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Alyson likes opiates and Gabe is a gambler. Vanessa shops too much, Matt smokes crack and Sara is a meth head. Travis? He’ll do anything. What do all of these people have in common? Interventions.

Intervention is a show about addicts of all kinds, and the response of their family and friends to get them help. Each addict goes into the show thinking that they’re participating in a documentary about addiction, and each is met with a surprise intervention.

The show kicks off with Alyson. Once a bright student and white house intern, Alyson does most every kind of drug, but especially likes her dying father’s morphine pills (at one point she pops eight with ease). One can easily spot Alyson as high out of her skull because she wears clothing two sizes too small for her pudgy little body and flaunts her naked fat rolls with ease. In any event, her family gnashes their teeth and begs her to stop, but it isn’t until the guest super interventionist shows up and springs a surprise confrontation on her that she goes to rehab. What will happen then? Luckily for us, the show skips to a year later, and we see whether Alyson is sober or not.

Gabe the gambler is a tool. He has no money and lives off his parents (who, in fact, have gone so far as to sell their house to pay off his gambling debts). Thirty years old, this man-baby is so obnoxious that he often whines in such a high pitch voice that thirteen-year-old girls everywhere would think it painful. Now, I know that as an audience we’re supposed to be riveted by their plight and yearn for their recovery, but I just wanted this guy to get hit by a bus. Vanessa, an ex actress with hollow eyes is a grab bag of mental illness who works out her issues with shopping. As she has no family, her friends get the joyous task of confronting her.

Sara lives in Wisconsin, and I might be driven to meth if I had to listen to that accent twenty-four seven. She has a young daughter, and like all but one of the other season one’ers, lives with her parents. She is openly melancholic and regretful of her habit, and of all the addicts, Sara had my sympathy.

The last episode was about Matt the crack addict and Travis, the everything addict (though meth seems to be his main problem). Matt seems nice enough, but Travis is simply astounding in his addiction. Former front man of Days of the New, Travis was clearly driven to drugs by his lack of talent. He insists on constantly playing his guitar and singing about his depression – and honestly, I’d be depressed if that were the sum of my talent, too. I wondered repeatedly if the drugs made him obnoxious and pretentious – is it a side effect, like the constant scratching and meth mouth?

Though each episode tells us what happened after the intervention, the DVD comes with a bonus set of follow-up stories, some of which surprised me, some didn’t. I think that this show is something I would watch on television at four am out of sheer boredom or insomnia (but only if Celebrity Rehab wasn’t on), but I wouldn’t buy it. There’s really nothing worth watching over and over again, and in the case of some episodes, it just isn’t worth watching once.

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