Bill Maher, Interventionist

Family Intervention Center of Virginia

alcoholism

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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Finding the Best Treatment Center

Selecting an appropriate facility for an addict and their family is an art form. One size does NOT fit all. In my experience, placing alcoholics and addicts in a treatment center with people of similar characteristics has big advantages. Over the years many treatment centers will find a niche group of people that they are good at and focus on that population. Would an alcoholic, senior executive relate well to a 19-year-old crack addict? Would a wealthy, isolated family matriarch fit in a program designed for youth? It is critical to match these wounded humans with the correct support and treatment. We’ve seen significant success from having physicians treated with other physicians. The same concept works for other populations. What about someone with a high security clearance? We now have substance abuse treatment facilities that specialize in licensed health professionals, military personnel, gay & lesbian populations, etc. These specially designed programs are highly effective in treating these various populations. I work with well over 200 inpatient treatment facilities, countless outpatient programs, and numerous clinicians all over the country to find the sweet spot for a family member, colleague or friend.  It’s worth the investment to hire a professional “treatment specialist,” to assist families with finding the right addiction treatment program for their loved one.