Intervention & Beyond Since 2008
Bryan Johnson

When someone is addicted to alcohol or drugs, the immediate and systemic negative effects are not just felt by the substance user. Addiction inevitably affects those closest to the substance user and can be equally devastating to the family members and their quality of life.

Families, often in uncharted territory, begin the coping process with maladaptive thoughts and strategies. The addicted loved one seeks to manipulate and mold the family into a counterproductive mechanism that provides comfort to the substance user while sowing confusion, anger, and uncertainty within the family.  

The process of intervention seeks to help families understand why they have waited as long as they have before trying something different. Substance users are almost never able to manage their addiction on their own.

The addiction lives and breathes thanks to enabling, codependency, and comfort. These three conditions are often present, provided (to the surprise of many) by the substance user’s immediate family. Over time, the family relies on these strategies to cope with the situation, and the substance user expects this way of living to continue and feels a sense of entitlement.

In due course, the family becomes needed and dependent on helping the substance user, giving the loved one needed comfort at the expense of their own. It is at this point when families become afraid to do anything. They find reasons to do nothing in order to protect themselves from any uncomfortable change.

Families formulate more reasons for not attempting an intervention than the substance user will for not entering a treatment program. In the end, it is less difficult to help a loved one struggling with substance abuse than it is for a family to let us in and offer it.

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Bryan Johnson is co-founder of BridgeBack Interventions Chicago & National Interventionist for over 17 years.

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Bryan has a powerful network of ethical providers, nor is he employed or subcontracted in any capacity with our provider network that he has personally toured and vetted. 

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Bryan is educated from DePaul University Chicago and highly family systems oriented and facilitates the latest Intervention approaches. I will never leave your family stranded. Period...  References available upon request from one or more of our Alum Families.