Bill Maher, Interventionist

Family Intervention Center of Virginia

Family Intervention

Growth After Trauma

Positive Growth After Living With Addiction

Recovery is Post Traumatic Growth! Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains transformation following trauma. Substance Use Disorders (SUD) either exacerbate existing trauma, or cause significant new trauma. Psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, theorized that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. I have witnessed miraculous growth by families recovering from a substance use disorder as they take this on with the use of specific tools. And, there are many rewards.

Out of post-traumatic growth I have seen family members develop a new understanding of themselves, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life. They accomplish a deep level of intimacy within the family relationships. The video is a great example of what type of success families can experience.
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Parents— Don’t Try This at Home

teenage alcoholismIt’s mind-boggling to me that families often try to treat the medical disease of addiction at home. If your teenager broke his arm, would you set the bone at the kitchen table? If he had an asthma attack, would you lecture him about getting his act together?

Of course not.

Still, families grapple with addiction at home for two reasons: First, addiction can look an awful lot like bad behavior, especially at the outset.  And second, parents feel embarrassed that addiction has found it’s way into their family, so they try solving the problem behind closed doors. There is a lot of shame related to this disease— parents feel as if they have failed.

In my 30 years as an interventionist, I’ve come to understand that addiction is one of the most complicated medical diseases to date. Few addicts recover on their own. And when they do, the hidden components of the disease have often gone untreated. An incomplete treatment leaves the entire family vulnerable to relapse. It can fracture families, which is counterproductive to your loved one finding and remaining in recovery.

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Finding Help for Addiction

Someone you love is showing signs of addiction. You’ve devoured books with titles like “Walking on Eggshells”. You’ve nudged, you’ve argued, and you’ve threatened. You’ve seen counselors and sought the advice of trusted friends. Still, the crazy-making behavior is accelerating like a runaway train and, by now, you’re feeling desperate.
Where do you turn?

Your next step is to seek the guidance of a certified addiction professional, ideally someone with experience in substance abuse intervention. But how do you find a reputable one? Who can you trust? As an addiction interventionist for 30 years, here’s my best advice:

Step One: Call a respected treatment center and ask them to refer you to an independent addiction professional in your area. Ask who they’d recommend for interventions. Who are their best referring case managers, addiction specialists, or interventionists in your city? Three programs I’d suggest calling include Milestones at Onsite in Tennessee, Cirque Lodge in Utah, or Saint Christopher’s in Louisiana. Jot down the names they offer, then call a second treatment center and ask the same questions. After a few phone calls, you’ll start hearing the same names. (In the Richmond, Virginia area, in addition to my intervention services, I recommend Gail Santarelli, LPC at Richmond IOP or Maryann Cox, LCSW. In Charlottesville, VA. I’d suggest Dr. Kevin Doyle).

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Your loved one is in treatment for alcoholism or addiction – now what?

family intervention
Mary Gray with her brother, Fitzhugh

By Mary Gray Johnson

Maybe this makes me a bad person, but during the first month that my brother was in treatment I didn’t miss him. In fact, I was glad he was there. I could take a sigh of relief knowing that he was alive and safe – one I’d been holding in for the last five years.

After catching my breath, the reality of his absence set in. I began to miss him, and I started thinking about his return home. This would be great! My brother was sober and healthy! Everything would go back to normal!

Do you see where I’m going with this? When someone gets out of treatment, things can’t just go back to “normal.” And that’s a scary realization for most people – like my Dad, who had literally maintained the same daily routine for the past 25 years.

We realized that if my family kept living our lives like normal, we would be making it significantly harder for Fitzhugh to stay sober.

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Family intervention: Escaping the chaos of drug addiction and alcoholism

family interventionBy Mary Gray Johnson

The morning after my last exam of sophomore year of college, I woke up to a phone call from my mom saying that my brother was in a drug-induced coma and the doctors didn’t know if he would wake up. She didn’t assure me that everything “would be okay.” My normally unshaken mother couldn’t fix this.

My brother is one year younger than me, and at the time we were both attending colleges in Virginia about an hour from each other. He drank a lot. He smoked a lot of pot. And he also took a lot of anxiety medication, as far as I was aware. In retrospect, his incessant substance use clearly showed signs of addiction and/or alcoholism. Since early adolescence he had caused my family huge amount of pain and embarrassment. I knew that his habits weren’t healthy, but I justified it because he was in college. I thought that one day he’d outgrow it. Little did I know, he didn’t know how to stop using.

The one-hour drive to the hospital, knowing that my baby brother might be dead was the worst hour of my life. I was physically sickened because I knew that I could have done something to avoid it.

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