DOT Supervisors: Don't Kill Your Alcoholic Employees with Kindness

Here is a checklist: Have you ever called someone a "functional alcoholic?" Is so, it's time to back off of this label, but it is going to kill your employee someday. Do you have a social relationship with this person where drinking plays an important role? Have you heard “stories” about the functional alcoholic’s home life that are problematic or disturbing to you, and do you redpond to them with your advice? Does the thought of not socializing with the functional alcoholic seem unacceptable and disconcerting because you do not want to give up a great friend? Have you dismissed or minimized alcohol-related problems that have occurred in the functional               alcoholic’s life, even while thinking to yourself that this person needs help? Would your decision to stop drinking with the functional alcoholic cause him or her to question your loyalty or ability to have a good time? If others agreed to participate in an intervention to motivate the functional alcoholic to enter treatment, would you feel inclined to argue against it, motivated by how your life might change? Do you believe the functional alcoholic would become boring if he or she decided to stop drinking for good? As you educate yourself about Reasonable Suspicion .If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you are an enabler. Don't worry, because here is the easy "shift" in thinking about drug abuse and alcoholism that you need to accept: Alcoholics are not responsible for acquiring their illness. Instead, they are responsible for treatment when any evidence of addiction begins to itself as symptoms. All drug free workplace programs and all EAPs knowf the great value of

What to Do about Coworker Cover Up and Enabling

Coworkers become enablers like anyone else in the immediate circle of the active addict's life. These employee are no different than supervisors, the employee with a drug or alcohol problem him or herself, family members, or supervisors. Everyone enables until a point in time comes that they are not enabling. This reality is 100% universal fact among alcoholic and drug addicts. If you live with an addict and think you are not enabling, you are probably fooling yourself, but it is more likely that you don't understand enabling completely. Enabling can be very subtle and it can mean doing something, not doing something, saying something, or not saying something that helps the addict not recognize or accept the consequences of his or her behavior, no matter how small, linked to the use of alcohol or other drugs of abuse. To impact the workforce and reduce the risk of substance abuse on the job, or the effects of substance abuse on the job, it is critical to educate employees about Workplace Substance Abuse so they are educated to dispel myths and false hoods about addiction. This is why we created the Alcohol and Other Drugs at Work: What Employees Should Know product.