by A Women in Sobriety | Mar 31, 2015 | Addiction Articles, Drug Addiction
How to Have a Successful Intervention
Those who need help the most, still sick and suffering addicts and alcoholics, often don’t want it. They don’t believe they have a problem. They don’t think they need help to quit drugging and drinking. They’re scared to stop.
Whatever the reason, many addicts and alcoholics are unwilling to get better on their own. This is where interventions step in and become a truly invaluable tool in effecting long-term recovery.
That’s right folks, interventions are more than just that emotionally manipulative TV show! I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here. I know I’ve experienced firsthand what an intervention is like.
For those of you who haven’t had that pleasure, find some tips and tricks for how to organize and run a successful intervention below!
Learn about the Drug(s) Being Abused
There’s nothing that will make an addict or alcoholic tune out faster than being lectured by someone who has no idea what they’re talking about! Can I get an amen!
So, before staging an intervention for your loved one, make sure to learn about whatever drugs they’re abusing. And I mean more than a simple Google search.
Reach out to addiction treatment centers (which you should be doing anyway!) and speak to the experts. Talk to friends and family who’ve struggled with similar addictions. You can even go to an open AA or NA meeting and ask some members for information about various drugs.
Seek Professional Help
This one should be obvious. If you’re going to stage an intervention for a friend or family member, hire a professional interventionist! They exist for a reason!
Nothing’s worse than finally gathering the courage needed to confront someone in active addiction and the confrontation going south. Emotions run high in interventions. Tears will be shed and four letter words will be uttered. Be prepared!
That’s where an interventionist becomes vital. They’ll be able to smooth any outburst and get the intervention back on track. They’ll be able to organize everything efficiently and maximize the potential of your loved one accepting help.
Have a Backup Plan
What’s the plan if your loved one doesn’t accept treatment? What are the potential consequences? What are the very real risks? How can you, as a family member, friend, or spouse, best prepare for the worst-case scenario?
This is where a backup plan becomes invaluable. Figure out the consequences if your loved one refuses treatment. Figure out what proactive measures you’ll take for yourself. These can be things like seeking individual therapy, attending a support group, or even taking legal action.
It’s important to come up with a realistic backup plan, one that you can stick to should the worst happen. Let’s say you decide that if a family member doesn’t go to treatment, you’ll cut all ties. Is that realistic and doable? What about family gatherings?
These are all things to keep in mind while formulating a backup plan.
Patience, Tolerance & Love!
Finally, we come to practicing patience, tolerance, and love. This is the glue that holds interventions together. Remember, even though anger may be running high, we love our addicts and alcoholics!
This is especially important to keep in mind because addicts are masters at manipulation! During my intervention, I tried everything imaginable to change my family’s mind. Thankfully, they’d hired an interventionist who saw right through my tears and yelling!
If my parent’s hadn’t practiced patience, tolerance, and love, I don’t know if I’d be here! So stay cool before, during, and after any intervention and remember, we can all change!
by Fiona Stockard | Sep 18, 2013 | Benefits of Sobriety
I Didn’t See That Happening!
1) Sober Fun Doesn’t Exist
Before getting sober, I thought it would go something like this – “oh, yeah, this is great. I get to sit around and drink coffee all day. And meditate. I love meditating. Sike! My life is OVER.” That’s really what I thought recovery was like. After being sober a few years, I’ve found most other people tend to believe this. How far from the truth!
After I got a little bit of sober-time under my belt, I began to have confidence again. I started to live, really live, life for the first time. I’ve been to more shows, concerts, events, parties, vacations, and adventures in sobriety than I ever did before. I have more fun on an A1A drive, near the beach on a Tuesday night, blasting music, than I ever did at clubs and bars, dealing with the other hot messes in the crowd.
If you think your social life is over just because you put down the drink and the drugs, well, just wait and see how fun life becomes.
2) I’ll Never Amount To Anything
Okay, before I came into recovery life sucked. I was a college dropout and fired from every job I had. Was this due to my addiction? Well, if you asked me a few years ago, I’d have said nope. I’d have said my boss was crazy. The company sucked. YOLO. Blah, blah, blah. I’d have said whatever excuse I could come up with to justify the gross injected that occurred in my professional careers.
The fact is, my drug and alcohol problems led me to make poor life choices. Drugs and booze led me to be a horrible employee, co-worker, and student. So, when I entered recovery I assumed that’s how things were always going to be.
What I didn’t know is that once the drugs and alcohol were taken out of the situation, I became better in each of those roles! I’ve held the same job for over three-and-a-half years. I’ve even grown in the company! For me, that’s crazy. The idea that someone like me, a down and out junkie, can’t change their life is ridiculous. The sky is the limit, ladies and gentlemen.
