Is It Safe to Disclose Your Alcoholism to Your Employer?
Or will they fire you for going to rehab?
Between 2010 and 2013, there were times when I considered asking for help when it was clear that everyone in the office knew I was reliably unreliable due to my party habits. I actually set up a lunch date with David Carr to ask for his advice about what I should do. His father died the week we were supposed to meet, so he had to cancel, and I lost my nerve after that. I doubt he or anyone else would have been able to get through to me.
My biggest fear about going to treatment during that period was losing my job. How much time could I take off to go to rehab? Would anyone trust me anymore once I got back, and how would I be treated? I think this fear of being found out and then phased out of a job is what prevents most people from speaking up.
That brings us to today’s Friday reboot with TSB’s in-house social worker and interventionist, Joe Schrank, who helps us navigate what to do if we need to tell our bosses that we want to take time off to get help for drug and alcohol addiction:
“I have strongly encouraged people to self-disclose because it helps to normalize the issue, but it’s a tall order. The truth is that people look at you differently once you self-disclose. People are suspect of any indiscretion. “Sorry I’m late, there was an accident on the 405” is different than “Sorry I’m late, my outpatient group ran a little long.” It’s a lot different.”
See you down there! — AJD
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Have a good weekend. Hope to see you Sunday. Thanks for your continued support of The Small Bow. — AJD
Full Disclosure—I Need Help
An Interview with Joe Schrank
Here’s a sample from a media company’s recent employee handbook outlining their policy on substance misuse:
“No employee may report to work with illegal drugs (or their metabolites) or alcohol in his or her bodily system. The only exception to this rule is that employees may engage in moderate consumption of alcohol that may be served and/or consumed as part of an authorized Company social or business event. "Illegal drug" means any drug that is not legally obtainable or that is legally obtainable but has not been legally obtained. It includes prescription drugs not being used for prescribed purposes or by the person to whom it is prescribed or in prescribed amounts. It also includes any substance a person holds out to another as an illegal drug.
Any violation of this policy will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.
Any employee who feels he or she has developed an addiction to, dependence upon, or problem with alcohol or drugs, legal or illegal, is strongly encouraged to seek assistance before a violation of this policy occurs. Any employee who requests time off to participate in a rehabilitation program will be reasonably accommodated. However, employees may not avoid disciplinary action, up to and including termination, by entering a rehabilitation program after a violation of this policy is suspected or discovered.”
It’s fairly standard, nothing too crazy. But I asked Joe Schrank if there was a better way.
*****
Do you think companies with open bars and huge after-work happy hours should have punitive policies surrounding that consumption? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?
There are always caveats for alcohol. I don’t understand why there are so many accommodations made for the toxic poison that kills more people than any other. The above policy is rife with holes and seems to reserve the right to fire people at will for having a diagnosable mental health disorder. Should someone want to challenge this, it would seem they could prevail, given the ADA protections, but the issue gets very sticky very quickly. One can’t be fired for being an alcoholic but can be for acting like one. This policy is set up with a “gotcha!” mentality and that never goes well. It breeds fear and shame and reduces the chances of self-reporting. As always, if addiction is a disease, then people with it should be treated compassionately as patients, not as criminals or behavior modification puzzles.
What is a better way to handle it?
On-site mental health screenings. I have a friend from school who is a nurse practitioner who works on-site at a big company doing health screenings for employees–not just accidents and injuries but other screenings as well. It’s in a company's interest to have a healthier workforce, but even solid policy relies on individual self-reporting, and there are massive hurdles to that. For one, it assumes that everyone knows the diagnostic criteria for mental health issues.
Right. Most people fear for their job security even when they tell employers that they're going to recovery meetings or doing recovery work. There seems to be no upside in sharing that information because I think most people fear they'll be blackballed, correct?
Correct. One of the biggest reasons people give for not wanting to go to treatment is that “my job will find out." People are often shocked to know there are legal protections for that, but it's not enough. They are afraid and ashamed of what it will do to their standing in their jobs.
I have suggested this to many employers at “on-site mutual aid meetings,” but no one has bought into it.
The recovery community has not yet learned that “silence equals death” the way the HIV community did decades ago. I have strongly encouraged people to self-disclose because it helps to normalize the issue, but it’s a tall order. The truth is that people look at you differently once you self-disclose. People are suspect of any indiscretion. “Sorry I’m late, there was an accident on the 405” is different than “Sorry I’m late, my outpatient group ran a little long.”
