The Importance of Family Alignment in Addiction Intervention: An Interview with Jane Mintz

When a family chooses to do a professional intervention to help a loved one with alcohol or drug addiction, it’s usually because they have tried everything else and feel they have no other option.

These are families in crisis. Over the years, the addiction has damaged not only the addict but the family and friends who have dealt with the chaos the addict has created. Addiction tends to run in families, so the addict in crisis might not be the only one dealing with drug or alcohol issues. By the time the family seeks out an interventionist patterns of co-dependency and enabling have been cemented. This means that although some family members may feel committed to the intervention, the risk for unintentional sabotage of the process is high.

“They are fragmented people,” explains Jane Mintz, a licensed addiction intervention specialist who has come to be known as a specialist in handling very complex, potentially volatile interventions. “They have different opinions. The intervention is as much about the families as it is about the affected individual. They’re in as much crisis.”

One of the goals of the intervention process is to help families understand the difference between enabling the addict and a responsible relationship.

“The addict is the master of illusion. They will look for the family member who might buckle during the intervention and try to manipulate them. For that reason, it’s critical that all family members feel like part of the greater good. You can only do that by truly assessing and understanding the family. If you don’t do that, you could unknowingly become co-dependent with the family, putting yourself and them in danger,” says Jane Mintz.

Jane has a systemized way to get families to start to align. She starts by first assessing for immediacy and risk – is someone at imminent risk for hurting themselves or other people? The next step is to give the family an opportunity to talk about the situation so she can determine if it’s an appropriate case for her to handle.

Once that occurs, Jane conducts an in-person meeting or a conference call where all the family members can ask questions and talk about their experience. This helps her start to organize the intervention as she starts to hear their personalities and understand their relationship to the addict.

Once Jane has answered their questions, the family takes the time they need to make the decision to move forward. If the family decides to move forward, they fill out a pre-intervention worksheet. Jane also explains to them the rules of engagement. This sets out the appropriate behavior in the intervention to make it effective and prevent escalation during the encounter.

Once a date is set, Jane flies out to wherever the family is located. They hold a pre-intervention meeting, something like a rehearsal.

“I don’t think you can really rehearse. You can only prepare people and come up with a strategy. Once the intervention starts, it’s like live TV – it doesn’t necessarily go the way you expect it to go,” Jane explains.

In most of Jane’s cases, the client does decide to go to treatment. Her close rate is over 98 percent.

“I personally transport the client to treatment then I case manage them while they are in an organized treatment environment and beyond. I have families that I intervened on five years ago who occasionally still call me with questions,” Jane says.

Part of that case management is keeping families together, Jane explains. “The family is now the board of directors. People are misinformed if they it’s just about the addict in crisis. When the family starts to move in a different direction the addict panics, so it’s important for family members to stay aligned throughout the process so the addict cannot divide and conquer.”

The alignment the interventionist creates especially pays off during the first 10 days of treatment.

“The addict will kick up a lot of dust the first week in treatment,” Jane explains. “They’ve been put in the wrong place. They’re not that bad. A terrible mistake has been made. If they say, ‘The food was great, not sure I liked my pillow, but I think I’m fine now so I’m coming home,’ the aligned family can respond with a unified message: we will support you in recovery, but we will not support your addiction any longer.”

Jane also has the family write a bottom-line letter. The addict is not given this letter before he or she goes into treatment.

“Everyone who participated in the intervention signs the letter. It’s a document from the family saying where they stand, not as individuals but as a group,” Jane explains. “Everybody is bound because signing this letter is very powerful for them. No one wants to break the contract.”

The bottom-line letter is placed in a sealed envelope and kept in the admissions office at the treatment center. If the addict tries to leave treatment, the letter is unsealed.

“Intervention clients are quick to forget what happened in the intervention and why people intervened in the first place, so the bottom-line letter is about helping them understand what no really means to the family, what leaving really means,” Jane says.

The alignment of the family allows each individual to work with the whole toward the goal of recovery. It is critical when hiring an interventionist to ensure her or she has the training and skills that will enable them to align the family appropriately so that the intervention has the best possible chance of success.