The family calls me because their family member uses drugs in a problematic way and does not accept being helped or helped: they do not want to be treated. My job as a Professional interventionist in addictions is to show, to give a new point of view, to the addicted person or to the one who has problematic consumption, what no one has achieved: that they can stop and that there is another life without consumption. The person usually agrees to be treated.
The people who are best prepared to guide intervention in addictions are those who have experienced addiction because we better understand the disease and the situations that those who suffer from this disease go through.” This is how forceful Jose Lopez Navarro, an addiction interventionist who collaborates with Adictalia, appears to whom we turned to help clarify what intervention work consists of.
The most popularized figure in the USA of someone who guides an intervention process exposed by the television reality show. Its protagonist, a former elite athlete, suffered from drug addiction and, from the place that gives him personal and sports improvement, and public recognition, he works as a coach for troubled adolescents, many with consumption problems. However, the format probably adds, as is foreseeable, a high degree of spectacularity and sensationalism to the addiction intervention process that takes place in reality.
Despite the popularity of the television program, the intervention is a process unknown to many families who have an addicted person in their home and refuse to receive help or even deny their addiction. A process that constitutes, precisely, a resource to urge that person abusing drugs and in denial to become aware of their illness and agree to be treated.
“For me, helping is a vocation; I have been volunteering for many years,” clarifies this electrical specialist, who came to discover the field of addiction intervention after giving voluntary photovoltaic classes to adolescents expelled from institutes. “Most of them consumed joints or some other substance, and without dedicating myself to intervene officially, I was already close to groups of socially disadvantaged people who needed help,” José is surprised.
He also served as the voluntary president of an association that assisted people newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, several infected due to drug use, and their families. And he collaborated in Colombia with a center for drug addicts, where he discovered the possibility and his qualities to become an Interventionist.
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