3) I Only Hurt Myself, What’s The Big Deal?
This was my favorite misconception. Okay, everyone calm down, I thought to myself in treatment. I drank and got high by myself. I didn’t hurt that many people. Chill, people!
See, I’m self-centered to the bone marrow. I didn’t think about how many times my roommates had to pick my drunk a** up from the bar. I didn’t occur to me how many times I drove drunk and hit people and stationary objects. I’m incredibly lucky I didn’t seriously hurt anyone!
I didn’t think about my poor mom. She used to wait up and see if I’d come home. I didn’t think about my boyfriend who would take me to dinner, only to watch me pass out. I didn’t think about my boss who I manipulated and took advantage of.
No, I didn’t think about anyone, other than myself. I thought my drinking and drug use only hurt me. Turns out, my actions effected everyone I came into contact with. I learned that after being sober for, oh…a few days.
4) I Can Totally Do This On My Own, I Got It
Who can relate to this – you have no idea who I am or what I’ve through. If you knew my life, you’d understand why I do the things I do.
I certainly did. I thought I was a big shot the first time I tried to get sober. I thought everyone trying to help me just didn’t understand. I thought I was so different and that I’d conquer addiction all on my own. It wasn’t until I suffered repeated defeats, that I gave in and accepted the help I was offered. After I gave in and accepted help, my life began to get better! Who would’ve thought? I began to make friends. Not the type of friends you meet in bars and clubs, but legitimate friends. I became friends with people who show up and offer emotional support. Friends who taught me how to handle life sober, with integrity and grace. I know now, without a doubt, that I couldn’t (and wouldn’t!) do this deal alone. I totally don’t “got this.”
There are SO many resources available for addicts and alcoholics. There are Intensive Outpatient Programs, Inpatient Facilities, and Twelve-Step Fellowships, just to name a few.
5) God? Ha! That’s Not Going to Happen
When I walked into the rooms of recovery, I didn’t accept help. I didn’t accept it from people or from God. I could sort of wrap my head around going to meetings and working steps. I learned to like coffee. Praying to this God creature, though? Thanks, but no thanks! I thought I’d entered a cult.
After being beaten into a state of reasonableness, I got a sponsor. They took me through the Big Book. They took me to meetings where people all said the same thing. They said if I wanted to have long-term sobriety, well, I was going to have to develop a relationship with God.
Time heals all wounds. The longer I stuck around, the more work I did, the more I started to actually believe in some sort of God. This happened in spite of myself. Today, my relationship with God is, without a doubt, the most important relationship I have in my life. When I’m connected to God, I’m spiritually fit. During these times, my life is better than I could have ever imagined. I’m happy and whole. I don’t obsess about drugs or alcohol and my life takes on new meaning.
6) My Family Is Never Going To Trust Me Again
I’d done so much lying, cheating, and stealing in active addiction, that I destroyed every relationship I had. This included my entire family. They’d been there for me time and time again. They spent years helping me pick up the pieces when my life would shatter (and it always did). Finally, they had enough and din’t want to support my harmful choices. When I got sober, I know this was it. This was beyond my last chance.
I knew my family wouldn’t be there if I threw everything away. I believed the damage I’d done was never going to be fixed. Even in my delusional self-centeredness, I saw how much I’d hurt them.
In recovery, I learned how to be a family member again. I learned to show up. I learned to be the child my parents always knew I could be. I learned to be a sibling to my sister. I learned to be a cousin and a granddaughter. I learned to be trusted again. It took some time, don’t get it twisted. It took time for these relationships to develop. However, when they did develop they became better and stronger and contained more love than ever before.
7) I Just Want To Be Happy
When I finally admitted complete defeat, I was one hell of a broken soul. I was miserable, alone, and unhappy. You know what? Unhappy’s an understatement. If you’d ask me to write down the one wish I had, I would’ve simply written “to be happy.”
As far back as I could remember, my birthday wish was always to be happy. I didn’t think I’d ever lose the anxiety (and pain, depression, hatred, and self-pity) I felt 24/7.
After being sober a few months, I learned some tools. I took suggestions. I made friends with other sober people. In turn, these people helped to transform my ideas about recovery. I learned that sobriety is possible. I learned that I could be happy and grateful. I learned that life is beautiful and I could be part of life, if I decided to take a few simple actions.
Today, life is beautiful. If you asked me to write a wish, I wouldn’t write “to be happy.” I don’t have to hope for it anymore. I’d write “for other sick and suffering addicts to experience what sobriety can really be like.”
by A Women in Sobriety | Jul 28, 2013 | 12 Steps
Listening is the Hardest Part
Al-Anon has taught me that pray requires listening. One of our slogans is Listen and Learn. Another is Progress Not Perfection. Another is Recovery is a Verb. Okay, I made that last one up. It’s good, isn’t it!
