A family begins to heal

Please accept this as testimonial for the Staff of Intervention 911. After ten years of desperation, and anguish over our son and his addiction to drugs…we finally figured it out ! We could not fix him, love him, scare him, push him, reward him, cajole him, counsel him, threaten him, shove him or any other verb you can think of him into getting better. The addiction won..every single time.

As we watched our family suffer more and more, and watched Mitch suffer more and more, with increasingly dangerous consequences (including a motorcycle accident and a subsequent fourteen month, five surgery hospitalization) our desperation reached a point of hopelessness. What could we do? What in God’s name could we do? Would he die, become homeless, get worse, break the law, go to jail, hurt someone…what else could possibly happen to make him see he needed help?

But where to start? Who could we trust to bring our only son to treatment? We chose Intervention 911.

I made the call, which was the scariest call of my life. A million questions swirled in my mind. My heart broke to think this is what we had come to. Would it work? Would he go? What would happen? How would it happen? Where would he go? Where should he go? And for how long? In less than 5 hours, I got a call from John Nosack. I felt an immediate sense of calm as he explained the process to me. He literally held my hand in the days up to the intervention. Always there, always caring, always reassuring. I love the man and always will because of this. He helped us select a facility, and most importantly selected an Interventionist that would “fit” our son’s needs. Even after the intervention, he has been there when I need a touchstone of reassurance. I wonder, where in the world did you find such a human being that can give so much to people he does not even know? John Nosack will forever hold a corner of our hearts. Forever.

Then I got to speak with Jerry Bowling, the Interventionist. What can I say about Jerry that you probably don’t already know? Jerry is a blessing in our lives. After a million and one phone calls to him before the intervention day, arranging, crying, being scared, being mad, flipping out, questioning our decision, feelings of hysteria and hope (how those two go together I will never know but they do) were put into perspective with Jerry’s calming, and firm but gentle presence. His message was consistent: you are doing the right thing, stay strong, you can do this, you are doing the right thing, you are doing the right thing, you are doing the right thing. What I love the most about Jerry is his tenacity. He told us “this might take five minutes, or it might take five days. And I’ll be here as long as it takes”. This is more than we could have ever expected. But we received it with Jerry. Thankfully, it didn’t take five days (!!!) and Jerry flew with our son across the country to deliver him safely to what we pray will be his eventual path to recovery. But it doesn’t stop there. Jerry is still there for us. Still tenacious, still supportive, still knowing what we need to do and hear from him fight our son’s disease. Because of Jerry, WE are able to fight. Because of Jerry we know that unless we change, our son does not have a chance in you-know-where to change. Because of Jerry, we have hope. And hope is a commodity that any family suffering along with their addict must have to survive. We hope for our son, and ultimately have more hope for ourselves, as truly we need to recover to have the hope that our son will too. Because of Jerry we have learned to detach, with love, from our addiction to our son’s addiction, the source of the chaos in our lives. Because of Jerry we know we must CHANGE for our son to CHANGE, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean it happens at the same time for us and him. And that it’s OK. Have you gotten the impression that Jerry means a lot to us? He is our general and we are the soldiers in the war. That’s who Jerry is to us.

I can only pray that other suffering families will meet Jerry and John. They have punctuated our lives with HOPE, where there was none. I hope they can be strong enough to make the call, strong enough to lay aside their fear for just one moment and make the call to Intervention 911. We do not know what the future holds for our son and his journey. But now at least, we know we did everything humanly possible to right his path. Thank you seems not a strong enough statement to express our gratitude. Bless you..now that’s better !