Does anyone know if they work?

A friend of mine who had a crack probelm and who had been a on crack binge for three days was tracked down by a group of us who pulled him out of the hotel and took him home. I'll spare you the details of the in between but he ended up kicking the habit and has been clean for 10 years now so in this case yes, intervention did work. Your results may differ but doing something is better than sitting idlley by. If you have a friend who needs help then by all means help!

If nothing else, interventions definitely do work in the short term -- i.e. like in the situation described by ChrisM above, it got the guy out of the hotel and away from his immediate environment and whatever people or situations were enabling him at that moment. That alone could have saved his life, who knows what would have happened to him if he kept on going with a major drug binge for another few weeks or months. Whether or not interventions "stick" in the long haul is a much more complicated issue, but in the immediate situation like the addicted friend holed up in the hotel described above, it obviously made a big difference. Or by contrast, in the famous case of Kurt Cobain, where there was no meaningful intervention, and look what wound up happening to him. Not to cast blame, or bring up an old story, but I always felt like if they had taken control and gone in there as a group -- friends, family, band, record company, management -- and gone to Cobain's house and gotten him out, sent him to some heavily-supervised psychiatric treatment and rehab in Hawaii or Europe or something, the whole thing would have ended differently and possibly prevented his suicide. (No comments about Cobain's music or personality necessary, I'm just talking about the personal situation.) So in drastic times, I'd say it's definitely better to do something then not to do it.

The Intervention

Mick and Keith: Ronnie, straighten up or we're firing you.

Ronnie: Duh, okay.

Repeat every three years.

From what I've seen on the Telly they only "work" if the addicted person goes to a professional facility. Even then the rate of success is no better than 50/50.

Hey elmo lewis very funny, that is good, except you might need to tell ronnie this every three weeks! poor old ronnie!

A close relative of mine had a serious drinking problem after his wife left him for his boss, up to the point where he lived in bus stops.
My (now ex) wife took him in and arranged for him to be put in a clinic. He stayed in the program for about four months. His employer took him back and put some money aside for a new start.

He's been off the boose for more than ten yearsnow. He even met a lady in the clinic and they both stayed clean even through difficult times when she eventually died from throat cancer.

In this case it was the love, care and trust he received and the professional help that helped him, but moreover is is in the man himself.

Thanks, valerie, so true, unfortunately.