Unlike most intervention companies, Family First Intervention has a full staff, including several experienced professional interventionists. Our team comes from many different backgrounds, and together we have a firm grasp on how various forms of drug and alcohol abuse impact the family dynamic.

We believe that not every client will be a perfect match for each intervention counselor. Therefore, we do our homework early on to understand your family better and then assign you an intervention counselor whose strengths and background best relate to your family’s situation. Our intervention counselors operate in all 50 states, and our group has been going strong since 2008.

The leading staff members and intervention counselors who make up Family First Intervention are as follows:

  • Mike Loverde, CIP, B.S. – President, Founder, CEO, Intervention Coordinator, Intervention Counselor & Aftercare Specialist
  • Lisa Loverde – Vice President, CFO, Intervention Counselor, Treatment, Insurance & Intervention Coordinator
  • Billy Gregg – Intervention Counselor, Director of Intervention Coordinators & Scheduling
  • Katelyn Burns – Operations Manager, CMO
  • Cathy Gardner Office Manager
  • Sharon Kubacki – Intervention Counselor
  • Pete (James) Brown – Intervention Counselor
  • Benjamin Delong – Intervention Counselor
  • Frank Riedl – Intervention Counselor
  • Joseph R. Novak, CIP, CCMI-Intern, NCIP, NCRIC-I – Intervention Counselor

 

The Goal of an Intervention

The most difficult task for our intervention counselors is not getting your loved one to accept the help necessary. Rather, it is getting family members to agree to change enabling behaviors and set boundaries so the addict or alcoholic is able to accept help.

A professional interventionist assists the family in understanding that the addiction cannot change without the family changing, too. When the family and the interventionist first meet for intervention family day (without your one loved present), the family is not only educated on the addiction model, but also led to comprehend how the addict or alcoholic has changed the family’s behaviors over time.

Intervention counseling goes far beyond simply talking with an addict or alcoholic. It also changes aims to change family behaviors and set appropriate boundaries so the addict or alcoholic becomes accountable. For the intervention specialist to get someone to change, the situation must first change.

Most families are told time and again that their loved ones have to want help or hit rock bottom in order to get well. In addition, many perceive an intervention counselor’s function as making an inspirational speech and talking the substance abuser into treatment. We know we can’t immediately change the addict or alcoholic because you have tried that over and over again. In order for the addict or alcoholic to get well, the family must become educated on addiction, enabling and co-dependency.

We Believe in First-Hand Experience

A history professor at an Ivy League school can relay an endless amount of information on the D-Day invasion during WWII. However, we would rather listen to an actual soldier who stormed the beach.

Our point is simply this: Not only are the intervention counselors at Family First Intervention professionals, they have also been in the trenches. We do not believe it is possible to be an effective intervention specialist if you have not walked in the addict or alcoholic’s shoes.

Our intervention counselors are told time and time again by families that – after speaking to dozens of other doctors, psychiatrists, therapists and others – we were the first ones to give them hope. We were the first interventionists who did not tell them to sit back because it was hopeless. Family First Intervention counselors change lives every day, and we never tell a family that their loved one has to want help or hit rock bottom, because that is exactly the wrong approach to take in this delicate process.

Founder Mike Loverde’s Personal Take

Is an addiction intervention counselor necessary when the family thinks they can do the intervention themselves? As the president and founder of Family First Intervention, Inc., I went to 19 treatment centers willingly because my family did their own intervention and established several rules on which they never followed through.

Every time I went to treatment, I never went for myself, and it never had to work. Frustrated, my family found an addiction intervention specialist. Not only did the intervention counselor obtain my willingness to accept help, he also changed our family system to make me accountable and responsible, allowing me to own the addiction for the first time in my life.

Because of this, I have been clean and sober, and I now perform the same type of intervention that saved my life and my family’s sanity. Families can often talk their loved one into a treatment center. However, rarely do they get them to stay in treatment and remain sober.

Bringing in an addiction intervention counselor greatly increases the long-term likelihood of your loved one remaining sober, as well as the family healing and getting better, too. When families try to do the intervention themselves, they are missing the entire first part of what an intervention is about: changing the family system that has been broken down by the loved one’s addiction.

Remember, when addiction has befallen someone, it is not the family’s fault. However, bringing in an addiction intervention specialist can show the family exactly what needs to change and why.

How Our Drug and Alcohol Intervention Process Works

Our intervention process is a two-day event, starting first with the family members but not including the addict or alcoholic. Our drug and alcohol intervention specialist spends as much time as necessary with the addict or alcoholic’s family members, preparing for the actual intervention day and for what happens after it is over.

Professional drug and alcohol interventionists are important because they are not emotionally attached to the situation, and it is much easier for them to see the forest for the trees. It is quite amazing how many families tell us that their loved one gave us more information about what is really going than the family ever received. This is because the family rarely understands entirely what their loved one is going through, and vice-versa.

Bringing the family together with an intervention counselor is the most comfortable option for everyone. There is usually much resentment and tension at the intervention, so having an interventionist present makes the process run much more smoothly, all while opening the door to long-term sobriety for you loved one. Our intervention process has an amazing way of making your loved one own the addiction and become accountable for past behavior, something that has been lacking in their life for a long time.