When someone we love is engaged in a lifestyle that results in crisis after crisis, it is easy to get lost in the “small picture” of addiction. What do we do now? How do we get past the latest disaster? Unfortunately, this approach amounts to putting out the small fires of an out-of-control life. This kind of damage-control can waste important opportunities presented by each crisis — opportunities to find significant and lasting help.

There is a “big picture” of addiction that many people do not understand. The big picture is this. Addictions have a continuum. An addiction begins when a person at some point chooses to experiment (they smoke a joint or take a drink at 13 or start abusing painkillers at 30) and it ends with an intervention. The intervention can take many forms. They may lose their job, home or family. They may run over someone with their car. They may be institutionalized in a psychiatric facility as the result of a psychotic break or in a prison as the result of criminal behavior. They may be victimized by predators and opportunists. They may sell their body for their drugs. They may die by disease, accident, overdose or by their own hand. And the list goes on. Make no mistake — each one of these things IS an intervention.

What we want to do is have our own intervention before one of these other interventions takes place. We don’t want to wait until our loved one “bottoms out” in prison, or suffers with hepatitis, AIDS, liver damage, or has to live with having caused the death of another human being. We want to RAISE bottom and have them hit it NOW, while they are still within reach, while we still have some connection and influence in their life, and before the time comes when what we have to say no longer penetrates the bars of prison or a chemically damaged brain. We want to intervene NOW to bring healing to a disease ravaged loved one.

An intervention IS coming, for better or for worse, and the choice can still be made.©

If you want to take the next step? Call 1-888-JEFF-911

Still not sure? Read Dorothy’s Story