During this past year I created a new service for families interested in performing interventions on their own. I call it, appropriately enough, “Assisted Interventions”.

I came up with the idea after receiving countless emails and phone calls over the years from families desperately in need of intervention help, but for a variety of reasons wanted to do the intervention on their own. I will say that the number one reason for families wanting to do interventions on their own boils down to money. Sadly, many people barely have the resources for treatment, let alone the cost of an intervention. Even though I strive to keep my fees significantly below the national average in an effort to accommodate those with limited resources, there are still legions of families out there who simply can not afford to hire a professional interventionist.

So the question became what do I do with all the callers and emailers who clearly are in crisis and in desperate need of an intervention but do not have financial resources? Do I qualify them and if it turns out they have no money end the call asap and move on to another call? Do I tell them to watch A & E’s show Intervention and tell them to figure it out on their own? Do I spend countless hours on the phone and offer help pro bono?

What I did was the later. It was nearly impossible for me to drop the call based purely on the lack of financial resources. I found myself spending more time than I care to admit helping families for free. While this is a noble and feel-good experience, the fact of the matter is that I do have my own overhead and mouths to feed. I soon realized that I was shifting towards full-time pro bono work which was going to put me out of business in no time. There had to be a better solution.

I decided that an effective alternative was to simply refer families to literature on the subject. I did some research and found several outstanding books on the subject of intervention. I routinely referred families to the classic Intervention by Vernon Johnson, Heart To Heart by Ed Storti and Love First by Debra and Jeff Jay. By acting as a quasi PR agent for these authors, I felt I was doing a service to these families by at least giving them a roadmap for the intervention process.

I noticed an interesting phenomina that occured with some of the families I referred books to. They kept calling me back! They had read books, read material from the internet but had a variety of specific questions unique to each of their cases. Sometimes they just needed a push to move forward with the intervention.

This got me thinking again. What if I developed an affordable service that would provide all the written materials needed for an intervention, and offered phone time to guide them through the process and analyze/answer specific issues. And that is exactly what I did.

I ‘m proud to say that the feedback has been extremely satisfying. The most widely expressed compliment has been the fact that while self help books are extremely valuable, the Assisted Intervention service allows the lead facilitator of the intervention access to my experience as a trained professional interventionist.

I will say that there really is no substitute for having a trained professional interventionist facilitate your intervention from start to finish. Fundamentally, it is important to recognize that when dealing with addiction, more times than not it is a life or death situation. If money is the main issue holding back the implementation of an intervention and treatment, now is the time to beat the bushes and do whatever you can to come up with the finances. I hate to sound dramatic, but the truth of the matter is that someone’s life may very well depend on it. At a minimum, buy some literature and consider doing it yourself or call me at 866 534 4443 and ask about Assisted Interventions.

For more information about the intervention process visit Steven Lodge Interventions