Episode 10: Life and Death Interventions
The “family disease” is so called because it has the power to rip families apart. For the last 5 years, millions of people have tuned in to look at people dealing with addiction. Everyone has something. Each week the A&E series “Intervention” tackles addiction and orchestrates last chance interventions. The problem could be shopping, food, sex, pills, gambling, or even rage. Help is what they get in the form of emotional intervention, they get free inpatient treatment for 90 days.
24 year old Josh is morbidly obese, he is over 500 pounds and utterly miserable. He can’t believe he got to this point. The average adult needs 2000 claories a day; Josh gets 5-6000. He is like a walking time-bomb; his body will simply give up under his weight if he does not act now. He doesn’t know how to stop eating- he was called fat as a child, he is afraid of being hurt, his parents always made him clean his plate. His parents say he is rebelling the only way he can, by eating. He says he doesn’t get support at home- we see him baking cupcakes with his family. He is trapped in a situation he can’t control.
Josh’s family are worried and they reach out for help via an intervention specialist. In a hotel room his family and ex-girlfriend are there with the cameras rolling. Josh enters the room and says he doesn’t like surprises – he is told it’s not a surprise, it’s a gift. His Dad is worried about Josh following in his footsteps, he apologises for not being a good parent. 2 years ago he checked into rehab. In two years he has lost half his body weight, over 250 pounds. He comes into the studio.
Josh was eating himself to death, when Intervention and his family checked him into rehab. Intervention has a 76% success rate. Intervention saved his life. He doesn’t know how he managed to get around with all that weight. Oprah asks what was different this time, diet-wise? The structred environment of rehab enforced strict guidelines and focus on his emotional wellbeing. Prior to rehab he dealt with his pain and hurt with food; his drug of choice. Food really was an adiction- willpower was not an issue. He tried everything, he’d be good for a few weeks then go on binges. He was hiding the fact that he was gay- he comes from a conservative Christian background. He was living a facade so that his whole life wouldn’t reject him- his family, his church. By being the fat guy he could keep people away from him. Oprah asks how the reaction was to coming out. He did it when in treatment; he told his mom first, who did not react well. She then told his dad. His dad called and said he still loved him but there was so much disappointment evident in his voice. Oprah says the feeling of letting down parents by just being yourself must be the worst feeling in the world. Josh says he doesn’t regret his choice at all. Over time, his parents have grown to accept him for who he is. In rehab he was told that our secrets will keep us sick. Josh knew he would never get well if he didn’t come clean. From now on, he is real. The people who love him love the real him. Thank you Josh.
Lesley, a mother of three, struggles with alcoholism. Before her addiction, she was a wonderful mom. She married Craig when she was 27. She was the PTA mom, the homeroom mom. She started drinking at 41- she would drink in the afternoons with a girlfriend. Soon she was having 2 or 3 bottles of wine a day. Her friends told Craig that Lesley had a problem. The alcohol doesn’t fix her problems. At her lowest she drank mouthwash and two pints of vodka a day. In video footage, she says she can only exist, she can not be a good mom right then. The footage shows her drinking dregs out of bottles in the trash while the kids are around. She feels like an unworthy mother.
A few days later the family staged an intervention. She has been sober now for a year and a half. Watching the tape is devastating to her, the pain she caused her family can not be reversed. Oprah asked how did it happen? Lesley can count nine times in her life that she was drunk until she was 41. She wasn’t happy with herself but the alcohol could not fix it, could only cover it up. We need to be taught coping mechanisms. She was a drug counselor teaching kids not to take drink or drugs, but she got caught up in it herself. She would have a morning drink, trying to hide it from the kids, to face the day. She’d drink until preschool pickup at 11am. She was able to hide it from her husband, and she thought she was hiding it from the kids, but they knew. Oprah asks about her drinking out of bottles from the trash while her kids watch- did she realise what she was doing this to her kids. She did not. All that was important to her was the alcohol. Alcoholism is an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body. She learned that mouthwash made her high- it’s 26.9% alcohol. She got high from it and learned it made her high- it became another means to get drunk. She will never have enough I’m Sorry’s for his kids. She deals with the pain that she does not raise her kids anymore- Craig took the children. She talks to them everyday but they never want to come visit. She finds the disease terrible, embarrassing and shameful.
