My name is Holly Conklin. I am a Certified Intervention Professional and the Founder and CEO of Angel Intervention, a business designed to help save people’s lives. I have dedicated my own life to that purpose as well as to my family and close friends. I am writing this because I want to give full disclosure as to who I am even though I do every single time I work with a family. I am not proud of my past, I want to tell the world or anyone who wants to read this that I refuse to be ashamed of it either and I won’t allow it to be used against me. I was a drug addict, of course I have a past and it’s not very pretty but it has given me a very special skill set that allows me to help others who are drug addicted and who have legal issues due to their addictions.
If you have the misfortunate experience of becoming addicted it does NOT automatically mean you are a bad person. All of the people I work with through intervention had lives, good lives at some point and they are good people underneath the addiction. They had dreams, they were excellent students in school, wonderful mothers and fathers, great kids with bright futures, kids whose families had very high hopes for, kids who never intended to be addicted to drugs, kids who never intended to hurt their families, end up in prison or worse yet dead. These are the things that happen when a person acquires an addiction and when you are addicted, and I was addicted, you cannot see the reality of it, you can’t see that you are hurting your family, you cannot see that you will end up in prison or dead and truthfully even if you do realize these are the possibilities, you are blinded by the drugs. All you care about is the drug and it’s very difficult to envision yourself as a sober person. Most people don’t think they can be happy without the drug, they think they will be bored and some believe they will die without it. That is what I deal with when I’m working with these kids, adult children and adults with addictions.
I would assume that a family with an addicted child, spouse, parent, cousin or even grandparent needs guidance. So, say you have a 19 year old daughter who is stuck in a crack house doing heavens knows what to get drugs and you are scared for her and you don’t know how to get her out and into treatment, who would you choose? Someone who learned from a book about intervention? Or would you choose someone who knows how to get into that crack house and gently remove her. I have and will continue to go where most interventionists won’t go because I am not afraid to risk my own safety to try and save someone’s life. I am confident in my abilities and so it doesn’t feel like risk it feels like it’s the right thing to do and so I do.
I am not afraid of crack houses or meth labs or heroin dealers or pill pushers, I’m not even afraid of pimps. Yes I have been to, what feels like, every crack house in the US, I have even climbed in the bathroom window of one looking for a girl, I have climbed through broken glass and faced a pit bull in one instance, I have fought with a pimp in downtown LA near tent city to save a girl, I have faced a gun. I have found missing children. I have been to the underbelly of Philadelphia. I have waited for 4 full days in the hallway of a house until the boy was ready to talk. I have removed a guy from a crack house who was being held at gunpoint. I have crawled into a house where the addict was sleeping, retrieved his AK47 from under his bed, crawled back out with the gun in tow so he couldn’t shoot me when I woke him up to intervene. I have physically jumped between a Father his daughters’ boyfriend during an altercation where several security guards were present and doing nothing. I have been nearly pulled from a moving vehicle at high speeds down a freeway in California. I have been pushed around by a man, physically confronted by many females and threatened with bodily harm many times, but none of this will stop me from doing what I know I was put on this earth to do. My grandmother always told me that God had a plan for me, this is it. My mother tells me “let no one stop you from helping people”. So I won’t.
As a side note, in every instance listed above…I was successful in getting the person into treatment and by the way, I am 4’ 11 ¾” tall and weigh 115 pounds.
I don’t know many drug addicts who don’t have some sort of drug related criminal past, I certainly do and I don’t hide that fact. Yes I have a rap sheet, all drug related, because I WAS a drug addict. I successfully completed treatment as well as many years of probation and yes, I have helped hundreds of families and addicts. Should I be persecuted for the rest of my life for it? Who among us has never made a mistake or done things that later become regrets? The point is that if you learn from the mistakes you make you become a better person. Isn’t that true?
I rarely ask families to write recommendation letters for me because I never thought I would need to prove, yet again, who I am and what I stand for but I thought now would be a good time to do that so I will be posting some of the stories on this web site so you can see for yourself what others have to say. I’m not hiding, this IS who I am.
Have I been able to help every single person that I approach? No, even though my success rate is roughly 97%, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t give it all I’ve got, that doesn’t mean that I don’t hang in there with the family, for years even, and continue to guide and help, because I do. Again my mother, in her infinite wisdom, reminds me, that I can’t save everyone. She is right, I can’t, but I won’t let anyone stop me from trying.
There are tons of amazing rehabilitation programs out there, not just one or a few and I support them all. I support treatment because you never know what will actually work. So if I am attacked because I support treatment in general then so be it. There are also a lot of intervention companies out there as well. I support and admire them too because this is not an easy job. I have always been okay with the fact that I may not be the right interventionist for a family or a certain situation and do encourage families to look around, find the counselor that is the best fit for them and move forward because it’s not about me, it’s about saving a valuable persons’ life. I will always support the family’s choice for treatment and help them no matter what program they choose.
I felt it necessary to write this so that I can let you know that this is who I am.
I am a Christian, I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a daughter and a sister to many siblings, I am a friend, I am a drug educator, I am an interventionist, I am no longer a drug addict, I have a past that I am not ashamed of and I have a purpose.
With all this being said I will leave you with this quote from the infamous Marshall Mathers (Eminem) in a song from his Recovery CD, “Now tell these people something they don’t know about me!” I’m not afraid either…and I just wanted you to know.
Holly Conklin CIP
Certified Intervention Professional
Founder and CEO Angel Intervention
