Intervention coley update

As our family journeys through this incredible adventure, we want to give away what we have been given. We want to share the times when the wind is at our back, and the times when we must lean into its gail forces.

Life is not a game as they say , but we want to share the "home-runs," and the "foul-balls. I did not want that lifestyle, but it owned me, and nearly took my life.

With three beautiful children, and a wife I adore, I wanted to live, but couldn't set myself free. Francine my wife is my interventionist. Within 3 weeks of her initial email, they were in my home, and saved my life. My wife fought for me. E florida, for the gift of recovery. For sharing their lives with Intervention and the public, participants receive some of the best treatment money can buy — a day stay at a reputable rehabilitation center.

But even in this upper echelon of treatment centers, there are still some bad seeds. According to Vice , A Sober Way Home, a now-closed for-profit facility out of Arizona, which was "featured on several of the Intervention episodes," reportedly emphasized a policy of "keeping heads on beds" above all else, rather than taking in only qualified patients. This led to trouble in , when a patient named Brandon Jacques was reportedly admitted to the center for alcohol issues and bulimia.

Despite assuring the family "it could treat Brandon's dual disorders" upon admittance, A Sober Way Home revealed it "could not properly treat [Brandon's] eating disorder" a month later. The center then encouraged Brandon to attend and pay another center in California called Morningside. According to a former Morningside employee, despite anti-kickback laws, these two facilities "were making referrals back and forth," resulting in bonuses for each, reported Vice.

Brandon was later transferred to a third facility without his family knowing that was not equipped to treat him. At that facility, called The First House, he went into cardiac arrest and later died. One of the concerns critics raise about Intervention is that participants may be pressured into treatment rather than freely choosing to pursue help.

According to several studies , that choice could be the difference between relapse and long-term recovery, because experts believe there is a correlation between success and an "internal desire to reduce or change addictive behavior.

Alan Cudmore, a program consultant with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Ontario , argues that the coercion methods employed on Intervention indicate how seriously the on-show experts "misunderstand how human beings change," asserting that "ambivalence is the normal human response to the pressure to change.

While it may appear that the Johnson Model has produced beneficial results on the show, clinical trials have shown these methods to be ineffective. According to a study by Miller and William Lee White , "Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations.

When a person struggling with addiction agrees to treatment — something that occurs in the majority of cases on Intervention — he or she should be fully committed to the entire recovery process in order to be successful.

Attending an all-expenses paid trip to rehab without actually desiring to become sober creates the risk for more than just an early exit and a depleted will to quit in the future. For many, relapsing can be fatal. Drug abuse counselor Dave Malloy told the Daily Beast that "people who die of overdoses As normal processes resume, the brain loses its tolerance for the ever-increasing opioid doses that often precede rehabilitation.

Because of this, it is vital that a person entering treatment is prepared for the challenges both during and after rehabilitation. While Intervention has, no doubt, helped rehabilitate many people suffering from addiction, there have been some dark spots in the show's history. According to the Just Believe Recovery Center, more than 30 people featured on the show have died since their TV appearances, and at least eight former subjects reportedly died from overdoses after appearing on the show.

Two others died from possible drug use. Of the aforementioned eight, seven were supposedly addicted to opioids. It's commendable that the show tries to help people, but for many participants, that assistance was arguably too little too late. Though it may be impossible to prevent all relapses, the team at Intervention could perhaps place more emphasis on the preparedness of the individuals entering rehab to better ensure they are committed to the entire recovery process. Though most professionals on Intervention treat their subjects with respect, there have been moments that seem unnecessarily exploitative.

The show is clearly in the business of entertainment, so some manufactured drama is to be expected, but the series' basic structure appears designed to value the negative more than the positive. Did you notice that episodes often seem to concentrate more on the addiction and less on the recovery process? By highlighting the angst and then staging a confrontational intervention, the show essentially throws gasoline on that fire.

Walsh argues that Intervention strives for "shock value" over professionalism. He points to one episode in which a past sexual assault is brought up during the intervention for no apparent reason.

A licensed professional shouldn't have done this. Intervention is structured in a way that allows the viewing audience to see the consequences of addiction without experiencing it personally. Think of it as addiction tourism. To appease its audience, Intervention shows the addict's life falling apart for the vast majority of the show. Then, during the final moments, we learn about the recovery. This structure is problematic for many because it suggests that the recovery — perhaps the hardest part of the journey — is the easy part.

By essentially fast-forwarding or altogether eliminating this part of the process from the show, Intervention runs the risk of misleading its audience. There are other issues, as well.

According to Joyce Pines for the Kalamazoo Gazette , securing treatment can be a challenge for many people. While Intervention pays for a day stay for the show's participants, that length of treatment would be wildly expensive in real life. Reviewing the rehabilitation rates reported by Intervention producers begs some serious questions. According to the Daily Beast via Reality Blurred , the show claimed in that of its participants had remained sober — that equates to an 71 percent success rate.

Three years later, that success rate had dropped to 64 percent. Then, in , it was reportedly 55 percent. While some may look at the decreasing number and see a problem, these rates are still exceptional. So exceptional, in fact, that they raise eyebrows. Alcoholics Anonymous , for example, posts success rates of 27 percent within one year, 24 percent between one and five years, and 13 percent between five and ten years.