This story originally appeared in the Denver Catholic Register Sept. 21, 2011. September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. This was the first in a two-part series on intervention. Click here for part 2, “Experts dispel common myths about intervention.”
Jheri Newell’s son John Paul, 30, had turned into someone she didn’t recognize. Her talented, sensitive, articulate, thoughtful son had withdrawn; he wouldn’t look her in the eyes; and he began lying and stealing—to the point that it landed him in jail for 17 days.
Over the course of two years, J.P. had become addicted to drugs. It started with Vicodin prescribed for a toothache, continued with Oxycontin, and ultimately led to an addiction to heroin.
“I realized he was turning into someone I didn’t know,” said Newell, a Catholic who attends various churches in the Denver Archdiocese. “The addiction started to really manipulate his personality, it’s insidious.”
Newell prayed that God would provide the help her family needed.
“I was overwhelmed with emotion because, you know, this is my loved one,” she said, breaking down and acknowledging the situation continues to weigh on her today. “You’re afraid …you’re just afraid …and then you start praying even harder than you usually do.
“It’s a matter of trusting that the right people are going to come into your life to help you with the situation,” she said.
In response to her prayers, she met Stephen Wilkins, a trained intervention provider.
On Dec. 1, 2010, Newell sat down with Wilkins at a restaurant for an hour and a half to discuss the situation and the possibility of conducting a family-structured intervention for J.P.
“We talked about how I felt, where I was in the process, where JP was in the process,” she said, “my expectations, my plans, and how an intervention actually works.”
A family-structured intervention is a process that involves several people, usually four to eight, that prepare as a group to approach a loved one who is involved in a self-destructive behavior, such as alcohol abuse, drug addiction, gambling, an eating disorder or other health problem.
An intervention aims to motivate an individual to accept help for the addiction or behavioral issue, put relationships on the road to healing, and raise an individual’s self-esteem so he or she believes she can succeed at recovering.
“This is a loving process,” said Wilkins, a parishioner of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Denver, who has been doing interventions for eight years. “Everybody that participates in a family-structured intervention has the opportunity to start getting well, everybody. It’s my job to shepherd them through this process with as little anxiety as possible.”
Interventionists such as Wilkins—and Howie Madigan, who has assisted with some 2,400 interventions since 1974 and co-founded the National Center for Intervention—equip families with the tools needed to get treatment for loved ones. Appropriate treatments vary by individual and may include counseling, community-based programs, outpatient treatment or inpatient treatment.
“The truth is families are not equipped to deal with alcoholics and addicts,” said Wilkins, who is a recovering alcoholic of nine years. “They wear themselves out with the best of intentions.”
Wilkins generally provides two training sessions of three to five hours with a family prior to an intervention. Newell was grateful for the educational and therapeutic benefits of the training.
“Educating yourself through an interventionist is absolutely amazing because you’re now out of fear and into empowerment—it’s absolutely priceless,” she said. “Once you have someone guiding you … you know you’re doing the right thing, and you’re being pushed along by God.”
On Feb. 8, Newell gathered four of J.P.’s closest family members and friends at a relative’s home, along with Wilkins, for an intervention. Each participant had prepared a letter that they read aloud to J.P.
“It’s very powerful to hear the voice along with the words,” she said. “And of course it’s emotional because the letters are very heartfelt and honest … it’s an incredible level of honesty. At the end of the letter, you ask: ‘Will you get help?’”
After more than two hours, Newell—along with Wilkins and J.P.’s younger brother—started the drive to a treatment facility; one that she had carefully researched and chosen in advance. After a few diversions along the way, including J.P. jumping out of the car at one point, she delivered her son safely to treatment.
“I know he has the faith, strength and stamina to get through this,” she said.
It is estimated when an intervention is done professionally, 85-90 percent of people, nationally, get some kind of treatment.
Madigan, a recovering alcoholic of 44 years, understands the power of addiction.
“The truth for an addict or an alcoholic is the single most important relationship in their life is the relationship they have with the thing they’re addicted to,” said the 76-year-old parishioner of Immaculate Conception in Lafayette. “They’ll sacrifice all other relationships, including their relationship with God most of the time, to stay with it.”
Newell believes the experience deepened her relationship with God.
“I didn’t realize how far I had gone from my relationship with God,” she said. “This experience has changed me immensely. I really had to trust God in a different manner…I really needed God more.”
This trust helped her deal with fear.
“At first I was afraid, but in order to really help an addict, it’s not about you—it’s about the steps that are needed to help that person,” she said. “Trust that God will give you the tools. The healing starts to happen; and it’s amazing what unfolds.”
RESOURCES
National Catholic Council on Alcoholism and Related Drug Problems
www.ncaaotoday.org or 800-626-6910 Ext. 200
National Center for Intervention
Intervention services or group presentations (parish, parent or community groups)
Stephen Wilkins
720-366-4736 or wilkins_Stephen@yahoo.com
Interventionist training
303-882-7222
National Catholic Council on Alcoholism and Related Drug Problems
www.nccatoday.org or 800-626-6910, Ext. 1200
Denver Area Central Committee of Alcoholics Anonymous
www.daccaa.org or 303-322-4440 (24-hour hotline)
Recovery retreats based on 12-step spirituality
Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat House
4801 N. Highway 67, Sedalia
www.sacredheartretreat.org or 303-688-4198 Ext. 100
