My daughter is an alcoholic and was on a downhill spiral. She had been in rehabs before but was unwilling to undergo further rehab treatment. I was deeply concerned about the traditional concept that the alcoholic has to reach ‘rock bottom’ before any meaningful treatment would work. This gambles that in the interim the alcoholic won’t die, cause irreversible damage to their body/mind and jeopardise their future by possibly having a criminal record, debts, losing their home etc.
Sober Services offered a different approach of ‘intervention’ before the alcoholic descends into the possible terrifying consequences mentioned above. The intervention process, which is explained in the Sober Services programme, whilst being very stressful for myself and my family, was effective in that despite my daughter’s initial strong resistance to further detox and rehab she ended up undergoing detox in the UK and rehab in South Africa.
Ian Young and his team at Sober Services were extremely helpful in:-
(1) the lead up to the actual intervention process
(2) participating in the intervention meeting with my daughter and family members
(3) choosing the right rehab as Ian has extensive knowledge of various rehab possibilities both domestically in the UK and abroad.
(4) putting together a programme to cover the post rehab situation for my daughter.
Throughout the process Ian was always contactable which was hugely important to myself and he gave advice to family members on the actions they needed to take as part of the intervention.
I appreciate there are no absolute guarantees that my daughter will remain alcohol free forever but I felt the intervention process at least offers her a good chance of living rather than the highly probable dire consequences of the ‘rock bottom’ approach.
