“Chaos. Just chaos,” says Jason describing his life before the intervention from drugs and alcohol—his life before Jim Tracy. “I was ordering drugs online, spending $100 a day on speed, pain killers, any drug I could get my hands on. The depression was horrible. I didn't want to deal with life. I'd been living a lie for years. My friends, my family, nobody really knew what was going on with me. I was miserable, the drugs and alcohol where used to cover the pain and guilt I felt for the life I was leading”.

Some would say Jason had lived a charmed life. The son of a powerful, wealthy businessman, he'd had everything handed to him with ease. Alcohol had made him the life of the party in high school. But when his peers went on to college, Jason didn't want to leave the high school life, he didn't want to grow up. So he pretended to go to college. During the day he'd hang out in his apartment drinking and drugging until it was time to go out and party with his college friends in the evening. Friends and family thought he was attending classes.

When his peers graduated from college and started their careers, Jason had never had a job, and couldn't bring himself to take a low-level job after living such a privileged and wealthy life style. So he continued to live the lie, drinking, drugging and pretending—all funded by his father's credit cards and eventually even forging his father's checks.

Jason put on a convincing facade—the charming, All-American, clean cut kid. He'd become a master manipulator, and a gifted liar—but he had no life skills. A child of divorce, the disconnect between family members combined with denial made it possible for Jason to hide the truth. His father, unaware of the extent of Jason's drug and alcohol problem tried to motivate him to do better by buying him a new car and a nice apartment. It didn't work; he crashed the car while driving under the influence.

At 27 he went to live with his father in another state. Isolated from his familiar environment, and nothing to do, the drugging accelerated. He was up all night and sleeping all day. And then his father intercepted a UPS package of prescription drugs Jason had ordered online. “When I confronted Jason about the package, he turned violent” says Jason's father, Don, “He was dangerous, he clearly wasn't himself anymore. I realized that we needed help”.

A psychiatrist recommended that the family contact Jim Tracy, certified interventionist. The severity of the situation called for a prompt response. Jim instructed the family to tell Jason a professional was coming to conduct a family workshop on addiction, and invite Jason to attend. Even though his father didn't believe that Jason would accept the invitation, on some level, Jason realized he needed help. That very small voice inside knew he was going nowhere with this life, and that he had more potential. He just didn't know how to get out of the situation. Besides, having become so dependant upon the family for financial support, he had no place else to go. He accepted the invitation.

About a week later the family gathered—father, mother, sister and Jason. Jason's mother, Debra, had suspected Jason's alcohol problem for some time, but within the family dynamics had felt unable to do anything about it. The intervention was very professional, organized like an educational workshop, rather than the chaotic surprise attack popularized in the media. Jim spent much of the first day focused on the family, creating a safe environment, and calming their anxieties. Over the course of the next three days, Jim shared his own story of addiction in a way that Jason could relate to, and he educated the family about addiction, brain chemistry, enabling and enmeshment. Family members had an opportunity to share about how Jason's addictions had affected them. Jim explored the family history, which uncovered several branches of the extended family tree that had suffered from alcohol and drug abuse. “Everyone heard the same information at the same time, so that they could all come to a common understanding and opinion,” explains Jim about his process of moving the family to a consensus that Jason was going to get on a plane and go to a treatment center across the country for 3-4 months. When opportunities arose, he spent time one-on-one with Jason to build trust and connection. He wanted Jason to know that he was there to help him, not hammer him. “I was pretty messed up”, Jason recalls, “but I remember that Jim was a really cool guy. I don't think I would have gotten on that plane if it wasn't for Jim,” he says.

As an independent interventionist, Jim has a large repertoire of treatment facilities around the country to choose from for his recommendations. “I take great care to match the right facility to the person's circumstances to get the best outcome,” he explains. Jim made the recommendation that Jason go away from the enmeshment and enabling of his family, to a substance abuse treatment center that focused on young adults and helped them learn how to create a life. It was more than just the addiction. Jason needed to develop living skills. Up until that moment, Jason didn't have a life—and he knew he didn't have a life. So even though he was still outwardly denying that he had a problem, he reluctantly agreed to go to treatment.

The treatment facility enforced strong discipline. And despite the fact that Jason had never encountered that before in his life, he embraced the program and his recovery. At the end of the first three months Jason was still in denial about the extent of his addiction and not ready to return to his home environment. It was agreed that he would stay at the treatment center. After a couple more months, with the help of the facility, he took a job working in the kitchen at a local hotel washing dishes. “For someone who had never worked a day in his life, being at work at 6:00 am every day was so hard,” says Jason. But he stuck with it, working his way up from the bottom and gaining self-esteem in the process. He would spend another year and a half in that community, supporting himself financially, eventually running an after-care group for the treatment center, maintaining an apartment and regularly attending AA meetings. Two years after getting on a plane, and leaving the security of his family to begin a journey of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, Jason returned to his hometown. He got a job at a local fitness facility. While living his life of lies he pretended to be a fitness trainer, now that dream was a reality and he was experiencing real success. This was a young man with many gifts, who had gotten derailed with drugs and alcohol. Now he is realizing his potential and creating a life for himself. His success is earned through his own hard work, and a continuing commitment to his recovery.

Don's advice to other families facing the problem of alcohol and drugs—”you have to face it, you have to make the tough decisions. If you put off dealing with the problem, it only gets worse.” “I shutter to think where Jason would be now had he continued down the path he was on. He'd probably be dead,” says Don. “We're very grateful to Jim Tracy. He gave us our son back.”

By Elizabeth McMartin
Writer's Note: This is a true story of one family's experience working with Jim Tracy, Interventionist as told through a series of interviews with family members. The names have been changed to maintain the family's privacy. We thank them for their willingness to openly share their story in the hopes that reading it may help other families.

Elizabeth McMartin is President of EJ Communications, a Marketing Communications firm in Charlottesville, Virginia