How to Get Someone Into Rehab in New York

Most people who call about addiction treatment are not calling about themselves. They are calling about a son, a partner, a parent — someone who has not asked for help and may not want it.

The question underneath almost every one of those calls is the same: can I make them go? In New York the honest answer is no, with one narrow exception, and understanding where that line sits will save you weeks of looking for a door that is not there.

This guide covers what the law actually allows in New York, what works better than the thing most people try first, and the practical steps that remove the obstacles between someone deciding to go and actually arriving. For the general principles, not specific to New York, see help for a loved one.

Can You Force Someone Into Rehab in New York?

For an adult, essentially no. New York has no process by which a family member petitions a court to commit someone to addiction treatment against their will. Some states do — Florida has the Marchman Act, Kentucky and Ohio have versions of Casey’s Law. New York does not.

What does exist: the 72-hour emergency hold

New York’s Mental Hygiene Law section 22.09 allows someone to be taken to a treatment facility and held for a short period, but the conditions are narrow and the trigger is not a family member.

Two things must both be true. The person must be incapacitated by alcohol or other substances — meaning unconscious, or with judgment so impaired that they cannot recognise their need for treatment or make a rational decision about it. And there must be a likelihood of harm: a substantial risk of physical harm to themselves or others, evidenced by suicide threats or attempts, threats of serious bodily harm, or violent behaviour that puts others in reasonable fear.

Who can set it in motion:

• A police or peace officer, who may take an apparently incapacitated person to a treatment facility.
• The local director of community services, or their designee.
• The director of a treatment facility, who may admit someone who appears incapacitated.

A family member is not on that list. What a family member can do is call 911 when someone meets the standard, and provide the account of what has been happening — which is often the information the responding officer relies on.

The time limits

Stage	Limit
Initial examination	As soon as possible, and no more than 12 hours after arriving at the facility
Reevaluation	Regularly. Release is required once a physician finds the standard is no longer met
Retention over objection	No longer than 72 hours, or until the person is no longer incapacitated to the required degree — whichever is shorter
Beyond 72 hours	Only with the person’s consent

No court petition, hearing or order is involved. The decision rests with the examining physician. The facility must also make reasonable efforts, with the person’s consent, to notify a close relative or friend.

Why this matters for expectations

Seventy-two hours is not treatment. It is long enough to get someone through the most acute danger and, sometimes, long enough for them to agree to stay. It is not long enough to change anything on its own, and a person who leaves at hour 73 has not failed — the mechanism was never designed to do more than that.

A bill has been introduced repeatedly in Albany that would create a family petition route, most recently as Senate Bill S2664 in January 2025. It would let a spouse, guardian, relative or other adult with personal knowledge petition the local director of community services, with court-ordered retention of up to 90 days. It remains in committee, and earlier versions in three previous sessions did not become law. It is not current law, and should not be planned around.

The exception: if mental illness is also part of the picture

There is one route in New York where a family member can petition a court, and it is widely missed because it is filed under mental health rather than addiction. It is Assisted Outpatient Treatment, usually called Kendra’s Law.

A court can order someone into supervised outpatient treatment in the community. Family members are explicitly among those who can petition:

• A parent, spouse, adult child or adult sibling.
• An adult roommate.
• The director of a hospital where the person is hospitalised.
• A treating psychiatrist, or a licensed psychologist or social worker treating them for mental illness.
• The county or city director of community services.
• An assigned parole or probation officer.

The eligibility criteria are strict, and all of them must be met. The person must be 18 or over, must be suffering from a mental illness, must be unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision, and must have a history of not engaging with treatment that has led either to two psychiatric hospitalisations in the previous 36 months, or to serious violent behaviour or threats of serious physical harm within the previous 48 months. They must also be unlikely to participate voluntarily, and likely to benefit from the order.

The limit that matters here: substance use disorder on its own does not qualify. Mental illness is a required criterion. Substance use appears in the statute as a service an order can include — not as a basis for obtaining one.

So this route is only relevant where there is a genuine co-occurring mental illness, with a documented history behind it. Where that is the case, it is worth raising with the county director of community services, because treatment for substance use can be written into the order.

Co-occurring conditions are more common than families expect, and they change what treatment should look like — dual diagnosis treatment covers why the two are treated together rather than in sequence.

