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"  High-profile addiction-related deaths of celebrities like Michael Jackson and DJ AM, combined with the explosion of rehab reality TV\u2014like A&amp;amp;amp;E&amp;#039;s Intervention, Obsessed, and Hoarders, and VH1&amp;#039;s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Sober House, and Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew\u2014have brought self-destructive dependency issues and the word &amp;quot;intervention&amp;quot; to the forefront of societal consciousness. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s definitely been an increase in the awareness of interventions,&amp;quot; says Ed Storti, CADC II, an interventionist who has practiced the trade for 34 years. &amp;quot;When I used to show up at people&amp;#039;s homes, they thought I was there to broker a real estate deal and give them a parcel of land. Now when the subject sees me they know immediately what&amp;#039;s happening. Through reality TV, I think people are much more aware; I get a lot more phone inquiries from families today.&amp;quot; But while knowledge of the existence of interventions has increased, experts agree that many Americans are still fuzzy when it comes to the details.   More Than Words &amp;quot;People now know of the word intervention and think they understand what it means, but more often than not they go about intervening the wrong way,&amp;quot; says Drew Pinsky, MD, addiction-medicine specialist and rehab-reality-TV fixture. &amp;quot;I see people staging things on their own. But discussing the nature of somebody&amp;#039;s condition over breakfast isn&amp;#039;t an intervention. An intervention is much more than telling someone they have a problem in a unified fashion; treatment options should be in place.&amp;quot; Sam Mettler, creator and executive producer of Intervention, adds: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very, very complicated procedure and you need an objective, knowledgeable voice there to orchestrate it. People don&amp;#039;t understand how little they know. You&amp;#039;re not going to perform your own dentistry or therapy\u2014why would you perform your own intervention?&amp;quot; Mary*, a young professional living in New York City, says she saw firsthand how casual intervening can go awry. &amp;quot;I have a group of fairly hard-partying friends, one of whom\u2014we&amp;#039;ll call her Lisa\u2014is known to routinely pass out on the subway, losing her phone and/or having her purse stolen as a result.&amp;quot; According to Mary, at one point Lisa confided that she didn&amp;#039;t want to live to see 30; she just wanted to do &amp;quot;a bunch of drugs.&amp;quot; This spurred several of Lisa&amp;#039;s friends to take action. &amp;quot;They began to discuss staging an intervention\u2014to tell her she was loved and that everyone wanted her to be happy and calm down,&amp;quot; says Mary, explaining that &amp;quot;it was decided three people would be the interveners.&amp;quot;  However, months later when the women finally found time to schedule the intervention, Mary received an e-mail from Lisa the night before the intervention, recounting her weekend\u2014which included clubbing and doing ecstasy with one of the chosen interveners. &amp;quot;I wondered how the girls could be interventionists when they were partying just as hard as Lisa,&amp;quot; says Mary. &amp;quot;Their excuse was that they could handle their drugs and alcohol whereas Lisa could not.&amp;quot; The intervention finally did happen. The women simply went to Lisa&amp;#039;s home and told her they cared about her, and wanted her to be careful. End of intervention. &amp;quot;The following weekend, I met Lisa out at a bar,&amp;quot; says Mary, &amp;quot;and by the end of the night, she had disappeared and I couldn&amp;#039;t find her anywhere. The next day, she told me that she didn&amp;#039;t remember a thing about our night out.&amp;quot;  All in the Family &amp;quot;The reason why informal interventions don&amp;#039;t work is because the family and friends are part of the problem,&amp;quot; says interventionist Vincent Casolaro, LCSW, MAC, CASAC, president of Inter-Care Private Service and co-founder of the Inter-Care Outpatient Program.  According to his partner, Robert Smith, LCSW, vice president of Inter-Care Private Service and co-founder of the Inter-Care Outpatient Program with Casolaro, &amp;quot;It helps me to think of interventions as a formula\u2014one plus two equals three: the addicted individual, the enabling family members, and a family disease, respectively. What we&amp;#039;ve learned over the past 30-plus years of performing interventions is that when the individual takes responsibility, most of the time it&amp;#039;s because the family and friends have changed. That&amp;#039;s how you alter the formula.