Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Brad Lamm CIP of Beverly Hills

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Brad Lamm CIP. Check out our conversation below.

Brad, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What do you think is misunderstood about your business? 
With intervention, NO is a conversation starter, not the final answer. A refusal is not a failure. It’s information. Information that cracks open a real conversation. Many people decline help multiple times before accepting it. Each respectful, well-structured invitation can reduce resistance and increase readiness, even when acceptance is delayed.
If you can keep that top of mind while busting several persistent intervention myths that keep people who love someone who needs help from trying to help them.

Myth 1: People Have to Hit Rock Bottom
Rock bottom is a cultural myth, not a clinical concept. Waiting for catastrophic consequences increases risk and trauma while narrowing options. Early, ethical intervention raises the bottom and preserves dignity and choice.

Myth 2: If They Say “NO” We Have Failed
A temporary NO is not failure, it’s information. Intervention is a process, not a single event. In invitational models, “no” often becomes the starting point for deeper engagement and eventual change. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, “Aslan is on the move!” And so are we with this evidence-based intervention model.

Myth 3: Families Must Be Perfectly Aligned Before Acting
Families are told they must be unified and flawless before intervening. What actually matters is alignment around concern and willingness to act. Progress begins with courage, not perfection.

Myth 4: When They’re Ready, They’ll Ask for Help
Readiness is rarely a measure of change that is anything but useful in intervention. Waiting for the one thinking the least clearly about a number of topics is the opposite of a “best practice”. Invitational intervention helps create the conditions where willingness emerges in time.

The goal of intervention, is to get a YES to help. It’s not the time to try to fix anything or everything in the room.
I’ve dedicated my career to helping those who suffer have an experience where transformation and change is possible.. Intervention, when practiced ethically, is not about coercion or cornering someone into change. It’s about interrupting pain with clarity and respect.

Families don’t come to our team with a lack of love. They come overwhelmed by fear, misinformation, and the disbelief that waiting is somehow protective. It isn’t.

Waiting often escalates risk, fractures relationships, and narrows options. Invitational intervention replaces fear with structure and chaos with strategy. It preserves dignity while addressing urgency and that distinction matters.

I love showing people how.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Brad Lamm, a Certified Intervention Professional, author, educator, and founder of Change Institute. Since 2005 I have dedicated my work to crisis intervention and recovery. In that time I have managed more than 1,600 interventions involving substance use, mental health, eating disorders, and complex behavioral crises.

What makes my work distinct is its high rates of success and foundation in ethical, invitational intervention and comprehensive assessment.

We don’t rely on surprise, shame, or ultimatums. Instead, we focus on preparation, alignment, and continuity of care—because intervention doesn’t end when someone says yes. In many ways, that’s when the real work begins.

My approach is informed not only by clinical evidence and collaboration with systems of care, but by lived experience. I came to this work by walking through addiction and recovery myself. That perspective shapes everything I do—from how I work with families, to how I train clinicians globally, to how I advocate for underserved communities who are too often excluded from care.

At its heart, my work is about restoring agency to families and their loved ones who are in a desperate spot.

Okay, so here’s a deep one: What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
As a child, I was surrounded by love and highly charged, highly held religious schedule and mystery. Was I going to hell? Were demons all around us. Heady for a child. Like GAME OF THRONES in ways. I believed that being “saved” was the price of being valued. Logging hours at church and evangelizing was the way to be noticed.

I came to believe that worth is not earned, but innate; something installed on arrival!

I recovered the best parts of myself that I’d imagined were lost forever. Getting help, equipped me to experience that transformation and change are possible no matter how far down the ladder I had slipped.

When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
That shift happened when I realized hiding my pain was costing me a life. Being human is messy, uncertain and imperfect no matter what.Once I understood that my pain didn’t disqualify me from meaningful work but rather equipped me for it, I stopped being something I needed to conceal. It became a source of credibility, compassion, and connection. Transparency became not just personal healing, but professional integrity.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
One of the most damaging is that a short thirty minute assessment will provide an accurate map for care. Mental health is often situated in shifting sand, so to best treat it, an in-depth well-rounded diagnosis comes one way – time and attention.

If we are able to replace fear-based approaches with ethical, evidence-based care, participation changes as do outcomes.

The industry struggles to let go of a barn just full of old equipment! We know more today so let the care reflect that.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people say I helped make change accessible. That I left the planet better than it was on my arrival.

Maybe my advocacy in New York and California at the state level, have changed laws in such a way that care improved and ethics were tightened. The overall failures are driven by fatigue and greed in equal measure but I know my fingerprints are lives changed as well as systems improved.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://intervention.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braddlamm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BradLammInterventionist/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BradLamm