A Critique: A&Es Intervention

For those of you out there in the blogging world and elsewhere who love keeping up with the new television shows that started this past fall (shout out to New Girl...LOVE that show!!) and are going crazy because they still haven't resumed and there is NOTHING on TV... well, this post is for you (mostly because you can probably relate to how I am feeling!) Because all of our favorite shows are on what I like to call "Christmas break," Tommy and I have struggled with what to watch once the boys are in bed and before I go to bed. Which, for those of you who don't know me personally, my bedtime is only an hour or so after the boys go down. I am an early to bed kinda gal and I wouldn't have it any other way. Back to my critique...because our usual shows haven't been on, we have been watching some WEIRD TV. Lately, we have been really into the A&E show Intervention.  Have you heard of it? What do you think of it?

The most recent episode we watched was about a young girl who was addicted to heroin.  She started shooting up when she was 17 and the show aired when she was 21. She was homeless and occasionally prostituted in order to get money to buy her drugs.  She literally broke my heart into a million bazillion pieces. Then they started interviewing her mother and I found myself getting so ANGRY.  The woman totally enabled her daughter. Would give her  money to buy drugs. Would do heroin WITH her. Annnd when it came to the actual intervention, the interventionist called her mother out on her behavior and told her she needed to stop and get help herself. The mother freaked out and left and when they interviewed her she said she was upset because the interventionist was accusing her of being a bad mom.  HELLLLLLLLLLLO...you do heroin with your daughter!!! Not exactly a vote for the mother of the year award. Right?!

Whenever we watch the show, I find myself getting angry with the person who has the addiction because of how they treat their family. How can one treat their family members in such a way...just with complete lack of respect? I just don't understand. I cannot relate. Yet, I obviously get the fact that these people are sick and have a real problem, drug addiction. I understand that the person literally cannot help themselves to quit even if they wanted to but I STILL find myself getting angry. I hate seeing how drug and alcohol addictions tear families apart. However, in this episode I found myself crying whenever they interviewed the young girl. She truly just broke my heart. I felt so bad for her and what she must be going through. I wanted to get on an airplane and help her because the people she was surrounded with, the people who are supposed to love and care for her and help here, were NOT helping her. They were doing drugs WITH her.  I think that is what got me all up in arms about this episode.  As a mother, I guess I just don't understand how you could do that to your daughter.  I was literally shouting at the TV.

I have always had this innate feeling of wanting to help people. When I got to college I thought I wanted to be a drug and alcohol counselor. Then when I realized what that entailed I immediately changed my mind. How can you help someone to get better if you have no empathy for them and get angered by their actions? Ummm...you can't. Definitely would not have been a good fit for me and that's OK. For the record, I give the utmost credit to those individuals out there who are drug and alcohol counselors. You are AMAZING people and I could never do what you do.  So thank you for doing what you do. Also, I don't want this post to come off and sound all judge-y because that is NOT my intention. This post is just a reflection of the episode I watched and how it made me feel. It is not my job or place to judge others and how they react to certain situations. I'm simply just saying that the girl featured made me feel so sad and lonely and her mother made me angry. Who knew one could get angered at a person they didn't even know?! Welcome to reality TV I guess. Lets just say this girl is looking forward to New Girl and GLee starting back up.