Are there any businesses or jobs that have good, effectual policies?
Airlines are pretty good, and pilots have some of the best rates of recovery because of the comprehensive oversight and, even more importantly, an aftercare model that tracks progress a few years after they go into treatment. Systems for first responders can be pretty good, but that’s also a culture of deep secrecy. I have seen this many, many times with the NYPD.
Current workplace culture follows the lead of society at large: substance misuse is policed and punished. Clearly, after decades of that with no improved outcome, someone should lead the way and do something different.
Let's make you an imaginary American Workplace Substance Misuse Policy Liaison. Lay out your program.
As long as we’re talking fantasy here, let’s just go for it.
Addiction is a chronic illness, and it’s dealt with only in acuity and on the heels of a crisis. The first step should be to make the rhetoric “It’s a disease!” less rhetorical. How about a workplace culture that incentivizes self-disclosure and asking for help?
Workplaces should have annual mental health screenings on-site to remove barriers. If treatment is appropriate, it should be quick, accessible, and not punitive. The employee should be informed of all of their rights and protections. There should be a system to support the family if/when their partner goes to treatment: making sure families get meals every day, driving kids to work, cleaning up the house–all of the things that concern people when they go away to get treatment.
I have a friend who went through chemo for breast cancer. When she was down for the count everyone–people from her office, her neighbors–circled the wagons to help. But when she went to treatment for alcoholism? The office grudgingly granted a medical leave, but there were no offers to help drive the kids to soccer practice or have casseroles delivered.
PLUS: Research shows that for every dollar invested in treating substance misuse, $4 is saved in healthcare costs and $7 in law enforcement.
With great maintenance care services on-site, think of the money saved when people stay OUT of rehab.
One company should champion this approach and become the premier company for recovering people. But we’re not there yet. I once suggested to a top-level Goldman Sachs guy that they have a daily 12-step meeting in a conference room at their lower Manhattan HQ. They politely said no.
But doesn’t a company take on too much responsibility with this approach? Why should a company have to keep on an employee who can’t keep their shit together?
Well, yes, it’s a huge burden on the employer. I thought we were talking idealistically, if not in my fantasy world.
That’s where this can only exist, huh. Fantasy.
Technically, no, but who is incentivized to change?
*****
Parts of this interview were published in October 2019.
Joe Schrank is The Small Bow’s in-house social worker and interventionist. If anyone would like Joe to consult about their personal situation or a situation with a close friend or family member, email me, and we can try to set something up.
ajd@thesmallbow.com SUBJECT: CAN I TALK TO JOE?
Previously:
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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
The Last Hours
by Stephen Dunn
***********************
There’s some innocence left,
and these are the last hours of an empty afternoon
at the office, and there’s the clock
on the wall, and my friend Frank
in the adjacent cubicle selling himself
on the phone.
I’m twenty-five, on the shaky
ladder up, my father’s son, corporate,
clean-shaven, and I know only what I don’t want,
which is almost everything I have.
A meeting ends.
Men in serious suits, intelligent men
who’ve been thinking hard about marketing snacks,
move back now to their window offices, worried
or proud. The big boss, Horace,
had called them in to approve this, reject that–
the big boss, a first-name, how’s-your-family
kind of assassin, who likes me.
It’s 1964.
The sixties haven’t begun yet. Cuba is a larger name
than Vietnam. The Soviets are behind
everything that could be wrong. Where I sit
it’s exactly nineteen minutes to five. My phone rings.
Horace would like me to stop in
before I leave. Stop in. Code words,
leisurely words, that mean now.
Would I be willing
to take on this? Would X’s office, who by the way
is no longer with us, be satisfactory?
About money, will this be enough?
I smile, I say yes and yes and yes,
but–I don’t know from what calm place
this comes–I’m translating
his beneficence into a lifetime, a life
of selling snacks, talking snack strategy,
thinking snack thoughts.
On the elevator down
it’s a small knot, I’d like to say, of joy.
That’s how I tell it now, here in the future,
the fear long gone.
By the time I reach the subway it’s grown,
it’s outsized, an attitude finally come round,
and I say it quietly to myself, I quit,
and keep saying it, knowing I will say it, sure
of nothing else but.
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
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Apt timing as I just checked into treatment this week and am figuring out how to inform my employer. Thanks for sharing this