The art of interventions and how to avoid them — at all costs

More and more South Africans are embracing American cultural practices. It is to be expected, given the sheer volume of American cinema, music, TV and social media content. Unless I have been walking around with blinders for my first 40 years, October 31 was ... I don’t know what to tell you ... but it was just October 31. People had their porridge for breakfast and pap-en-vleis for supper and that was that. And then, around a decade-and-a-half ago, when my second born started kindergarten, I discovered that we had inadvertently dragged Halloween into our household.

And until about three weeks ago, I wasn’t aware that on top of wearing denim, spelling the word “normalise” as “normalize” and stuffing our faces with Big Macs, we had moved on to holding interventions for friends and family members. Yes, I know, at this rate it’s only a matter of time before we do away with the “u” in words such as “colour” and “labour”.

American Episcopal priest and psychotherapeutic counsellor Vernon Johnson developed the intervention as a tool to “interrupt” the trajectory of dysfunction in addicts and alcoholics in the 1960s. The Johnson/Surprise Model became popular after he published his 1973 book, I’ll Quit Tomorrow, formalising his method. By the 1980s it had become so widely used it had become a pop culture staple in Hollywood and TV circles.

This may be a function of the dysfunctional circles I move in, but until earlier this monthI wasn’t aware that “regular” people were organising interventions on a random Wednesday evening. I don’t know why, I assumed that if they happened here, they’d be structured, formal and ... more stiff upper lipped in a cocky Pom type of way? The one I attended was the clumsy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind you’d expect to see in an episode of Modern Family.

Where do I start? OK, the subject of the intervention was someone I have known for years. The details of the nature of the addiction are not important, but she recently lapsed in a catastrophic way. Her immediate circle of family and friends organised this gathering. When I questioned why I needed to be there, I was told that it was because the subject had immense respect for my opinion. This was my first mistake. I allowed my ego to be stroked, straight into the lion’s den. The convener and host was, like Johnson, a man of the cloth and a counsellor, except that his headquarters are in the Vatican.

After the social deviant had arrived, we put away our tea cups and saucers holding samosas and kicked off by bowing our heads and praying. Participating in the prayer was my second mistake. After the convener gave his opening remarks, setting the tone, the spirit and the rules of engagement, he opened the floor to the first volunteer. After we took turns speaking, it was her turn to respond. This was my third mistake. I should have shrieked, complained of a pain in my abdomen and made a dash for the door. By the time the thought entered my mind, the protagonist was about a minute into her rebuttal. She started by expressing mock surprise at the identity of what she called “the coalition of model citizens”. What confused her, she mused out loud, was why she had been singled out for an intervention when, looking around the room, several of us were in as much need as she, if not more.

For a few seconds there was silence, interrupted by the creaking of chairs as weights shifted uneasily. The Reverend Father jumped in, throwing around big English words such as “deflection” and “repressed anger”. But she cut him off by reminding him of his rules of engagement. We were going to sit there and listen as she went around the room and told us why we needed interventions as much as she did.

Until that moment I didn’t realise that the sound of collective gulping was audible. By the time she'd gone halfway around the room, an aunt was weeping uncontrollably, two cousins were at each other’s throats and the alcoholic uncle had gone to fetch his Gordon’s flask from his 1987 Toyota Cressida GLS.

She then asked if anyone knew Matthew 7:1-3 in the New Testament. It was a trick question. This was a bunch of Catholics and Catholics don’t commit Bible verses to memory. She then pointed at me: “And you, sitting there with a silly smirk, you’re probably the only one who knows what the verse says because all closet devil worshippers know the Bible intimately.” She was right. Not about that. I did know that the verse is about not judging lest ye be judged. By the time she was done with the Reverend, I was teetering on the verge of breaking my two-month-long booze hiatus and asking for a triple Gordon’s to calm my frayed nerves.

Reflecting on that evening, I can hear my father’s voice in my head: “Don’t wish for your neighbour’s peach tree because it may be housing a wasps’ nest.” After my harrowing experience I conducted an unscientific scan of people who had participated in an intervention. The stories I heard made mine seem like a tea party at Buckingham Palace.

Maybe we need to import a few Americans to sprinkle some of that intervention spirit on us. The tragedy is that as soon as we perfect this latest American fad, it will be time to assimilate another intervention method, based on Eastern philosophy, in anticipation of the next wave of inculturation.