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We did an intervention recently where a chemically dependent person said, `I&amp;#039;m not going to stop drinking,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Casolaro. &amp;quot;And the family&amp;#039;s response was `Fine, have it your way. However, our new behavior is that we&amp;#039;re cutting off the credit card and the car\u2014you&amp;#039;ve already had three major accidents and almost killed yourself. You can continue to drink but you can&amp;#039;t do it on our dime. And we&amp;#039;re not doing it to punish you; we&amp;#039;re doing it so that we&amp;#039;re not helping contribute to your demise.&amp;#039; The chemically dependent person then decided to go into treatment.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s difficult for the family to realize that it&amp;#039;s just as hard for them to stop being enablers as it is for the chemically dependent person to stop using,&amp;quot; adds Smith. &amp;quot;We have to do family sculptures and show them how they&amp;#039;re enabling. That way the whole family is working on a primary illness that, once fixed, begins to help other problems like finances and relationship issues.&amp;quot;  Intervention Techniques In keeping with the notion that addiction is a family disease, the specialist will often counsel the family or refer them to a treatment program while the addicted person is in a treatment center. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t send someone away to treatment for 60 to 90 days only to have them return to the exact same environment. Something has to change with the family too,&amp;quot; says Candy Finnigan, CADC II, a regular on Intervention who will direct families to Al-Anon, Alateen, and Nar-Anon. The events that occur prior to the treatment phase, however, often depend on an interventionist&amp;#039;s school of thought. &amp;quot;There are different techniques\u2014some interventionists are really loving, others are very tough,&amp;quot; says Pinsky.  &amp;quot;Certain people will tell me they want to do an intervention and if the person doesn&amp;#039;t go to treatment that day, they&amp;#039;re going to call the police. That&amp;#039;s a case I will not take,&amp;quot; says Storti. &amp;quot;There are interventionists who don&amp;#039;t mind doing that, but I&amp;#039;d rather treat the individual with firmness yet kindness.&amp;quot;  Why do some families and friends feel the need for a harsher approach? Storti says it&amp;#039;s likely because they view the possibility of not beginning treatment on the day of the intervention as failure. &amp;quot;The truth is, a seed was planted,&amp;quot; says Storti. &amp;quot;In my experience, if people don&amp;#039;t go that day, eight out of 10 will go to treatment a few weeks to a few months later.&amp;quot; Most controversial among interventionists, though, is how an intervention should be initiated. Storti and Finnigan each use the approach seen on Intervention, where surprise is a key component. Storti likens it to an intricately planned sting operation\u2014deciding who sits next to whom in the meeting room, who deals with the individual when they walk into the intervention, which person follows them if they leave the room, who&amp;#039;s escorting them to the treatment center, etc.  *Name has been changed to protect identity  Says Finnigan, who helps families find the appropriate treatment facility and transportation prior to the intervention, &amp;quot;You must get everything in alignment because you have to take the person to treatment the day you intervene. You can&amp;#039;t let them sit at home and think about it or else they might run away or accidentally overdose. You can&amp;#039;t risk anything.&amp;quot; Though Casolaro and Smith agree that treatment after an intervention should be swift and efficient, they disagree with Storti&amp;#039;s and Finnigan&amp;#039;s stealthy pre-intervention measures. &amp;quot;I threw a surprise party for my wife twice, and each time she wanted to punch me in the nose,&amp;quot; says Casolaro. &amp;quot;Being sneaked up upon is scary. You want to have some kind of control over your destiny. Our invitational model allows for self-determination.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The family and the loved one that they&amp;#039;re concerned about come in together for an informational session before an intervention takes place\u2014the person is invited by the family to participate,&amp;quot; says Smith. &amp;quot;We explain to the individual that we feel this is a family issue, and the family as a whole needs to get help.&amp;quot; Too avoid a situation where a behaviorally challenged loved one reacts badly. Casolaro encourages families to refrain from saying &amp;quot;You need help,&amp;quot; and instead to say &amp;quot;We need help. Please come and join us. We&amp;#039;re having trouble and we need you to be part of the solution.