Many battle with substance abuse to deal with their everyday stress. Becoming addicted to numbing negative emotions leads to long term tolerance. Some may deny their addiction and claim that alcohol and drugs assist them with everyday stress, but scientists found that it actually decreases your ability to manage anxiety, depression, anger, and even digestion over time. While using these substances bring harsh consequences to a person’s health, anyone heavily relying on their addiction will try to justify their unhealthy habits. It’s important to ask your family or friends for help and look into entering a drug and alcohol treatment program to recover. Another key aspect to recovery is to pursue meeting a professional interventionist who can create a step-by-step program with you to get the catered help you need. Once you grow to be faithfully committed to overcoming the problem can you then be on the road to recovering once and for all.
Recognizing a Substance Abuse Problem
Anyone who might be struggling with a substance abuse problem will display key signs of heavy usage. If you wonder if you or someone you know is developing an addiction, it is crucial to admit your symptoms to begin solving the problem at hand. A couple of red flags to watch out for is if the individual appears dramatically different compared to a few months before, are acting oddly secretive about their personal life and habits, avoid questions about their financial activity, and are sleeping or eating much more or much less. Other traits, especially when dealing with drug abuse, is if the person is caught sifting through other people’s medicine collections or are relying on larger doses of medications than before. If you find any of these signs to be true, you must take a step back and make a decision to seek an intervention. Whether with a professional intervention, a drug and alcohol treatment program, or another resource, you need guidance as soon as possible before more negative consequences begin to develop in different aspects of your life.
Families and Their Influence on an Addict
Any person who is a family member of someone struggling with a drug or alcohol addiction problem plays a big role on whether or not they can successfully recover. Families are in close quarters with the addict and often their words, actions, and ideals transcend far more than meets the eye. If the addict has a personality that is quite stubborn, sometimes their family can fall into a vicious cycle of feeling emotions of guilt, depression, and regret. As a result, they tend to enable the addict’s bad behavior to prevent raised voices and backlash. If they are a mother, father, sister, or brother — anyone who is fairly reliant on the addict’s behavior and relationship — will feel extreme stress about the situation. In most cases, they will feel definitely upset that their attempt to help isn’t being effective, and fall into a pattern of enabling the bad behavior so as not to “rock the boat” or make the addict angry with them. It is incredibly important to steer away from those patterns, and get the proper education about having a successful intervention with an addict by visiting a professional. Together, the interventionist and family can brainstorm methods to combat the issue with changes to be made within the household, while also showing the addict that their family truly cares about them and is hurting
The Impact of an Intervention
Seeking out a professional interventionist is highly important since they understand that communicating with anyone who is trying to come back from a substance abuse problem can be difficult without proper guidance. Many families may push towards trying to fix the addict themselves, but trained counselors push for the entire family system to be united as one to hold their loved one accountable and limit their abuse. Far too often, families struggle with doling out the “tough love” that the addicted person needs, and so a professional interventionist can also act as a scapegoat – they are not afraid to talk about hard issues and can act as a mediator for the family.
If you are experiencing difficulty with a drug or alcohol addiction or are the family member of someone who needs help, find a local drug and alcohol rehab program to receive tools for help. If you feel confused or still hesitant about whether or not an intervention is even relevant to your life, be sure to check out the intervention quiz that is posted by Family First Intervention when you have time. The program the quiz mentions is managed by a former addict who realized that he was able to recover from his problem because his family was provided an individualized action plan. Family First is special in the rehab industry as they treat each client on an individualized basis, and sort through every available treatment center until the best fit is found. Seek a more educated level of a drug and alcohol intervention for you and your loved ones while you can.
