INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / OCTOBER 31, 1989

 

 

 

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Intervention Seminar

 

How to Help Those Who Don't Want Help

Intervention. Is it possible to
help a family member or close
friend who hasa serious problem
with alcohol or drug abuse?

Sooner or later, alcoholics and
drug addicts end up out of control,
and become increasingly destruc-
tive to everyone around them. The
myth is that unless these people
have finally “bottomed out” and
are genuinely willing to change, it
is impossible to help them.

This may be partly true, but ac-
cording to Roy Adams, a counsellor
with New Westminster’s Pacifica
Treatment Centre Society, there are
effective techniques for interven-

 

about how the behaviour of the al-
coholic or addict has affected them.
“This sort of groundwork is ab-
solutely essential,” says Adams.
“The family needs to sort out their
own issues among themselves.”
“The alcoholic or addict seems
to have a way of separating mem-
bers of the family from one another.
Family members often feel isolated.
But pre-intervention counselling
can have a beneficial ripple effect.
As the rest of the family becomes
more integrated and secure in them-
selves, this can have a very good ef-
fect on the substance abuser,
particularly with seniors.”

 

If family members are prepared carefully beforehand, as
many as half of interventions attempted can be successful.

 

tion that are designed to encourage
alcoholics or drug addicts to want
help.

“If family members are
prepared carefully beforehand, as
many as half of interventions at-
tempted can be successful,” he says.

Douglas College is hosting a
seminar called Intervention: How
to Help Those Who Don’t Want
Help on November 16 and 17. The
workshop will be led by specialists
from the Johnson Institute of Min-
neapolis, one of North America’s
most experienced treatment centres.

“Many interventions are car-
ried out by the employer and these
can be successful,” Adams says. “I
prefer to work with the family. |
place a lot of importance on their in-
volvement.”

Before confronting the sub-
stance abuser, Adams says it is
necessary to meet several times
with family members so that
everyone involved feels comfort-
able expressing their own feelings

 

When it comes to the interven-
tion itself, the process should be
one in which each family member
tells how he has been affected by
the abuser. This is not judging,
preaching or demanding, warns
Adams. If done properly it can help
to motivate the alcoholic or addict
to recognize the problem and
decide to change.

Ronald Conboy, of Maple
Ridge Alcohol and Drug clinic,
agrees that intervention should not
be an accusatory confrontation. It
should be a process where the fami-
ly mirrors back to the victim what
they have observed and how they
have been affected by the
alcoholic’s behaviour. It should be
aimed at getting the victim of sub-
stance abuse into treatment.

“To have it work there should
be some sort of hammer or ul-
timatum to help to coerce people
into seeking treatment,” Conboy
says.
Adam’s adds that the method

 

of intervention varies depending
on the abuser. “With middle-aged
people, you can usually approach
them with the danger of losing
their marriage or their job. But with
the elderly, you need a totally dif-
ferent approach. Their physical
health is important to them and
their bodies can deteriorate very
rapidly, particularly if they are
mixing prescription drugs with al-
cohol.”

“Even for people in mid-life,
mixing booze with prescription
drugs such as pain-killers, anal-
gesics, sleeping pills, anything with
codeine in it, will triple the
debilitating effects of the alcohol,”
Conboy says.

“For people over 65 years the
effect is even more dangerous.
Mixing pills and booze quadruples
the damage.” Adams adds that
there are now many more elderly
victims of substance abuse because
people are living longer and they
appear to have more disposable in-
come.

The two-day seminar on
November 16 and 17 will be held at
Douglas College’s New
Westminster campus. Particpants
will learn the Johnson Institute
family model of intervention, the
roles education and counselling
play in the process, the importance
of assessment, and how to use inter-
vention in the workplace, social
work settings, schools and the
criminal justice system.

It is designed to assist all help-
ing professionals who work with
chemical dependants and their co-
dependants and families. The semi-
nar costs $160. Early registration is
recommended. Contact Douglas
College at 527-5479 for more

information. @