A&E's Interventionist: Breaking Down Walls

There’s a wall of denial that needs to be broken through in order to get to the other side of addiction. I have the gift of being able to help people break the cycle, and that gift was given to me when an intervention was performed on me in 1989. I was addicted to crystal meth and alcohol.

At that time, in my denial, I believed I could do it on my own, but I was wrong. My loved ones sat me down with a professional interventionist and, in a loving way, told me I needed some help. Because of the intervention, I agreed to go into a treatment facility and have been clean for 19 years.

The root of addiction is just like any other medical condition; it runs in the family. Ten per cent of people in the world are born with a gene that makes them vulnerable to addiction. I had an incredible upbringing and I’m an addict while my sister is not. It’s luck of the draw, so to speak.

Sometimes people blame the parents or the family when a child becomes addicted, and that breaks my heart. I work with hundreds of families, and while some of them are difficult, some of them are just the most loving parents in the world, and yet their kid comes up with addiction.

Sometimes parents are addicts, but the children turn out fine. One episode of Intervention showed a mother who was a crystal meth addict, who had brought up these two boys – the boys must have had some terrible experiences with that, but they weren’t addicts; they’re very healthy young men. Why is that?

All I can say to people who blame is to go and get some more education.