Setting Up a Drug and Alcohol Intervention in Montana

If you have a loved one who has been struggling with a substance use disorder in Montana, it is recommended that you consider setting up a drug and alcohol intervention. By so doing, you might be able to motivate them to turn away from these substances by checking into a rehabilitation and treatment program.

What Is It?

An intervention refers to the structured and highly planned conversation that you would host with other loved ones to get an addict to seek treatment. In many cases, it works well especially if you get a professional interventionist on board.

To ensure that yours is successful, it is essential that you get everyone to express their thoughts and feelings as constructively as possible. Through the conversations that you will have at the intervention meeting, you could potentially get the addict to understand that they have a problem and to start getting help for it immediately.

You might already have tried talking to the addict about the problem in the past but that did not work. Even so, you should not give up. Instead, you should host a group intervention to get them to realize just how widespread their drug and alcohol problem has been, and so that they can seek recovery and rehabilitation services.

Through this process, you will be able to intervene in the behavior and life of the loved one with the primary goal of trying to get them to change their behavior, as well as overcome the situation that they are dealing with.

All the loved ones that will come together to set up the drug and alcohol intervention in Montana would already have seen the addict's life spinning out of control. As such, they would ideally be interested in ensuring that the addict checks into a drug rehab center.

However, you can also use the intervention as a way to inform the addict that everyone present is going to stop the enabling behavior that they have been engage in the past, and which has allowed the loved one to continue using drugs and drinking alcohol.

What Does It Consist Of?

While setting up a drug and alcohol intervention, you will basically gather a group of people with the goal of confronting a loved one who has clearly been struggling with alcohol and drugs.

During the intervention, you would all try to persuade the addict to start making changes in their daily life by seeking help from an accredited addiction treatment and rehabilitation program.

Often, you would include close family members and friends, as well as some colleagues depending on their relationship with your addicted loved one. You might also want to consider getting a professional interventionist to attend the meeting, as well as help to plan for it beforehand.

In the same way, it is recommended that you plan for and decide upon what is going to happen during the actual intervention even before you invite the addict to attend the meeting. This way, you will be well prepared for anything that could happen.

To this end, the intervention group should meet beforehand so that you can all discuss the intervention and how you would like it to go. You will also discuss everything that will be said and by whom as well as what is going to happen. In many cases, it also helps to have a group leader who would ideally be selected by the entire intervention group.

When you first meet with the group, you will discuss everything that you know about the loved one's substance abuse. You can also write down a letter or a list - or even a couple of letters - that will be read during the actual meeting.

These writings will typically address all the ways in which the addiction has been affecting every individual in the meeting group. It will also show that the substance abuse has been causing problems with the addict's life. Further, you can use the writings to inform the addict that everyone present in the meeting wishes that they would check into a treatment center.

There is always a chance that the addict could refuse the help that is being offered by the group. To this end, you should also come up with various consequences of everything that is going to happen if the addict chooses this course of action. These consequences will define all the outcomes that are going to transpire so that the addict realizes that no one is going to be enabling their behavior in the future.

The primary goal of the intervention meeting would be to encourage the addict to check into a treatment center. Research studies have shown that interventions are generally successful ways of getting addicts to get help for their substance use disorders.

Is It Necessary?

It might be difficult for you to approach a loved one who has been struggling with drugs and alcohol. Although you might mean well, there is always a possibility that you might not know what you are going to say. Additionally, the addict could end up denying the fact that they have a substance related problem. All these factors could make it difficult for you to have an open and honest conversation with the addict on your own.

Even so, there are some situations in which it might be necessary for you to consider setting up a drug and alcohol intervention in Montana. These situations are often linked to the signs and symptoms of a substance use disorder, which may include but are not always limited to:

• Aggressive behavior
• Borrowing money
• Deterioration of their physical appearance
• Health issues
• Lack of energy
• Problems at school or work
• Reduced motivation
• Secretive behavior

The addict might also have been struggling with several other problems, such as eating disorders and depression. This is because they may have a co-occurring mental health or medical disorder over and above their addiction.

In all these cases, it is important that you host an intervention meeting. If possible, you should consider inviting an intervention specialist to the meeting so that they can direct all the conversations that will be trying to address all these disorders.

That said, you should realize that a drug and alcohol intervention would be ideal if you have a loved one who has been struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, especially if they do not seem to see how their substance abuse has been affecting their life in negative ways - as well as the lives of others around them.

You might also want to consider hosting this meeting if the loved one has been denying the fact that their substance abuse has been causing problems. They could, for instance, have placed blame for their problems on other people instead of accepting that these problems are the consequences of their own drug use.

Is It Available?

While setting up a drug and alcohol intervention in Montana, you should know that there are intervention services available across the state. This is important knowledge because you might require professional help during the initial planning stages as well as in the course of the actual intervention meeting.

Getting professional help from an interventionist is a good way to ensure that your intervention meeting has a high likelihood of succeeding and convincing the addict to seek rehabilitation and treatment services immediately after the meeting.

Today, Montana has many highly qualified and experienced professional interventionists. You can count on their services to get help with your intervention. They could even guide you over the phone on how you can program the entire process, or even invite them to the actual meeting so that they can come and help you with the intervention.

However, you might not want to invite a professional interventionist or have them present during the meeting. Even so, it is recommended that you seek their help especially during the crucial planning stages. This way, you will be able to gain a better understanding of the best ways to approach the intervention, as well as how to go about increasing the chances that your meeting will end up being successful.

Apart from interventionists, Montana has various drug intervention programs. Through these programs, you might get help on staging your own intervention. These services can, for instance, provide you with the resources that you need to plan and start staging the intervention.

Best Practices

While planning a drug and alcohol intervention, there are some best practices that you should keep in mind. These best practices could increase the chances that your intervention meeting ends up being successful. They include:

• Create a plan
• Gather all the necessary information pertinent to the addict, their substance abuse patterns, and the problems that their addiction has been causing
• Set the consequences and boundaries that you are going to enforce should the addict refuse help
• Take notes or write letters that you are going to use during the actual intervention meeting
• Get everyone present to share their thoughts on the addict's substance abuse, as well as the consequences that they are going to follow through with should the addict refuse to get help

In the long term, you should keep in mind that having a proper plan is as important as setting up a drug and alcohol intervention in Montana. You should also consider inviting an interventionist to guide the planning and execution of the intervention meeting - because this could increase the chances that the process would be more successful.

CITATIONS

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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023748

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02779.x

https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh342/163-166.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057310/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031575/