People use interventions all the time to persuade their drug-addicted or alcohol-addicted loved one to get clean and get back to a productive life. I’ve seen them on TV. I’ve read about them in stories, but I’ve never been to one, until I was the subject of one. And you can believe that I have something to say about them.

My situation was unusual. I’d even go so far as to say rare. I was a sober, non-drug user when I was tricked into an intervention. But let me go back to the beginning, when I was drugged by a doctor, taken unconscious to a mental hospital, committed in my unconscious state as “disordered and unable to care for myself”, where I had to stay for several days. I was opposed to any anti-psychotic prescription medications. Oddly enough, my refusal to take meds was the reason for the intervention. Yes, normally an intervention is to get people to stop taking drugs and alcohol, but in my case, it was to get me to take anti-psychotic meds that I didn’t need. Or want.

When I fought to leave the mental hospital, and won, what I wanted more than anything was a warm, safe place to be able to sleep. My own bed sounded amazing. I wanted to be with my family (parents, children, siblings). And even more, wanted the safety and comfort of my husband’s protective arms. Yet, surprise I get ambushed by an intervention manufactured and led by my own sister. She recruited everyone I loved and cared for with closed-door secret meetings, plotting her takeover. She sabotaged my family meeting intended to have them see that I was fine, in control, and needed time with my husband and children to restore balance and the calm life we had.

My family intervention was intended to not just drug me, but to also get me to go back to get mental health care. On the surface this all sounds like people looking out for my best interest, but when you find that your family has already researched mental care facilities before seeing you then you’ve got to be scared. My siblings never visited me in the hospital, thankfully. Their entire understanding of my situation was based on the story my husband told them, along with a bunch of threats that I would be schizophrenic and they’d get cut off from me. Never did they think if this made sense, what the basis for my “illness” was, or looked for a second opinion. On the word of my husband, they were ready to ship me off to a “farm” in Tennessee with horse therapy. No questions asked.

Further, the intent of the intervention is to tell the addict how their behavior has impacted the family and friends. What I needed from my parents and siblings was to listen and trust me. Instead, I get random questions, criticisms, opinions, and directives with an underlying motivation to take over my control, disguised to ‘help’ me. So I got to hear a bunch of nonsense about how I needed mental help, needed to be drugged, needed to care for myself. It was all so belittling, demeaning, and embarrassing. I knew I was fine. I didn’t think I had a “mental” issue. I was already traumatized by being locked up against my will in a mental hospital. That’s some scary shit. To hear my family say I needed more, was also alarming. Again, I could see that no one was really listening to me or wanted to hear me. And I was pissed that no one thought to get a second opinion for me or look for reasons why I might have acted odd. Never mind the single most important fact – that a judge at the hospital deemed me mentally competent.

So here I was in a room of people that I love, being told I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t following orders, I wasn’t doing what they wanted, I needed to be drugged, I needed more psychobabble, I needed to get “help” or I’d get very crazy. And knowing with every fiber of my being, that they were wrong. I’d already been kicked to the curb by my husband, would my family now disown me too? When you start thinking like that, you start down the path of issue management. I had to pretend to be acquiescent so they’d stop bothering me. I had to go through the motions so I wouldn’t be further outcast. I had to start hiding things from them, like that I wasn’t going to take the drugs. I had to start walling them off to protect myself, especially if they weren’t going to do it for me. I had no one left to fight for me, but me.

So, do interventions work? Maybe, but not for me. The best intervention for me might just have been the warm embrace of my husband, children and siblings. I could do with some emotional and self-esteem reinforcements and the caring of my family. The accusations, the orders, and the interference was counterproductive. It just made me sneaky, distant, and protective. If you plan on “helping” someone, think through the best approach before you take action. Interventions aren’t magic. They don’t solve the problem, they just facilitate the conversation. But be prepared to walk away because even healthy minded individuals will falter under the weight of criticism, accusations, and threats.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

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Nikita@dontreleaseme.com