When to Call 911 Instead

Separate from any question about treatment, some situations are medical emergencies and should be treated as such:

• Unresponsive, or breathing that is slow, shallow or stopped. Blue or grey lips or fingertips.
• Seizures, confusion or hallucinations after stopping or cutting down drinking. Severe alcohol withdrawal can be fatal.
• A suicide attempt, or stated intent to end their life.
• Violence, or threats of violence, toward anyone including themselves.
• Unable to keep fluids down for an extended period.

For a mental health or suicide crisis that is not immediately medical, call or text 988. Emergency departments must provide emergency care regardless of insurance or ability to pay, and many New York hospitals can admit directly into withdrawal management from the emergency department — see detox in New York for how that works.

If you call 911, say explicitly what substances are involved and whether naloxone has been given. That changes what the responders bring with them.

Get naloxone before you need it

If opioids are any part of this — including pills that may not be what they are sold as — have naloxone in the house. It is the one thing a family member can do today that changes an outcome.

In New York you do not need a prescription. A statewide standing order lets every pharmacy dispense naloxone to anyone, and you do not need to be the person at risk. Ask at the counter and present your insurance details.

• Insured: the state Naloxone Co-payment Assistance Program covers copayments up to $40, so most people pay nothing.
• Uninsured: you can buy it at a pharmacy, or get it free from a registered Opioid Overdose Prevention Program.

Get two doses rather than one, learn how to use it before you need to, and keep it somewhere findable rather than put away. Overdose risk also rises sharply after any period of abstinence — after a hospital stay, after detox, after jail — because tolerance drops while the usual dose does not.

What Actually Works Better

The image most people have of getting someone into treatment is the confrontation — family gathered in a room, letters read aloud, an ultimatum at the end. It is the version in films, and it is the version most people try first.

It is also the least effective of the approaches that have been tested.

The research

A randomised trial by Miller, Meyers and Tonigan in 1999 assigned 130 family members of people with drinking problems to one of three approaches. The results, measured as the proportion whose loved one entered treatment:

Approach	Entered treatment
CRAFT — Community Reinforcement and Family Training	64%
Johnson Institute intervention — the confrontational model	23%
Al-Anon facilitation	13%

A separate study by Kirby and colleagues the same year looked at families of people using drugs rather than alcohol, comparing CRAFT with a twelve-step self-help group. CRAFT reached 64% engagement against 17%.

The gap is not small, and it points in a direction that surprises people: the approach built around confrontation performs worse than the one built around changing what happens at home.

What CRAFT involves

CRAFT trains the family member rather than targeting the person using. The components, as described by the American Psychological Association:

• Functional analysis — working out what the substance use is doing for them, and what in the environment keeps it going.
• Communication skills — how to raise the subject in a way that does not end the conversation.
• Contingency management — reinforcing the behaviour you want rather than arguing about the behaviour you do not.
• Treatment entry training — recognising the moments when someone is briefly open to help, and being ready for them.
• Immediate treatment entry — having the arrangements already made so that a yes can be acted on the same day.
• Life enrichment and safety — for the family member, not an afterthought.

That fifth point does most of the work. Willingness to go is rarely a steady state. It tends to appear briefly — after a bad night, after a scare, after something at work — and close again within hours. Families who have a program identified, a bag packed and a benefits check already done convert far more of those moments than families who start looking when the moment arrives.

More on the general approach in how to support a loved one struggling with addiction and when a loved one refuses treatment.

What to actually say

The communication component of CRAFT is specific, and it is the part families find hardest, because the instinct in the moment runs the other way. Four principles, with the difference they make:

Instead of	Try
“You need to get help. This can’t go on.”	“I’ve been worried about you. Can I tell you what I’ve noticed?”
“You’re an alcoholic and everyone knows it.”	“I noticed you didn’t make it to work on Tuesday. That’s not like you.”
“Why do you keep doing this to us?”	“I feel frightened when I can’t reach you at night.”
“If you don’t go, I’m done.”	“If you decide you want to go, I’ve found two places and I can drive you today.”

The pattern underneath: describe what you observed rather than what you concluded, speak about your own feelings rather than their character, keep it short, and finish with an offer rather than a demand. A label invites an argument about the label. A specific observation is harder to argue with.

Timing matters as much as wording. Raise it when they are sober, when neither of you is already angry, and when there is time — not on the way out of the door, and never during or straight after a row.

One more thing worth knowing: you will almost certainly have to do this more than once. Families who treat the first conversation as the attempt tend to conclude it does not work. Families who treat it as the first of many are the ones still there when the opening comes.