We watch painful footage of the intervention. The addiction specialist says that children are not normally present because it’s too painful, but in this case they need the children to make it work. They are the mainstay of why Lesley should decide never to drink again. Her oldest son says its embarrassing, the loving mom has gone, and that if she doesn’t take control of her drinking, she’ll lose her family and relationships. She says she loves him, they embrace. Her daughter says she could die if she does this, she could die in a car- Lesley thanks her for sharing that with her. the younger son reads through the tears- they used to do so much together but now she does nothing but sleep in the car, ashe is not there for him when he needs her. She apologises and hugs him and says she wants to be there for them. In the audience, her son says it was hard, he didn’t want to be around her when she was drinking, he’d have to take care of her. Oprah says he had to parent his parent, and parent his siblings. The daughter, Margo, says it was hard to see her mom through it, even in 4th grade she found it embarrassing. Now she’s sober it’s easy to be around her, they talk two times a day. Ryan, the middle son can trust her now that she is sober, he could never trust her before. Now they can talk about anything. Oprah asks her husband where he was mentally when this was happening? He wasn’t thinking about alcohol, and he couldn’t figure out why she was acting this way. She’d blame hormones, PMS, she was a good liar. She’d go to the doctor for these things. They’d argue alot about dumb things- she was a good housewife and mom but all that stopped. She was neglecting her family responsibilities. She had been the trophy wife, the team mom, and all that stopped.
Lesley was told she had a high “bottom”- she hadn’t lost anything, not her family or her job. Through relapses she lost everything- dignity, home, family, marriage, finances, her home- she became homeless. She had to hit absolute bottom to begin to climb up. Over a peiod of three or four years she’d be sober then relapse. Then Craig had to take the kids. Lesley advises that alcoholism is a disease and that people should not be ashamed, they are not a bad person, they need to get help. Oprah asks if you should take responsibility for what you’re doing? Lesley says you need to get help and you shouldn’t be ashamed to get help. Last time she was sober for 2 1/2 years, this time round it’s 1 1/2 years. Lesley says she has to take things day by day, sometimes even minutes by minute. This is the nature of addiction, but she feels stronger in her sobriety than she has ever been.
Jason was a star athlete form a middle-class family in Colorado. After Columbine, his family watched him slowly kill himself. For five years, he had been injecting heroin. He was panhandling to feed his addiction. His mom would text him everyday to say she loved him, just incase. His addiction was destroying the family. He was the perfect child, he had everything. But at 16 he started experimenting with marijuana and cocaine. 10 months after graduating from Columbine High School, the deadly massacre occured. 12 off his former classmates and one teacher were killed. The shooters were retaliating against the jocks- Jason says a big reason for the rebellion was because him and the other athletic kids picked on them; they were bullies. After the Columbine incident, it became very apparent that Jason was using drugs. Cameras followed Jason to an Intervention with the A&E program. His family wants to fight to get Jason back. He agrees to listen. His family say that he has to change, they will no longer give him money for drugs. He agrees to go to rehab for an intervention.
Jason says that right is now the first time he has ever really broken down and started to feel his emotions. When his intervention took place, he couldn’t feel anything because he was too high. Columbine sent him into a downward spiral- his name came up as being at fault as a jock and a bully. He didn’t know the shooters personally, but he did pick on them- Jason was in the elite group. Guilt and shame piled upon him, so he began to do more drugs to try and not feel. Oprah says we all do it to try and escape stress. All Jason knew was how to get high. He has been clean for eleven months. The crowd applaud. He learned breathing skills and how to think about his emotions before he acts. The pain in his past is a motivator for what he is doing today. He doesn’t want to be that low, to hurt his family again. Heroin was his soulmate, he couldn’t stop it. Jason is grateful that his family are hear for him and that he is alive today. He is going to be a diving instructor. It’s a whole new world. He has a new passion for diving.
New episodes of Intervention are airing Mondays on A & E. Goodbye everyone.
WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY:
Our secrets will keep us sick
We need to be taught coping mechanisms
Addiction is a disease, not a choice
Do not be ashamed, you are not a bad person, ask for help if you need it
Take things day by day, minute by minute if need be
A VERY QUICK SUMMARY:
Addiction is a disease which can be treated, but be honest- your secrets will keep you sick