Bill Maher, Interventionist

Specializing in Gentle, Respectful Intervention of Alcoholism and Other Addictions

Parents— Don’t Try This at Home

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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.

Addiction treatment is never as straightforward as, say, cutting out a tumor or setting a broken bone. This disease is confusing and crazy-making. In the beginning, addiction looks a lot like a behavior problem. The manipulative behavior and the stealing feels like such a personal assault when in fact, it’s part of the disease process and there is an appropriate way to react to these behaviors that is not what you’d think.

We pull out our parenting tools and crack down with strict limits and consequences. Our intentions are good but, as the disease progresses, families don’t have the tools to deal with it on their own.

That’s why it’s important to seek help from a qualified addiction counselor, preferably one with experience in intervention, so that you make educated decisions and utilize your funds in the best way possible. Sure, I’m biased since that’s what I do.

But consider this. While a specialist costs money, just like a doctor costs money, they can direct your loved one to the best treatment for that individual and also save you money in the end– money that may have been wasted on the wrong treatment option for your child.

At the very least, find support for yourself.

Finding Help for Addiction

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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).

Step Two: Now, start calling your list of recommended professionals and pay attention to their initial response. My approach is to ask family members to take some time before hiring me to watch my video talks about addiction and alcoholism, and read the client testimonials and client stories on my website. I also ask them to call two of my client references. My former clients will often say something like, “When Bill told us to do this, we thought he was crazy. But in the end, he was right.” This background research helps new clients establish trust in me before we begin the arduous process of intervention, recovery treatment, and aftercare. The road to recovery from drug addiction and/or alcoholism is often bumpy. When I work with families, there are often rough patches, such as when parents balk when I tell them to stop paying an adult child’s rent or confiscate a teenager’s cell phone. But they’ll remember my former clients’ words: “We thought he was crazy but his advice worked”.

Trust is everything in this process, and trust in who you are working with for the intervention is essential. In the end, you know your loved one better than I do. But I know the disease of addication better than you do. Together, we’ll work as a team to help your loved one get onto the road to recovery.

Bill Maher, Interventionist, is a Board Registered Interventionist II and Member of the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors and member of The Association of Intervention Specialists.

Can we talk about alcoholism and Anthony Bourdain?

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Anthony Bourdain and AlcoholismI didn’t know Anthony Bourdain, but felt like I did in one small important way. In him, I saw a drinking alcoholic with a front-stage vigorous attempt to do it successfully. His was a fantastic life-embracing show, with drinking taking a prominent role in the joie de vivre, and sometimes that made it hard for me to watch.

When he threw back shots, indeed got wasted, I saw a fellow alcoholic living dangerously whereas most viewers, I imagine, saw “a man who knew how to drink, knew how to live.” His state of mind will be called depression, and who can argue with that in the wake of his suicide. But can we please, people, start connecting the dots to alcoholism (also a disease of the mind), at least when it is screamingly evident?
Perhaps I should not presume to think I know, but I can at least invite the conversation where it is uncomfortably and amazingly absent. Did alcoholism (which brings depression or ineffectively “treats” depression) ultimately take down Bourdain?

Alcohol is a drug. “Drugs” and “alcohol” remain separate in conversations about addiction, like a “bad sister” doing outrageous unthinkable things while the “good sister” quietly nurses a prom hangover and shame from a blackout.

Can Bourdain’s death please generate a conversation about alcoholism and not just befuddlement about his fantastic life that countless people wish they had? Because you don’t want his life. The travel, the breadth of his experiences, sure, maybe. But this man on the move had to stop sometimes. No cameras, no action. Just himself. I didn’t know him, but I do know addiction and it can be a fiercely critical companion that may take a back seat but lies in wait. It can tear us down and sometimes just won’t shut up — goading shame, provoking self-loathing and inviting emotional isolation.

When you’re an addict, as he proclaimed he was, it’s highly risky to keep one drug on board. He had respect and fear of the “hard drugs.” He reportedly was grateful and humble for having escaped death by addiction decades ago.

We’ll be talking about depression and suicide for days now, with Kate Spade’s and Bourdain’s suicides, until another famous person with a seemingly magnificent life shocks us. Bourdain was a famous, beloved “bad boy” as one friend described him. He demonstrated a generosity of self. He cared deeply, it would seem, about injustice, and about the opiate-addicted with whom he empathized. I’ve found, working with the addicted, both those using and those in recovery, that addicts/alcoholics are generally extremely sensitive souls.

Alcohol “works” for the alcoholic until it doesn’t. It promises and delivers what we seek from it for years, until it stops working. Yet still we want to drink like everybody else. Drinking is fun, right? It goes with culinary delights, correct? It enhances life, isn’t that so? Well, yes, and no. Certainly ultimately “no” if you have the malady, which quietly marches on and in time takes our joy, even our will to live and carry on and pretend we’re OK. We’re not OK. We are just good actors. Bourdain perhaps was one of the best. With alcoholism, we make rules as we go along, to prove we have control. We also break those rules. We take life by the tail, but, dare I say, some weary of the show and let go.

This is a progressive, chronic, fatal disease with predictable stages. The brain science is in, and has been for years, yet it is ignored or given short shrift because drinking is such a huge part of our cultural fabric. We don’t stop and think about it until we’re forced to; until it’s obvious, undeniable, that someone we care about is suffering.

Alcoholics minimize, deny, believe their drinking is under control, and refuse to connect the dots — that drinking for escape, relief or to solve problems is creating more problems, and is taking a toll on self-worth and perhaps cognition. The substance they are drinking for “a lift” is a depressant. The guilt, shame, powerlessness and depression can take them down.

Blessedly it can also wake us up to the true nature of our disease. We stop separating “drugs” from “alcohol.” We find freedom from the tyranny that is addiction, that is alcoholism. Can we at least talk about it?

Written by Jo Ann Towle (reprinted with permision). Jo Ann Towle, is a certified intervention professional who helps people find treatment for addiction.

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

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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.

You see, we had become professionals at helping Fitzhugh’s disease thrive. Our lives revolved around it. Mom kept him from flunking out of school, Dad paid his bills, and I covered for him whenever trouble arose. We kept him from suffering any of the consequences of his alcohol and drug abuse.

I’ll go ahead and sound like a broken record – addiction is a family disease. Everyone in the family is affected, not just the addict.

Before Fitzhugh came home we had to take a hard look at ourselves – our habits, our family dynamics, and the trauma that we had been through. We had to change. With the guidance and support of Bill Maher and the support we found in Al-Anon, we found a new normal.

It wasn’t easy, or fun necessarily. But we decided that if keeping old habits meant hurting Fitzhugh’s recovery, that wasn’t going to work for us. To our pleasant surprise, the new normal has been hugely rewarding.

Mom found a new troublemaker to keep tabs on in our new lab puppy – allowing some breathing room for both she and my brother. Dad started meditating and going to Al-Anon regularly, making him a bit more flexible in his daily routine. And I’ve reaped the huge reward of helping many friends whose family members have gone through the same thing as mine.

Through these changes to better ourselves, we’ve created a stronger support network for one another. And we’re doing all that we can to support my brother in his health and recovery.

If your loved one recently went to treatment, call Bill so that you can learn to support them in recovery, rather than making sobriety harder. Bill can be reached at bill@interventionctr.com or call (804) 677-7728.