the intervention
2013-07-25 01:08:25 ET

I participated in an intervention recently. The purpose of it was to get the person to stop drinking. The fear is that he is going to drink himself to death--he is drinking over a fifth a day. We were trained by a specialist, wrote our letters, got feedback from each other, and then had the confrontation. It went really well, and he said he was considering going into treatment himself. He agreed to go to recovery treatment, and went that day.

Now, a month and a half later, he is sober and angry. I liked him better drunk.


2013-07-25 02:29:03 ET

ddSounds like he has a lot of things to get through. He should consider some form of councilling. Mention how irate he has been and that he still needs help.

2013-07-25 05:30:04 ET

When it comes to addictions, as trite as it sounds, the first step is really acknowledging it yourself. When I lived with my parents, they tried to coerce me into a treatment facility. It didn't happen and it just made me resentful. Give him some time, sobriety is hard to tackle and full of pitfalls but ultimately if you're determined to stay sober it apparently gets better. But that can take months or years. Just hang in there for him.

2013-07-25 11:06:38 ET

I've always heard that the addiction is just the presenting problem--that there are underlying problems. I might mention that this is not a young person, and now he is surfacing resentments from long long ago. Maybe 40 -50 years ago. It's like he has changed, and now I don't have a clue who he is. And now I don't trust him like I once did, because he has become so unpredictable.

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