How effective are interventions in dealing with behavioral addiction?
I'm very sceptical about interventions in dealing with behavioural addiction. I've worked at several residential treatment centres. I believe that some people really do respond well to interventions, but the vast majority find them as providing more reasons to put their heels into the ground and say: "I'm not going to do what you tell me to do; I think it's your problem, get off my back". Many people I've seen in these residential centres may go in to acquiesce to the family's requests. Then, two or three days later, they accidentally find a way of checking out, and two or three hours after they leave the treatment centre, they're actively involved in their addiction again, because they were not sincerely involved in the choice of treatment. They were not sincerely ready to involve themselves and get serious about it, even though the family feels it's time; it's time, it's gotten bad enough. If the individual isn't ready, they're not going to integrate. They're not going to take in the best, even the very best, of treatment.