Citations & Excerpts

"Tough Love"
By Carlin Flora
January, 2006

…NO SUREFIRE SOLUTION

…Bruce Cotter, author of the book When They Won’t Quit, became disenchanted with the technique after leading many interventions. “I walked into a lot of volatile situations,” he says, recalling an incident in which a father lunged at his heroin-addicted son. “I began to see a contradiction: You have half a dozen people telling you, ‘I love you with all my heart, but you’re a no-good SOB’ It can be humiliating and degrading for the person, who is, after all, sick.”

Cotter favors a modified approach: Family and friends still get together, write their letters, determine consequences and choose a treatment facility. But only a therapist meets with the substance abuser. Under these circumstances, people are more candid and choose whether to go into treatment without feeling coerced, Cotter says. He finds that those who enter rehab after one-on-one intervention arrive less angry and more receptive to change than those who enter after a group confrontation.

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