September is National Recovery Month, and SAMHSA opened this year's observance with a week themed around community and connection. That framing matches something we notice at our clinic: often the person making the first phone call isn't the person using. It's a mother, a wife, a brother-in-law, someone who has been rehearsing the same conversation in their car for two weeks. If you're trying to work out how to help someone with opioid addiction, the fact that you're reading this is already the hard part starting.
Here's what to say, what to do when the answer is no, and what's available in Prince William County right now.
Quick answers
- You can't force an adult into care. What you can do is stay connected and make the next step easy.
- Open-ended questions work better than warnings. So does naming what you admire about them.
- A clinic can listen to your concerns even before your loved one is a patient — federal privacy rules permit it.
- REVIVE! naloxone training in Prince William County is free, runs about 90 minutes, and sends you home with Narcan nasal spray.
- If someone is unresponsive or barely breathing, call 911. That's an emergency, not a clinic visit.
What do you actually say when you're worried about someone?
Lead with curiosity, not evidence. SAMHSA's guidance for families is to listen without judgment and to ask open-ended questions — the kind that start with how, what, or where and can't be closed off with a yes or a no. "I've noticed you haven't seemed like yourself. How can I help?" gets further than a list of everything that's gone wrong.
One detail from that guidance is easy to skip and worth keeping: comment on their strengths during the conversation. Cataloguing failures tends to close a person off from asking for help later. So does an ultimatum delivered in front of the family.
It also helps to expect this to take more than one sitting. SAMHSA is direct that it may take many conversations before someone gets help, which reframes what a "successful" talk looks like. You're not trying to win. You're trying to make sure they know where to come back to.
If you want to practice first, Prince William County Community Services runs community trainings on how to have these uncomfortable conversations, alongside its overdose response work.
What if they say no?
Then you keep the door open. You genuinely cannot make another adult accept treatment — SAMHSA says so plainly, and every provider who works in this field will tell you the same thing.
What tends to backfire is making your support conditional on a yes. What tends to help is staying reachable, staying honest about your own limits, and having the practical details ready for the day the answer changes. That day often arrives suddenly, after a scare or a bad week, and the window can be short.
Can you call a clinic before they're ready?
Yes, and this surprises most families. Federal privacy rules run in one direction. HHS guidance on HIPAA and behavioral health confirms that a provider is permitted to listen to family members about a loved one in treatment — the restriction is on what the provider can share back without the patient's consent.
In practice that means you can call our office and ask what a first appointment involves, whether we take your loved one's insurance, whether evenings or telehealth are options, and what they'd need to bring. Nobody will confirm or deny whether a specific person is a patient. But you can walk into that conversation with the logistics already solved, which turns a scary research project into a ten-minute step.
What happens at a first appointment here?
No referral and no formal diagnosis are needed to get started. AltMed Medical Center in Manassas, VA provides confidential Suboxone treatment for opioid use disorder, and the first visit is mostly conversation: a medical history, a discussion of goals, and an honest look at current use. For patients who are medically stable and ready, dosing can often begin that same day, with adjustments at follow-up visits.
Buprenorphine-based treatment is one of several evidence-based options for opioid use disorder, and a provider is the right person to decide whether it fits a particular situation. It isn't a cure and nobody should promise sobriety. It's medical treatment for a medical condition, reviewed and adjusted over time like any other.
Transportation and work schedules stop more people than ambivalence does. Telehealth visits exist partly for that reason, and walk-ins are welcome at our Rixlew Lane location, though booking ahead usually means less time in the waiting room.
What free help exists in Prince William County right now?
Three things, and none of them cost anything. Families here often assume that knowing how to help someone with opioid addiction requires money or a specialist referral, and locally it doesn't.
REVIVE! training. REVIVE! is Virginia's Opioid Overdose and Naloxone Education program, run locally by Prince William County Community Services and its partners. Sessions run roughly 90 minutes, cover how to recognize and respond to an overdose, and participants receive Narcan nasal spray at the end. Register through pwcva.gov/events or call 703-792-7800. If you're supporting someone who uses opioids, this is the single most useful afternoon you can spend.
SAMHSA's National Helpline. 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members. Nobody needs a diagnosis or insurance to call.
Virginia's Safe Reporting law. This one matters because fear of arrest keeps people from dialing 911. Virginia provides legal protection from certain possession or intoxication charges for someone who calls 911 to save a person they believe is overdosing, as long as they stay and cooperate with responders.
When is this a 911 call instead?
Immediately, if someone can't be woken, their breathing is very slow or has stopped, or their lips and fingertips look bluish or grey. Call 911 first and tell the dispatcher what you have on hand — if there's naloxone in the house and you're not sure how to use it, say so and ask for instructions.
Naloxone buys time. It doesn't replace emergency care, and a person can slip back into overdose after a dose wears off, so emergency responders still need to come.
How do you keep yourself standing through this?
Caring for someone through a substance use disorder is taxing, and SAMHSA's family guidance is explicit that caregivers need to prioritize their own health too. That's not a throwaway line. Sleep, your own blood pressure, the primary care appointment you keep pushing back — those hold up the person doing the supporting.
If your own anxiety or low mood has become the bigger problem, that's worth a visit of your own. And if you're ever in crisis yourself, call or text 988.
Ready when they are
If the conversation goes well this week, don't let the momentum drain away while you look for a phone number. You can book an appointment online or call us at (703) 361-4357, and we're at 8551 Rixlew Lane, Suite 140, in Manassas.
And if today's answer was no — call anyway. Ask your questions. We'd rather talk to you now than have you searching at 2 a.m. later.
This article is for general education and doesn't replace an in-person medical evaluation. If you think someone is overdosing, call 911.
Care connected to this topic
Altmed Medical Center offers urgent care, primary care, occupational health, telehealth, and medical weight-loss services in Manassas. If this article matches what you are dealing with, our team can help you choose the right service.
Book Appointment