A Gatehouse Academy Long Term Drug Rehab Graduate On The Importance of Family and Professional Interventions

Todd Welch is currently the Admissions and Marketing Coordinator at Gatehouse Academy. He is also a long term drug rehab graduate of Gatehouse Academy. Alcoholism and addiction took control of Todd´s life and nearly ended it when he overdosed and fell into a coma at one of the many treatment centers he visited. Before coming to Gatehouse Academy, his last stay in treatment, Todd was physically dependent on drugs and alcohol and completely hopeless. Todd found recovery at Gatehouse Academy and now enjoys facilitating recovery and breakthroughs with newcomers to the program. Knowing firsthand the struggles of an addict, Todd gives his advice to others struggling with addiction and their families. Find out more about Todd Welch

An intervention is at most times the starting point on an addict's road to recovery. It's when family and friends band together in an attempt to confront a loved one of their drug or alcohol addiction in an attempt to get them to realize that they need help. Most interventions do not force a person into treatment; rather they give the family an opportunity to offer suggestions and express their concerns. An intervention is supposed to be the low-point for an addict, a starting point to get them into treatment.

Family and professional interventions play a significant role in guiding addicted individuals to the sources of help they need. The act of “raising the bottom” to the date of an intervention through a decision of a family to no longer enable the addict's destructive lifestyle has led many to the water's edge of recovery and contributed to lifetimes of recovery for many former addicts. More and more experts are touting the efficacy of interventions and the validity of bringing someone into treatment with whatever small willingness they may have.

Since becoming an admissions staff member at Gatehouse Academy, I have had the privilege of serving directly in interventions. This has been a most valuable experience. The careful and conscientious process of preparing for an intervention has allowed for a better understanding of family dynamics in addiction and an opportunity to put to good use my experience as an addict. We travel well-worn paths and tend to react in a fight or flight fashion and in most cases the response is to flee.

I once walked in addict's worn shoes, at the occasion of an intervention; I feel the rebellion of the addict within the confines of my own skin. It is a prickly sensation, in the lower abdomen, which elevates blood pressure, crawls the skin and speeds the heart to a race. A small piece of me still wants to stand up and yell “Don't go with us!, scurry on back now...You've got it made boy!!”...And the pictures of a former life-idea begin to parade quickly through the mind: a solitary balcony seat elevated above a lobby of populated activity, l the most inviting leather couch, a pen that holds the click-push option of on-demand mood self-adjustment.

Then I realize the balcony seat and couch are graves and the pen the instrument that kills. These pictures are still-life... dead. What are absent are love, peace, and real power. These are what separated me form the obsession of addiction several years ago and fill my heart with the experiential knowledge of new life and transformation. My heart quiets the rumblings below and I am given what inspiration I need to perform usefully during the intervention.

My own journey toward recovery began with a family intervention coached by Gatehouse staff members Kent Sherman and Matthew Brown.