&amp;quot;   Intervention History Finnigan and Storti&amp;#039;s methods are based on those of Vernon Johnson, &amp;quot;the father of interventions as we know them today,&amp;quot; says Finnigan, who was trained by Johnson at Scripps Memorial Hospital in LaJolla, Calif. Casolaro and Smith also employed Johnson&amp;#039;s approach early in their careers before modifying their technique.  An Episcopal minister from Minnesota, Johnson was treated for alcoholism in 1962. Following his recovery, he became particularly sensitive to others&amp;#039; alcohol addictions and according to Finnigan, &amp;quot;after an alcohol-related death he would gather the deceased&amp;#039;s family and friends together following the funeral and go around the room asking each person to share something wonderful about the deceased and how they wished they could&amp;#039;ve helped them. During these meetings it suddenly occurred to Johnson that he could save alcoholics who were still alive through their families.&amp;quot; Johnson&amp;#039;s program challenged the idea that a chemically dependent person had to &amp;quot;hit bottom&amp;quot; before outside assistance could be offered, a belief that resonates with Mettler. &amp;quot;I wrote the pitch for Intervention after someone in my life who should&amp;#039;ve received an intervention didn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Performing an intervention before someone hits rock bottom can be the most loving act because it can prevent the person from hitting a horrible bottom such as death, jail, or accidentally killing someone else.&amp;quot; Adds Storti: &amp;quot;Some people are incapable of asking for help and making a healthy decision. If you&amp;#039;re going to lose the person, then why not create a psychic jolt to pull them out? Johnson was the one who coined the term sincere delusion, the idea that most people are sincerely deluded and that you can create a crisis in their life by intervening.&amp;quot; Originally, Johnson&amp;#039;s intervention teachings extended solely to his parishioners. But as his ideas took hold, he eventually ended up co-founding the Johnson Institute in 1966, which helped employers assist employees suffering from chemical dependency. &amp;quot;He performed a lot of corporate interventions and they just escalated,&amp;quot; says Finnigan. &amp;quot;I got my beginnings doing interventions as a co-coordinator of an Employee Assistance Program [EAP], a union-based organization at Pan American World Airways in 1973,&amp;quot; says Casolaro. &amp;quot;They learned how to do it three or four years prior to me, and it was determined that it was the best way to motivate chemically dependent individuals into treatment. The occupational programs identified job-performance problems and helped Americans get better. They went against the erroneous belief that you couldn&amp;#039;t help people with drug problems until the late stages.&amp;quot; Though Finnigan notes that there were high-profile interventions done on powerful Wall Street businessmen beginning in the mid-&amp;#039;60s through EAPs, Storti says that &amp;quot;Betty Ford&amp;#039;s is one of the most famous interventions.&amp;quot; Performed in 1978, the intervention was planned by the former First Lady&amp;#039;s daughter, who gathered the family together for Ford, who was addicted to alcohol and prescription painkillers. After completing a rehabilitation program at the Long Beach Naval Hospital, Ford co-founded the Betty Ford Center in 1982 with tire and wine magnate Leonard Firestone, who was also a longtime supporter of alcoholism treatment and EAPs. Ford was a constant presence at her clinic\u2014affectionately called &amp;quot;Camp Betty&amp;quot; by current and former patients\u2014and a strong voice for chemical dependency treatment. The author of two books chronicling addiction and recovery, Ford helped further the awareness of interventions. Despite the surge in interventions throughout the &amp;#039;60s and &amp;#039;70s, Storti notes that &amp;quot;there have been interventions throughout the world for years, even centuries\u2014they just came in different packages.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The word intervention hasn&amp;#039;t always been used, but anytime people come together for an emotional meeting of the minds to help one another\u2014whether it&amp;#039;s spiritual or physical\u2014basically, they&amp;#039;re intervening,&amp;quot; says Finnigan.   The Future of Interventions &amp;quot;Addiction knows no boundary, whether it&amp;#039;s gender, race, economics\u2014it does not discriminate,&amp;quot; says Mettler. In terms of female versus male addictions, though, Casolaro and Smith say that women-focused interventions are the most difficult to do.  &amp;quot;Just as men typically don&amp;#039;t want to ask for directions on the road while lost, they often don&amp;#039;t want to ask for outside help when their wife has an addiction,&amp;quot; says Casolaro. &amp;quot;They feel ashamed that they can&amp;#039;t get a hold of their wife&amp;#039;s problem and do something about it. The wife is allowed to feel feelings in society but there are obstacles and dynamics that keep men from moving forward.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And the way that plays out is that if the husband is the one with the problem we&amp;#039;ll get a call from the wife\u2014she&amp;#039;ll ask for help. But if we have the wife drinking alcohol, we hear from the children,&amp;quot; adds Smith, citing Betty Ford&amp;#039;s situation as an example (the first lady&amp;#039;s daughter was the one who initiated the intervention for Ford&amp;#039;s alcoholism, not President Ford). While alcoholism may have been the most treated addiction in Ford and Vernon Johnson&amp;#039;s time, treatable addictions today run the gamut with specialists reporting interventions on everything from OCD and hoarding to TV, video game, and shopping obsessions. But the most prevalent issue, say experts, is prescription medication abuse, which the federal government estimates is a problem among 15 million Americans. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, made a point of acknowledging the seriousness of the epidemic in the wake of Michael Jackson&amp;#039;s prescription-medicine-induced death.  &amp;quot;The Office of National Drug Control Policy has been shouting about prescription drug abuse from the rooftops for the past several months. It&amp;#039;s a significant problem in this country,&amp;quot; Kerlikowske told CBS&amp;#039; The Early Show last July. &amp;quot;When we look at what&amp;#039;s killing people in this country, as recently as 2006 the data showed that more people were dying of drug overdoses than were actually dying from gunshot wounds in the United States. All of the prescription drugs have legitimate medical uses but the key is they&amp;#039;re being abused.&amp;quot;  Pinsky echoes Kerlikowske&amp;#039;s sentiments. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a massive problem right now,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;A CNN poll revealed that one in five Americans abuse prescription drugs at some point in their life and 20,000 die each year. And the National Association of School Nurses reported that a quarter of 12th-graders abuse them.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;More often than not I see people on prescription drugs,&amp;quot; confirms Storti of his field observations, adding that &amp;quot;the availability of them over the Internet has really exploded the problem.&amp;quot; In spite of illegal online trafficking of prescription medications, however, Pinsky says that even when taken legally under doctor&amp;#039;s orders prescribed drugs can become a problem. About his friend DJ AM&amp;#039;s death from crack cocaine and an overload of prescription drugs, Pinsky says the over-the-counter pills likely triggered AM&amp;#039;s old habits (he was a recovering heroin addict): &amp;quot;When I first heard the news, I thought no way. And then I thought, Oh God, someone put him on prescription antianxiety meds after that plane accident last year in September. Even if medications are appropriately prescribed and used, the disease of addiction is building momentum the entire time you&amp;#039;re exposed to that chemical and will eventually explode back to your drug of choice.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s some controversy in the field and people would argue with me here, but every day in my professional life I see that you can not stay sober long-term if the biology of addiction is being massaged by a pharmaceutical or pharmacological agent,&amp;quot; Pinsky continues. &amp;quot;AM went through tons of stresses while sober\u2014breakups with Mandy Moore, career changes, trying to work in the clubs. But when he&amp;#039;s on an addictive chemical and has major stress\u2014pow. That&amp;#039;s what happened to him. It&amp;#039;s subtle, cunning, and pernicious and it requires people who manage it to have a lot of experience.&amp;quot;  Overcoming Addiction The first step in battling addiction is being able to recognize that your loved one has a problem\u2014something that&amp;#039;s hard to detect in the early stages, according to Pinsky. &amp;quot;There are no signs, but when it progresses, it becomes obvious\u2014the tensions begin to mount, the person has interpersonal difficulties, erratic behavior, absences, emotional outbursts, changes at work,&amp;quot; he says.  