»»   INTERVENTIONISTS & THE INTEGRAL ROLE THEY CAN PLAY IN HELPING TO BREAK THE CYCLE OF ADDICTION

What is an Intervention?

"An intervention is a deliberate process by which change is introduced into peoples' thoughts, feelings and behaviors," according to Vaughn J. Howland, Founder and Director of the Intervention Center.

Mr. Howland has organized hundreds of interventions throughout the United States and abroad since 1982. In addition, Mr. Howland trains addiction and other mental health professionals in how to conduct interventions to maximize the chances for success and to minimize the chances of doing harm. He also provides counseling and therapy services to individuals and families, conducts workshops and lectures on many diverse topics including Interventions. Mr. Howland is active in numerous professional organizations including the National Association of Social Workers, the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, and the Association of Intervention Specialists. Mr. Howland is a Licensed Certified Social Worker - Clinical (LCSW-C), a Licensed Clinical Alcohol & Drug Counselor (LCADC), and a Master Addiction Counselor (MAC). Prior to entering the social work profession, Mr. Howland worked in the private sector as a management consultant and executive for over twenty years.

A formal intervention, like we are discussing here, usually involves several people preparing themselves, approaching a person involved in some self-destructive behavior, and talking to the person in a clear and respectful way about the behavior in question with the immediate objectives being for the person to listen and to accept help. Although the intervention process has been formalized, the idea is not new. Thinking back, most of us can remember a time when someone or something - a teacher, friend, or set of circumstances impressed us in a seminal way which altered how we understood ourselves and changed our perspective. Moments like these constitute turning points where new vistas open allowing us to see things differently and to recognize opportunities we did not know existed before.

The overall objective of an intervention is to begin to relieve the suffering caused by a self-destructive behavior - the suffering of the person engaged in it and the suffering of family and friends.

How did the idea of intervention develop?

Family intervention, where family and friends band together and encourage a drinker to accept help for his drinking, has been used successfully for over thirty years, ever since Vernon Johnson first began experimenting with the technique in the early 1960's. This intervention technique was and continues to be the standard against which all further developments are compared and measured. And rightfully so. Johnson's classic volume I'll Quit Tomorrow, published in 1973, includes the basic rationale and approach to interventions still used today. This approach was published later as a separate book, Intervention, in 1986. Both books remain excellent primers on the subject for the professional and layperson alike.

However, there have been many developments over the last few decades. And even though these developments are but variations on Johnson's basic themes, some of them are significant. First of all, people recognized that the intervention technique was applicable to a broader range of environments and issues than just alcoholism in the family as most people originally thought. For example, intervention is now used not only in domestic situations with family and friends, but also in many other environments, among them businesses and corporate boardrooms (often called "Executive" interventions), the military, professional sports, and various professional associations including impaired professional groups in the mental health field. And in addition to addressing alcohol, interventions are also done for people with other drug addictions. Recently they are even being performed around issues not related to chemical dependency at all: eating disorders and violent rages for example.

Thus intervention activity has increased both by serving a wider and more varied population and by addressing a broader range of issues. And concomitant with this increase has been an increase in several other areas including the numbers of people conducting interventions and in refinements and variations on the intervention technique itself.

As the applications of interventions has grown, and as more people with a broader range of backgrounds have become involved in conducting interventions, many refinements on Johnson's original techniques emerged. Some of these refinements are due to the population served. For example, the approach to interventions can vary considerably from one conducted in a safe corporate board room to one conducted in a potentially violent poor inner city apartment. Also the mechanics of the intervention often vary depending on the style, training and history of the interventionist: some interventionists are assertive, some relaxed and laid back; some interventions are done by one practitioner, others have more than one: some interventions are done in the drinker's home, others in the interventionist's office; some interventions focus on getting help for the drinker, others on promoting recovery for the whole family.

In short, the acceptance by the general public, the refinements in intervention approaches and techniques, and the range of self-destructive behaviors for which interventions are now appropriate, have all increased substantially since Vernon Johnson first expressed his ideas on the subject over twenty years ago.