What does it mean to be an addict or alcoholic? I’m not talking about the medical definition but at the core who are these people? Here’s what I learned in my 10 years in and out of the rooms of a 12-step program. Addicts and Alcoholics are...
It’s about 7 p.m. on a Wednesday night. It’s still over a hundred degrees outside in the desert. The air conditioning is blasting. You can hear laughter in the air. In this nondescript building, in a nondescript neighborhood lives about 20 women. They come from all...
What do you think when someone says tell me a story? Does it conjure up images of beasts and princesses? Maybe it’s a little more personal. A time when you laughed so hard you cried, or cried so hard you laughed. Chances are it’s a...
It’s been called a weaponized form of marijuana by the police commissioner of New York City. On the street it’s known as Spice, K2, or Black Mamba depending on where you are in the country. The headlines say “synthetic marijuana”. No matter its name it’s...
This two-day workshop was a great success and a lot of fun. It gave everyone the opportunity to reach out to fellow colleagues, to meet, dine and socialize with like-minded professionals, to learn from each other, and to grow our outreach. For information on how to attend...
The club drug Molly, which is a street name for a drug called MDMA, has been linked to an increasing number of deaths recently. This is very troubling for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that many of the deaths...
One of the country’s top electronic music festivals, Electric Zoo, recently cancelled its third day of programming after two concert goers who attended the first two days of the concert died due to what appear to be drug related issues. Four other concert goers are...
Life in the public eye is not easy for many people: the pressure of fame, a demanding career, and the discomfort of being in the public eye can be incredibly waring. For a person who struggles with addiction, these pressures can be particularly stressful and...
If a person is engaged in a dangerous compulsive behavior like drug addiction, their friends and family will likely become extremely worried about them. There are few things as frustrating as watching someone you care about putting themselves and those around them in danger. When a person is addicted to drugs or alcohol, they are not in control of their actions. Their mind has become fixated on using and doing whatever they must do to find more drugs or alcohol. This often comes at the price of their jobs, their relationships, and their general well being. People around the addict may be very hurt by the things the addict says or does to them, and have no idea what they can do to help the situation.
It is important that anyone close to an addict realizes that they cannot make a loved one stop using drugs or alcohol. That is ultimately a decision that only the addict themselves can make. What friends and family of an addict can do, however, is make sure that their loved one knows how their addiction is affecting them and making them feel. This is what an intervention is for. If you are ready to stage an intervention, you should make sure that you do the planning and work necessary to make it as effective as possible. Here are the steps you should plan on taking:
If you have a loved one who is suffering from addiction, it is not at all uncommon to feel frustrated and confused about what to do. Addiction is a disease that completely takes over a person’s ability to live their life normally. Most addicts will behave in a way that is hurtful or upsetting to the people around them, and confronting an addict about their behavior can be difficult in a number of ways. Because drugs and alcohol affect a person’s emotions, people who are chemically dependent can be very emotionally unstable.
When a person is addicted to drugs or alcohol, they are also singularly fixated on procuring more drugs or alcohol. This thought drives all of their actions, and any person or thing who gets in the way of them continuing to use will likely be met with anger. For these reasons, no one who plans on confronting their loved one about drug or alcohol abuse should do so alone. If you have come to a place where you realize you must confront a loved one about their addiction, you absolutely should enlist the help of a professional interventionist.