In Al-Anon meetings, share after share builds my trust that a Higher Power is eager to help us. There’s a catch though, we need to shut up and listen. I’m learning to listen with the eye of my eyes, the ear of my ears, the heart of my heart.
Listening in Al-Anon
Prior to entering Al-Anon, my prayers had generally consisted of long litanies. They were requests from me, Whitney, to God, wherever God is. Recovery encouraged me, through first-hand testimony, that a Higher Power is absolutely able to communicate. God can speak through anything, even a donkey!
I remember one day I was folding laundry in my son’s bedroom, who was five at the time. It must have been a summer morning, because I was folding laundry while Ned was going through the gymnastics associated with obediently making his bed. I had told him before about the times I would come into his room when he was at school – either to put laundry away or to dust or something – and find that he had made his bed (very lumpy indeed but nevertheless completely made) as I had asked. It was not until this particular morning, however, that I had ever actually observed him making his bed. And when I did, it touched my heart.
His pillows were all over the floor, while he was on his mattress. He was in the exact middle, trying to flip the various layers into flatness. He was smoothing his sheets by elongating his body and moving closer to the edge, trying to work out the wrinkles and waves and lumps. It struck me that he was so sweetly obeying, really trying and trying, and without a single complaint. Everyday, he’d been struggling like this, so faithfully. To say I was touched to see his efforts is an understatement.
Next thing you know, I was crying. “Mommy!” Ned exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” To which I replied, “Nothing, Ned, it just touches my heart to see you making your bed, to see how hard you’re trying, to see all the trouble you go to just to get it done.” And then, I believe, I heard God say:
“I love the lumps.”
God sees my efforts. He looks at my heart. My little boy, Ned, had shown me what God looks like. It doesn’t matter how well I understand each and every jot and bustle. It doesn’t matter how well I teach. It doesn’t even matter how well I do.
It only matters that I try. It only matters that I Listen and Learn.
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by A Women in Sobriety | Jul 20, 2013 | 12 Steps
A Voice From Al-Anon
Meetings of Al-Anon and ACA are helping me to recover myself. See, I’d wandered into a swamp of confusion and crisis. This swamp was twenty year marriage, during which I drank right alongside my handsome, fun-loving husband.
My husband and I were glamorous, or so we thought! We fancied ourselves latter day versions of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Back in the whirlwind of our Zelda and Scott days, we tried with all our might to never grow up. Our agreed upon goal in life was to avoid ever becoming boring and staid, like our parents!
After all twenty of those years, it dawned on us that we might have a problem with alcohol. It took twenty years for me to do the math on my husband’s employment record. Twenty years to discover he’d had ten jobs, with ample downtime between gigs! It took me twenty years to enter the rooms of Al-Anon.
My Recovery
Al-Anon quickly clarified there was such a thing as functional alcoholism. This, in turn, led me into years of Denial (Don’t Even kNOw I Am Lying). I learned that alcoholism is a disease and contagious at that! My husband was affected by the alcohol part. I was affected by the “-isms” part. Let’s start with the letter A: Anger and Anxiety, and move through the alphabet to Worry and Xtreme fear! Until I entered Al-Anon, I didn’t think I had any problems! I just thought my husband kept losing his job, leaving me to keep our canoe afloat.
Al-Anon taught me I was just as much an addict as he was, except my drug-of-choice wasn’t booze. My drug-of-choice was adrenaline, which pumped through me daily (at increasingly high levels!) as my husband’s disease progressed in a downward spiral. I thank GOD for wooing my husband into the rooms of AA towards the end of 1990. Approximately fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves pregnant with child, something we (aka Zelda and Scott!) had never ever wanted.
The Serenity Prayer saved the life of our unborn child. I had been pointing to the first line, saying we needed to accept the things we could not change. My husband was pointing to the second line, saying we needed to change the things we could. Then came the afternoon he phoned from a rest stop on the Merritt Parkway, hollering into the phone:
It’s the wisdom to know the difference!
This child is half mine!
I can’t walk out on him.
Our Life
It’s now twenty-two years later and said that child is the joy of our hearts. Truly, I credit the program(s) of twelve-step recovery for saving all of our lives. I credit our meetings, sponsors, recovering friends, the steps, the literature, the slogans, and the Serenity Prayer.
Most of all, I credit the Voice of God, which managed to overcome the Committee of Our Mere Minds! As we learned to practice Step Eleven, we learned to seek through prayer and mediation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him. We learned to pray ONLY for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.
It was a noisy waterfall we were headed towards when God answered us. Gently and lovingly, He spoke through earthquake, wind, and fire. He spoke a still small Voice of Calm.
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