Where formal interventions still have a place

A structured intervention is not worthless, and some families do get a yes from one. If you are considering it, work with a professional interventionist rather than doing it from a template, and treat it as one option rather than the obvious first step. How to stage an intervention covers the process.

The Preparation That Makes a Yes Usable

This is the part families can do entirely on their own, without the person’s cooperation, and it is what turns a brief window of willingness into an admission.

1. Find out what their coverage reaches

You can ask a treatment program to run a benefits check using their insurance details, and most will do it in a few minutes. In New York, in-network inpatient substance use treatment does not require prior authorization, so there is no permission to obtain in advance — but knowing the deductible, the in-network options and the likely out-of-pocket cost removes an argument before it starts. If they are on Medicaid, New York Medicaid and rehab coverage covers what is included. If they have no coverage at all, paying for rehab in New York without insurance sets out the options.

2. Identify two or three programs, not twenty

Call ahead and ask three things: whether they have space now, whether they will hold it, and what the admission process looks like at the hour someone might arrive. Capacity in New York moves hour to hour and varies a great deal by region. The state directory at findaddictiontreatment.ny.gov lists certified programs across all levels of care.

3. Work out which level of care fits

Someone who is physically dependent on alcohol or benzodiazepines will likely need medically supervised withdrawal before anything else. Someone whose use is serious but who is not in physical withdrawal may go straight to residential or intensive outpatient. This is a clinical decision, but knowing roughly where it will land tells you which programs to call. Inpatient versus outpatient treatment explains the difference.

4. Sort the practical obstacles in advance

• Transport, including who drives and what happens to their car.
• Childcare or pet care, arranged rather than discussed.
• Work — many programs will write a letter confirming medical treatment without naming the condition.
• Phone, bills and anything with a deadline in the next month.

These are the things people reach for when they want a reason not to go. Each one solved in advance is one fewer exit.

5. Ask about a release of information at intake

Once an adult is admitted, confidentiality rules mean you may be told almost nothing — not whether they are still there, not how they are doing. A signed release naming you is the only thing that changes that, and it is far easier to arrange at intake, while they are still in the room with you, than from outside afterwards.

Ask the program for their release form and raise it before admission, not after.

New York Resources for Families

Family Support Navigators

New York funds Family Support Navigators specifically for families rather than for the person using. They help families understand addiction, identify available services, and navigate insurance and treatment access. They are reached through the state’s support services directory and through Regional Addiction Resource Centers. See the OASAS regional support services page.

The state HOPEline

Free, confidential, and staffed around the clock: 1-877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369), or text HOPENY to 467369. You can call about someone else. Staff can tell you what exists near them and what accepts their coverage, without you having to name anyone.

Al-Anon and Nar-Anon

Peer support for families. Worth saying clearly: in the trial above, Al-Anon facilitation produced the lowest treatment-entry rate of the three approaches — but treatment entry was not what it is designed to do. It is designed to help the family member, which is a different and entirely legitimate goal. Many families use both. Al-Anon versus Nar-Anon covers the difference.

Things That Usually Backfire

• Ultimatums you will not carry out. One unenforced ultimatum costs you every future one.
• Waiting for rock bottom. There is no reliable floor, and the phrase has no clinical basis. Earlier engagement does better than later.
• Paying off the consequences — fines, debts, missed rent — while nothing changes. The costs are often the thing creating the opening.
• Arguing while they are intoxicated. Nothing agreed in that state survives into the morning.
• Framing treatment as punishment, or as something they owe you. It gives them something to refuse.
• Doing it alone. Families who hold this on their own for months tend to be exhausted by the time the opening arrives.

If They Are a Minor

The position is different for someone under 18. A parent or legal guardian can consent to treatment for a minor child in New York, and the question becomes finding an appropriate adolescent program rather than obtaining consent.

New York also allows minors to consent to their own substance use treatment in some circumstances, which can cut both ways: a teenager can seek treatment without a parent, and a program may not be able to share information with a parent about treatment the minor consented to themselves. Ask the specific program how they handle it before admission.

After They Go In

Almost everything written for families stops at the admission. The fortnight that follows has its own pattern, and knowing it helps.

The first few days

Expect limited contact. Most programs restrict phone use during the early part of a stay, and the reason is clinical rather than punitive — the first days are when people most want to leave, and a call home is often where that decision gets made. Silence is not a bad sign.

