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Drug Counseling and Intervention The Planned Ignore Approach

Drug Counseling and Intervention

The Planned Ignore Approach

Drug Counseling and Intervention

Drug Counseling and Intervention. What is the planned ignore approach. Drug counselors use techniques that are know to work. My favorite is the planned ignore approach. Some people say. “What is it that makes someone qualified to be a drug counselor”? What is drug counseling and how is it effective? The fact that they are licensed or accredited and think that they can claim that’s enough? Do they really understand the mind of the addict?

Let me tell you what an addict thinks of you as a drug counselor when you spit out a few words like: “Get a support Group, Go to AA Set healthy boundaries and stick with the winners.

The darkest and lowest points of an addicts life are often at hell’s door knocking to be taken in and away from this earth. That is the only “support group we can see”. An addict whose every ounce of fiber is screaming for their drug of choice and the shear panic that sets in if you can’t score it.

Do the loved ones of the addict think we feel any pleasure or satisfaction when we steal straight from their wallets, write checks, rob, manipulate, lie and scam over and over again? The overwhelming depression, disgust, shame and hatred for yourself at who you have become that is felt each time you wake up (if you can even sleep). Waking up hoping, just praying you would die in the middle of the night. Just to not face another day. Everyday knowing that your main job will be the obtaining of money to get the drugs just to need more money to get more drugs. And so on it plays.

The unimaginable places we put ourselves in and the darkest corners of this world. We lose our moral compass, we beg, manipulate, hurting the ones we love. We say and do whatever it takes and become whoever we must be to get our drug.

So when a family wants their loved one to get help or seek out an interventionist I have a few helpful tips as to what may or may not work.

Drug Counseling and Intervention

What does not work

  • Springing an intervention on the addict and surprising an attack in hopes they will “come to their senses” and surrender the fight. Actually you have sped up the process in the attempts to corner the addict into going to treatment.
  • Going to anyone who knows them to speak for you in hopes that they may talk sense into the addict. (Former employers, cousins, friends, etc,). They won’t hear the message. Again they feel cornered.
  • Attempting to appeal to a loved one does not work. Why would it work if they have come to grips with the fact that they can’t even stand to look at themselves in the mirror?
  • Giving ultimatums does not work. We could care less if you give up on us. We gave up on ourselves a long time ago.
Drug Counseling and Intervention | The Planned Ignore Approach
Drug Counseling and Intervention | The Planned Ignore Approach
  • Springing an intervention on the addict and surprising an attack in hopes they will “come to their senses” and surrender the fight. Actually you have sped up the process in the attempts to corner the addict into going to treatment.
  • Going to anyone who knows them to speak for you in hopes that they may talk sense into the addict. (Former employers, cousins, friends, etc,). They won’t hear the message. Again they feel cornered.
  • Attempting to appeal to a loved one does not work. Why would it work if they have come to grips with the fact that they can’t even stand to look at themselves in the mirror?
  • Giving ultimatums does not work. We could care less if you give up on us. We gave up on ourselves a long time ago.

Drug Counseling and Intervention

What does work

If the family, the spouse, and children seek drug counseling for help it works. This may seem radical. I am sure your thinking you had nothing to do with this. I am not talking about the addict at all when I mention the people whose lives it affects the most. These are the ones that need to seek help first.

The ego stands in the way. It is inflated and your afraid to look at yourself. Afraid to understand why the addict has such a powerful grip over you.

Questions that might be asked:

  1. Why do you allow the addict to keep coming and stealing and manipulating?
  2. Why can’t you say no to the addict? Do you cave the second they start pleading and crying, begging for help? Saying “one more time please help.”?
  3. What are you getting out of it? What needs of yours are being met to agree to keep dancing this dance with the addict?
  4. Is codependency keeping you in a sick and dysfunctional relationship? You have the need to control and fix the addict as a way to avoid feeling your own feelings? You place them on the addict as if it’s your full time job.

The second you stop doing, asking, fixing and enabling the addict in every way, you are on the path to recovery for all. I am not proposing a method that boxes the addict in with demands, unexpected interventions and ultimatums.

Drug Counseling and Intervention

The Planned Ignore Approach

Drug counseling and intervention work hand in hand. What is a planned ignore and how is this effective in getting our loved one into treatment. Planned ignore is across the board. It involves a team approach with loved ones caught in the cycle with the addict. If you can imagine all involved linking arms and literally turning your back to forge a wall, a united front that will send the message you are done participating in the cycle of addiction. When the addict calls, all parties agree to say the following one time only:

“Do not Call Us, attempt to come over to my house, ask for a single dime.” Then follow this up with a strong statement that says, “The only way I will communicate with you is when you have agreed on your own to go to long term treatment.” HANG UP THE PHONE.

This is how to get addicts like us to wake up, hit rock bottom faster and could save our lives. All it takes is one family member to enable and not follow the plan. The alliance will break. The cycle will not end.

As for myself, a therapist, mother, former drug addict in 5 different treatment centers over a span of 15 years, it works. Drug counseling and intervention go hand in hand. Not writing love letters, not surprising them with staged interventionist charging $5000 or threats. It’s a complete turn around and alliance that says:

  • No longer are we participating in the sickness.
  • We are no longer talking about it.
  • We are no longer letting it consume our every thought, sucking up and draining us of our energy and time and focus that other members need and deserve.
  • No longer will we contribute to putting the nails in your coffin. Your doing a fine enough job yourself.

If you can form an alliance and utilize the planned ignore approach, I can assure you the addict will hit their bottom faster. For many it is death. It is the awakening for the addict to start the real work and face their daemons. Your struggling addict will start to become internally motivated to go to treatment and start the process of life.

Utilize drug counseling and intervention for the above stated reasons. Take a stand and create an alliance for the first time. It’s death and life we are talking about here.