If he won’t willingly choose to go to treatment he is having a normal reaction and joins 90+ percent of the young men who end up going to treatment. Being willing or unwilling is greatly misunderstood and prevents many families from getting their children the help they need in a timely fashion so they can minimize the hurts, damage, legal and medical expenses, and lost potential. The vast majority of our residents are “unwilling” to admit to treatment, in the sense that if they had all of the choice to themselves, they wouldn’t go. The perspective that a person needs to admit they have a problem and ask for help in order for them to go to treatment or get help does not apply to adolescents and young adults. They have parents who are very influential with them (even when it doesn’t seem so) and are capable of reaching out in love and constructing a consequence response to their son choosing not to go to treatment. Adults, however, have the consequence scenario handed out to them by real life. Adults are on their own; therefore, a lifestyle of active addiction gives them escalating consequences to a point that they either, choose to admit they have a problem and ask for help or, they continue their descent which will eventually end in their death. They only choose treatment because of life’s consequences. However, the vast majority of adolescents and young adults only choose treatment because of the life’s consequences that are orchestrated by their parents.

The approach we take is that all residents that admit are “willing” in the sense of the old Godfather line, “A deal they can’t refuse.” Many parents have made this deal by saying something like, “Enough is enough, whether we are right or wrong, we believe with all of our hearts that if we let you continue going down the road you are on, it will end in a catastrophe, so you are going to treatment and you have no choice. Get in the car!” If you can do that with your son, look no further. One of the secrets to success in the treatment process is that parents have to regain their parental authority. However you win the battle of getting him to treatment is a giant step in the direction of re-establishing parental authority. How you achieve it doesn’t matter much as long as it is honest, loving, and firm.

When the above approach won’t work, then the two-roads choice is the best alternative. When a young man is offered the two-roads choice by his parents in a calm but firm way it is the illusion of choice. For example, you can say, “Son you can choose to go to Capstone, graduate, work the aftercare program and we will respond by being in your corner with financial support (not overindulgence and not on promises but on an earn-it-first basis) for school, car insurance, food, etc. and other types of support (like a place to live); or you can choose to not go, and we will choose to not support you in college, car, car insurance, cell phone, television, computer, clothes, etc.” or “we will utilize the legal system, or change schools, move, etc.” It is a great illusion of choice to offer Capstone for 3 to 3 ½ months verses a detention center or another program for 6 to 9 months. Technically this is a choice, so if he takes the road to Capstone, you could say he was “willing” however, it was really the illusion of choice. AA speaks of this as “raising the bottom”, and it saves a lot of hurt compared to letting it go until life gives the two roads’ choice.

When he is admitted to Capstone, he does have to sign some papers in order for us to have legal permission to treat him. However, that battle has already taken place and been won by the parent(s) with the two-roads choice. If he were to buck and say, "I’m not signing", then we would defer calmly to the united parental front that would simply reiterate the choices and hold the line concerning their response options on the two roads.

It’s unrealistic to expect an adolescent or young adult to come willingly. Although a small percentage do so, to expect it is a setup for failure, creates more risk for the son, and makes the parents feel more hopeless. The “willing” vs. “unwilling” admission to treatment has been researched often and it has no prediction on whether or not the outcome will be successful. The key to success is that he becomes willing during the course of treatment, which is basically the central goal of the process. The secret of residential treatment is the crock pot strategy, as named by one of our residents. He said that Capstone was just like a crock pot turned on low so it would cook the residents real slow until they bought into the program. This usually begins after the first 30 days of treatment, which is one of the reasons that the research says that the 90+ day treatment is so essential (National Institute of Drug Abuse).

Be ready when your son stomps his foot on the ground, threatens, verbally attacks and refuses to agree to treatment. This is the normal response and doesn’t mean anything other than that. Every once in a while a parent will tell the story of their son agreeing to get help when first asked, or disclosing their problem and asking for help. I am always amazed, and I am sure any parent would want that to be the situation with their child. However, remember it is not an indicator of whether or not treatment will be successful and it doesn’t happen in most cases. It is not how they start but how they finish that counts. Preparation, calmness, and firmness are keys to success. The first objective and the strongest resource in being prepared is when there are two parents that are on the same page about the need for treatment. When it is a single parent situation the goal doesn’t change but instead becomes a question about the resolve of the individual parent. Instead of a united front with two parents, there must be a united resolve on the part of the one parent. He or she must be firm on how they see the situation in the same way as the two parent unit must be firm.

The locked arms of a united parental front are the most powerful advantage in getting your son to treatment. One way of achieving this is to read the web site on warning signs, fill out the online assessment, and call Capstone to discuss it. This will give you some professional perspective on the level of the problem and the appropriate level of treatment. If the problem is a level three as described on the Online Assessment link on the web site, then residential treatment is the only viable option.

Many parents struggle with the helpless feeling that they can’t get their son to go to treatment. I think the way to look at this is to first determine how serious you think the problem is. If you look at the past six to twelve months and see an escalation in the problem then you can project into the next six to twelve months and predict pretty closely how bad things will get. The projection question then is what will you wish you would have decided? Most of the time the son doesn’t need to get any worse to merit decisive action; however, parents are the only ones that must see this and agree on it because they are the only ones that have to live with their decision. Once the decision is firmly made then it’s all downhill, which will include many ups and downs but the biggest obstacle has been overcome. Again, once it is determined that the situation is that bad and the parents agree on it, the battle is downhill from there. If your son was having unprotected sex with a girl that you knew had the AIDS virus but he didn’t care, what would you do to stop him? If he were playing a game of Russian roulette with a 45 caliber revolver how determined would you be to save him? Do you see what I mean? Once the parents come to the understanding that their son is at the level that fits with residential treatment the rest will fall into place.

Why couldn’t outpatient therapy or intensive outpatient therapy work for this level of problem? When a young adult or adolescent goes to outpatient therapy for 1 to 15 hours per week, he is out of therapy for over 150 hours per week. During this time out he is right back with his group doing the same things he needs to stop doing and is learning how to go more under the radar with his misbehavior. Thus the need for the crock pot effect of residential treatment.

When constructing the two roads some situations are helped by doing an intervention when it’s an older son, 18 and up. However, this intervention is not helpful or productive with a younger son who is 17 and under, most of the time. When the son is that young he needs to simply have the non-choice of the two roads or the absolute non-choice of "It ends here son, get in the car and let’s go!"

Hopefully some of these ideas helped. Don’t think that you should know how to do this. No parent knows how to do this until they learn the hard way, through unwanted personal experience. This is our job and we should know how this works. I’ve gone through this with more than a couple of thousand families. I would have known little of it had I stayed a football coach and high school teacher. Just stay with it and you’ll get it. The secret is to never quit and you’ll get there.

If you want to consider doing an intervention without a therapist or interventionist, click on the Intervention Format link for a description of a basic intervention.

Please call us if we can help at our toll free number 866-728-4479 or email at info@capstonetreatmentcenter.com or me personally at adrian@capstonetreatmentcenter.com. If you haven’t filled out the online assessment or read the web site please do, it will help you make good decisions and be prepared. God bless.