Expect the call where they want to come home. It usually lands somewhere between the first and third day, and it is rarely about the program. What the first 72 hours look like explains why that window is what it is.

Ask about the family program

Many New York programs run family sessions, education evenings or a family therapy component, and they are usually underused. If one exists, go. It is the cheapest way to find out what is actually being treated and what the plan is, and it gives you a relationship with the staff before discharge rather than at it.

Discharge planning is where families should pay attention

Discharge is the highest-risk moment in the whole sequence, and New York sets out what a program must do before it. As of 1 June 2026, that includes a discharge plan made with the patient, an onward appointment for any continuing medication, enough medication to bridge to that appointment, overdose prevention education, naloxone training, and take-home naloxone and fentanyl test strips. The full list is in our guide to detox in New York.

If a release has been signed, ask what the plan is before the discharge date rather than on it. If there is no onward appointment, or no medication to bridge the gap, that is worth raising while there is still time to fix it.

The risk nobody warns families about

Tolerance falls during any period without use. Someone leaving detox or residential care who returns to the dose they were using before faces a substantially higher overdose risk than they did on the way in. This is the clinical reason naloxone at discharge is mandatory rather than optional in New York, and the reason to have it at home as well.

What follows treatment matters more than its length. Inpatient versus outpatient and intensive outpatient programs cover the step-down options.

Looking After Yourself

This is not a courtesy paragraph. Families who are depleted make worse decisions, miss the openings, and are less able to hold a boundary when it matters.

Caregiver burnout is a recognised pattern with its own trajectory — caregiver burnout and mental health for caretakers covers the signs. Where the line sits between supporting someone and sustaining the problem is addressed in codependency versus caring.

If there are children in the household, explaining rehab to young children has age-appropriate scripts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I have someone committed to rehab in New York?

Not as a family member, and not through a court. New York has no family petition route for involuntary addiction treatment. What exists is a short emergency hold under Mental Hygiene Law section 22.09, which can be initiated by a police officer, the local director of community services, or a treatment facility director — and only where the person is incapacitated by substances and there is a likelihood of physical harm to themselves or others. Retention over objection is capped at 72 hours.

What is the difference between New York and the Marchman Act?

Florida’s Marchman Act allows a family member to petition a court to order assessment and treatment for someone with a substance use disorder. New York has no equivalent. A bill proposing something similar, Senate Bill S2664, was introduced in January 2025 and remains in committee; earlier versions in three prior sessions did not become law.

What can I do if they refuse treatment entirely?

More than it feels like. The evidence points toward changing what happens at home rather than escalating confrontation — the CRAFT approach produced 64% treatment entry against 23% for confrontational intervention in a randomised trial. Alongside that, preparing everything in advance means that when willingness does appear, usually briefly, it can be acted on the same day rather than researched from scratch.

Should I call 911 or the HOPEline?

911 if there is immediate medical danger — unresponsiveness, slowed breathing, seizures, confusion or hallucinations after stopping drinking, a suicide attempt, or violence. The HOPEline for everything else: finding programs, understanding coverage, and working out what to do next. They answer 24 hours a day and you can call about someone else.

Will I be told anything once they are admitted?

Only if they sign a release naming you. Confidentiality rules for substance use treatment are stricter than for general medical care. Ask for the release form at intake rather than afterwards — it is much harder to arrange once you are on the other side of the door.

Does my loved one need my insurance details?

They need their own coverage information, not yours, unless they are a dependent on your plan. You can ask a program to run a benefits check with their details. In New York, in-network inpatient substance use treatment does not require prior authorization, so there is nothing to arrange with the insurer before admission.

How long does treatment take?

Withdrawal management is usually days. What follows varies — residential care is typically weeks, intensive outpatient runs over months around work and family. There is no fixed answer, and a program that promises one is describing a schedule rather than a clinical plan.

Sources

• New York Consolidated Laws, Mental Hygiene Law § 22.09 — emergency services for persons incapacitated by alcohol and/or substances
• New York State Senate Bill S2664 (2025) — proposed involuntary treatment provisions, in committee
• American Psychological Association — Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT)
• Miller, Meyers & Tonigan (1999), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology — engaging the unmotivated in treatment
• Roozen, de Waart & van der Kroft (2010), Addiction — CRAFT as an effective option to engage treatment-resistant individuals
• NYS Office of Addiction Services and Supports — Regional Support Services and Family Support Navigators
• NYS OASAS — HOPEline
• NYS OASAS — Find Addiction Treatment provider directory