Article: Rescued from addiction - From drugs to alcohol to eating disorders, families and friends are using interventions to pull their loved ones back from the edge
By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
RedEye / Chicago Tribune
March 13 2007
John David was asleep, coming down from the heroin he'd
shot the night before, when his doorbell rang one morning
last April in his Humboldt Park apartment.
Waiting on his doorstep were his dad, mom, two sisters and
their husbands, and his step-grandfather.
"I wasn't too sure what was going on," David,
now 23, remembers. "I was kind of nervous."
What was going on was an intervention into a heroin habit
that had led David to drop his longtime dream of cooking
school and spend his days prowling Chicago Avenue for drugs
he said he paid for by stealing, scamming and begging.
Fearing the worst was to come, David's family confronted
him that day with letters, tears and pleas that he seek treatment.
It was excruciating, David and his parents told RedEye.
And it changed his life.
"I knew I had a problem with drugs, but I didn't have
any clue what to do about it," said David, who says
he is now drug-free, a chef and living near his parents in
Wisconsin. "I don't think I would have done anything
if my parents hadn't put their hand out."
Too often, experts say, the families and friends of people
on self-destructive paths don't put their hands out soon
enough.
There are efforts to change that. The A&E reality show "Intervention," which
starts a new season Friday, and HBO's "The Addiction
Project," a multimedia campaign that debuts on Thursday,
aim to raise awareness of what addiction is and what people
can do to help.
Hollywood offers more real-life lessons. The recent downfalls
of Britney Spears, who entered rehab two weeks ago after
several months of odd behavior, and Anna Nicole Smith, whose
death last month shone a spotlight on her troubled life,
are very public examples of lives allowed to spin out of
control, some say.
"It's really sad when I look at people like Britney
Spears or Anna Nicole, to look at all of these supposedly
professional handlers who just enabled them by covering up,
fixing their problems, keeping their secrets," said
Bob Poznanovich, CEO of St. Paul, Minn.-based Addiction Intervention
Resources, which the Davids hired to help with their intervention. "People
were holding their hands but never gave them help."
Oftentimes, people who think they're helping inadvertently
become enablers. They don't know what else to do and fear
an intervention will be alienating.
"There's always this sense that they're being disloyal," said
Jake Epperly, president of New Hope Recovery Center in Lincoln
Park, which has an intervention team.
But by and large, interventions seem to work.
At New Hope, 75 percent of interventions lead to treatment,
Epperly said, mostly for alcohol addictions but also for
drug addictions, eating disorders and gambling.
At Addiction Intervention Resources, which has an office
in Chicago, 90 percent of intervention subjects seek treatment
for everything from substance abuse to depression to compulsive
behaviors, Poznanovich said. (Meth addicts are an exception,
with only 50 percent seeking treatment after an intervention,
often because the drugs make them paranoid or psychotic,
Poznanovich said.)
People who go into treatment after an intervention tend
to fare better than if they go in alone because they have
loved ones holding them accountable, experts say. Even if
a staged intervention doesn't lead to immediate treatment,
it often plants the seed that gets someone to seek help down
the road.
The notions that people have to hit bottom before they can
get better, or that they have to want help before they can
be helped, are misguided and, in some ways, cruel, Poznanovich
said.
"Interventions are a way to get people to get help
before they are able to get help themselves," he said.
He speaks from experience.
Poznanovich was a successful vice president at Zenith Data
Systems in Chicago when he developed a $1,000-a-day cocaine
habit that derailed his life. He lost his job, his fiance
and half a million dollars, he said. It wasn't until his
mother and brother staged an intervention that he started
treatment.
"I didn't want to have to ask for help," Poznanovich
said. "The beauty of the intervention was that it was
done for me."
David, 22 at the time of his intervention, said he at first
felt his family members were ganging up on him when they
confronted him. But he listened as they read the letters
they'd prepared, telling him how his addiction was affecting
their lives and that they wouldn't put up with it. He caved
after the first letter, read by his older sister.
"It was an eye-opening experience," David said. "I
had thought that I was by myself and no one really cared."
David's father, Douglas David, called the intervention experience "the
worst thing you could imagine," even though it was successful.
John was a culinary arts student at Kendall College in Evanston
(the school later moved to Chicago) when he started doing
drugs his freshman year. He said he went from smoking pot
to snorting OxyContin, then to snorting and shooting heroin.
"It was about not feeling accepted and wanting to feel
accepted," John said.
He got suspended from school because his grades were suffering
and never went back.
John said he did "the most despicable things" to
support his heroin habit. He said he scammed money from his
parents, did errands for dope dealers, panhandled and shoplifted.
He was caught stealing $550 worth of DVDs from Best Buy in
the fall of 2005 and spent five days in jail. Court records
show he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor retail theft and was
sentenced to court supervision.
"That was probably when I first knew that I had a problem,
when I got caught," John said.
His parents, who were living in Wisconsin while their son's
life came undone in Chicago, didn't see the signs at first.
Then, on a visit to Chicago, Douglas said he found a hypodermic
needle in his son's bathroom. Later, John's girlfriend's
mother told the Davids that she'd seen track marks on John's
arms.
"We were scared to death," Douglas said.
Douglas awoke in the middle of the night and told his wife
that he feared their son might end up on the streets and
disappear. They became proactive, contacting treatment centers
to learn what they could do. They hired David Eichhorn, Midwest
director of intervention services for Addiction Intervention
Resources, to help.
On April 29, 2006, family members flew in from across the
country and gathered in a downtown Chicago hotel to write
their letters. The next day, they rang John's doorbell.
"It was one of the most powerful [interventions] I'd
ever seen," Eichhorn said. "They loved him so much,
and he felt it."
John was admitted to Hazelden, a treatment center in Center
City, Minn., for its 28-day residential program. Resentment
of his family turned to appreciation. In the last week of
the program, "it was like seeing miracles," Douglas
said of his son's transformation.
After eight months of treatment that involved halfway houses
and outpatient programs, John is now the head chef at a bakery
and living in Wisconsin with his best friend from childhood.
When he gets cravings, he calls his sponsor. He said he is "incredibly
happy."
"There's a life afterwards. People should know you
can get through it," John said. "People should
know that there's always someone who will miss you if you
die."
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