Casolaro agrees with Pinsky that detection can be tough, but says a good indicator of when an intervention is needed is when your norms and values\u2014as well as the chemically dependent&amp;#039;s norms and values\u2014start changing. &amp;quot;People are aware of what they&amp;#039;re doing\u2014they start enabling and making excuses for the person\u2014but they continue to do it because they think someday it&amp;#039;s magically going to get better,&amp;quot; he says. Adds Pinsky, &amp;quot;Because the objective data is difficult to put your finger on, when you get a sense that something&amp;#039;s up, know that it is. Trust your instincts.&amp;quot; Once an addiction is identified and you decide to intervene, begin what Finnigan calls &amp;quot;intervention shopping.&amp;quot; Visit reputable websites such as AIS and the Addiction Resource Guide and be sure to find a specialist with at least a few hundred successful interventions under their belt. Also contact licensed rehabilitation centers, which usually have a list of preferred interventionists that they use.  Interventionists should be licensed clinical social workers (LCSW), psychologists, or individuals with a CADC (Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor) or CASAC (Certified Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor) certification. &amp;quot;You should feel comfortable with the interventionist and ask them about their own history\u2014see if they understand recovery and will follow the patient through treatment and help them get the help they need,&amp;quot; says Finnigan.  Adds Mettler: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very important that interventionists put in their time in the recovery field, whether it&amp;#039;s at treatment centers or getting their master&amp;#039;s in psychology.&amp;quot;  The downside of interventions is that unlike various treatment centers that accept insurance, the act of intervening is not covered. &amp;quot;And there&amp;#039;s no regulation of intervention fees,&amp;quot; says Finnigan. &amp;quot;There are people I know in Los Angeles who do interventions for $12,000 to $15,000. I don&amp;#039;t think they have any more credentials or power than anyone else but they&amp;#039;ve chosen to charge that amount. But I also know a guy in his 70s\u2014he&amp;#039;s been doing it for years and he does it for $750.&amp;quot; Says Casolaro, &amp;quot;Interventions run anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000, depending on how long you work with the family and where you&amp;#039;re traveling to.&amp;quot; (Casolaro says he and Smith have traveled as far as Singapore and Beirut.)  That said, Smith explains that you can get a lot for your $5,000: &amp;quot;It sounds like a tons of money but it&amp;#039;s important to consider how much time the interventionist is spending with the family. It&amp;#039;s a six-month process and the interventionist provides plenty of support.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I spent 38 hours straight with a family last weekend,&amp;quot; says Casolaro, who talks of the Inter-Care Family Foundation that he and Smith founded to help those who can&amp;#039;t afford an intervention. &amp;quot;Families will go to any lengths\u2014they&amp;#039;ll mortgage their house, max out their credit card\u2014but we want to make sure it&amp;#039;s healthful. With the foundation, we now have the luxury of coming up with monies to help people who are unable to afford the intervention process.&amp;quot; For her fee, Finnigan says she also helps families locate the proper treatment facility for their loved one. &amp;quot;Based on their physical and mental conditions, I&amp;#039;ll choose the appropriate facility,&amp;quot; says Finnigan, who notes that the designated treatment center &amp;quot;depends on what drug they use, what kind of detox it is\u2014you also have to fall into line with what the family can afford, whether they have insurance for rehab treatment, and if the place is around them.&amp;quot; In addition to the financial hurdles surrounding interventions, the acknowledgement of an addiction&amp;#039;s seriousness can make getting to the actual intervention stage difficult. &amp;quot;Addiction has a worse prognosis than most cancers,&amp;quot; says Pinsky. &amp;quot;I tell someone they have cancer and they want to be airlifted to a cancer treatment center; I tell someone they have an addiction and they&amp;#039;re going to die and they want to argue with me about the treatment.&amp;quot; Smith agrees: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the saddest part about intervention. When people come to do it, it&amp;#039;s usually during the late stages of the disease. It takes a lot for them to reach outside that shame circle and ask for professional help. But the earlier people do it, the better off all of us are. Addiction is an involuntary situation\u2014it&amp;#039;s a terminal illness that keeps progressing, and it&amp;#039;s not anybody&amp;#039;s fault.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/a10481/intervention-the-rehabilitation-craze-359145/>