurance test, and began to drink like he'd never gone......They fired him a month later.
S_J,
If I didn't know better, I'd say you and I were married to the same guy in the early 90's! That was my first husband to a tee. He went to the celebrity rehab center paid for by his employer and was fired a few months later when he tested dirty.
How alike our stories are...spooky!
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Bethany
"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be." Abe Lincoln
My hubby had his intervention with the judge. Go to AA for a year or go to jail or get an interlock on the car or, or, or........
I was told that an intervention won't work unless there are some consequences that you can hold over their head. But even that doesn't always work. Only the addict will make the choice. The booze/drugs have such a hold on their lives.
Someone said it before but the intervention was more for us than the alcoholic. It put a bandaid in a seeping wound. Lots of resentment came with the intervention on all of our parts. That being said I think when rock bottom hit, the supports were already in place for the alcoholic who is 9months sober and in active recovery.
Knowing what I know now. I would have skipped the intervention and just got myself the supports I needed to break free from the chaos. We didn't know what else to do for ourselves so the intervention was a place to start.
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