Planning An Intervention

2. Decide who will participate in the drug intervention

The persons you invite  to the drug intervention should have personal experiences with your loved ones out-of-control behavior. Otherwise, there is no reason for their presence, other than to support you. You will find that anyone closely associated with the addict already witnessed some signs of the addiction.
When contacting people about doing a drug intervention, you may encounter some opposition from family and friends of the addict. While they may  have no trouble talking to you about the addiction problem,  they may fear speaking about it at the drug intervention because there is a risk it may end the relationship with the addict. To counter this, you need to educate all potential intervention participants about alcoholism and addiction. Tell them that  if nothing is done, your loved one's problem will get worse and he may die or may accidentally kill someone else.  Also explain that that their relationship with the addict will eventually be over  if the addict is allowed to carry on.

You may invite the following persons to the drug intervention:

• Friends and Associates:  It is a mistake to invite someone who is just an unimportant colleague or acquaintance.  The people who are invited to the intervention have to mean something to the drug addict. They have to be able to exert some leverage on the person. That's why it may be appropriate to invite his employer. If the addict realizes even his boss knows his work is suffering because of his erratic, destructive behavior, it may push him over the edge as far as wanting help.  Be sure you do not invite the people who help your loved one engage in the destructive behavior! This would be disastrous as
  the drug addict may think of the intervention as unjustified.

• Family members: His parents have to be there unless they are involved with addicts themselves or are emotionally unstable. Even if they live far away, you will find that they may have had a notion that something was not right with their son or daughter. The persons siblings can be invited as well. If he has children, you should invite them if they are mature enough to speak and tell their stories of "daddy being wasted" Children usually suffer a lot in alcoholic environments and deserve to share their experiences during the drug intervention.

• An intervention specialist:  One of the  treatment centers you are planning to send the drug addict to after the intervention may be able to refer you to a good interventionist.   Sometimes, Al-Anon groups may be able to help you find a drug interventionist as well.  Personally, I recommend you visit www.intervention.com.  Although I have never contacted this organization, the information on this website indicates that Mr. Howland is not interested in just making money (unlike some of those larger, only-interested-in-money websites).