Employee Assistance Programs: Understand the Faragher/Ellerth Affirmative Defense

Employee Assistance Programs: Understand the Faragher/Ellerth Affirmative Defense: Employee assistance programs can promote EAP, grow value, expand program offerings, and improve utilization by understanding the Faragher/Ellerth Affirmative Defense

Loss of Control? Why DOT Supervisor Training Should Discuss It

Loss of control is a hallmark of addiction and addictive disease. Why do DOT supervisors need to know about this biological reality? The answer is simple. It helps them detach themselves from myths and misconceptions so they can act on the drug free workplace policy. Loss of control means much more than going to a party and being unable to stop drinking once you stop, which is rare for even most alcoholics.
Social drinkers can consistently predict their ability to control all the factors shown above, including their decision to over use alcohol, or get drunk. DOT Supervisors will often have social opportunities in which their employees off the job use alcohol. Getting drunk does not mean your an alcoholic it simply means you abused alcohol (and yourself.) Here's something to think about:  Getting drunk is a choice for the social drinker.  It is a symptom of the disease for the alcoholic. Once a DOT Supervisor is able to wrap their head around this paradigm shift in understanding alcohol and its effects, big things happen.
As the disease progresses, most alcoholics will eventually discover maintenance drinking.  This is an attempt by the alcoholic to consume alcohol at a rate and frequency capable of helping him or her maintain a certain blood alcohol level to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
That is why we discuss this concept in the DOT Reasonable Suspicion Training Program

Intervening with an Alcoholic: New Methodology that Will Make You an Unstoppable Intervention Force for Treatment

Start here: http://bit.ly/INTERVENTION10

You can get intervention guidance by phone, but first start with this video. Phone 1-800-626-4327 after viewing the video above

Did you know that thousands of people are admitted to drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs every day in the U.S. and that 99.99% of them are voluntary admissions without any prompting or help by professional counselors who claim to be family intervention specialists?

The television and even healthcare marketers would have you believe that you can't do an intervention yourself, and that you need them to educate you and also be present at the intervention to guide everyone so the meeting is effective in motivating the alcoholic or drug addict to accept help through an intense emotional appeal by visibly moved and desperate people. This is nonsense. You can learn intervention fairly easily and become a force to be reckoned with that leads the alcohol or drug addict to accept treatment.

This new approach to teach people how to do interventions is called the Family Empowerment Model created by Daniel Feerst, MSW, LISW-CP.

This approach to intervention is teachable, and relies upon the power of influence and leverage, which are naturally occurring forces existing in all relationships. Intervention education has its purpose in helping you discover the influence and leverage afforded in the family or friend group that you share with others who are concerned about the welfare of a loved one who is alcoholic.

To begin an intervention by group discussion, first what this video above, and then phone 1-800-626-4327. We do charge a fee for what is typically a two hour phone conversation that will require to meetings. We work with families or businesses.
Start here: http://bit.ly/INTERVENTION10

I'm Not Drinking! It's Mouthwash, Man!

Perfume with Alcohol = Alcohol in Perfume.

Once you have completed DOT Supervisor Training, the fun begins.

The last time you went to Walmart and bought some medicine, did you notice that it smelled like booze on your Uncle's breath? No, it did not.

There is no medicine sold at Walmart that will smell like booze. Yet, this is one of the most common of excuses given by employees for explaining alcohol on their breath.

There are dozens of excuses associated with employees who are confronted for reasonable suspicion of using substances on the job. Many are highly creative. However, most are not original, except to the alcoholic him- or herself, who thinks they sound pretty good. To make them sound even more believable, a lot of added emotion is typically injected into the explanation you'll hear. Shouting and intimidation are also typical garnishments designed to help you accept the excuse more readily.

Reasonable suspicion training requires understanding this information, which is why we are the only DOT Reasonable Suspicion Training Program in the USA that includes this educational information -- unless of course -- this content was "borrowed" from us. We're pros in what we produce. Not freelance authors. Trench work is our background, not library research.

Two common excuses you will hear from employees are similar - 1) I'm not drinking, it's mouthwash; and 2) "I'm not drinking, it's medicine."

You will discover that the degree to which employees are emphatic about the nature of the substance you are smelling, the more inclined you will be to believe them. This is because you are hard-wired to except excuses that sound plausible because life is easier if you do not have to confront your employee and require them to be tested. Don't fall for it.

Most people don't know that alcohol is put into cough syrups. Some have 25% alcohol, which is enough to reduce withdrawal symptoms. Although most alcoholic in withdrawal will not drink cough syrup, a percentage have, and some alcoholic women have even consumed perfumes or colognes containing alcohol. If you visit an open AA meeting (or a closed AA meeting if you are a member of AA) you will eventually hear about perfume drinkers.

But for the alcoholic on the job, admitting to consuming anything with alcohol in it gives you reasonable cause to request a test. The same is true with medicines or mouthwashes. Reasonable cause is determined and based upon what you are smelling, not what the employees tells you the substance you are smelling is. DOT Supervisor Training should include information like the above to help bring reality to the nature of the illness and the symptoms of reasonable suspicion for the consumption of alcohol on the job.

Handouts and Tip Sheets for DOT Supervisor Training -- Get Some Good Ones

If you are training supervisors in a two-hour, DOT Drug and Alcohol Training Course, will they walk out the door as unprepared to confront workplace substance abuse as when they walked in? They will unless effective take-away handouts and tip sheets are included in your training.

Let's talk tip sheets and handouts. You probably distribute a chart with drugs and alcohol signs and symptoms on it. That's a good thing, but make your original copy editable so you an amend it with new substances of abuse that appear on the streets. Examples include things like Bath Salts, Spice/K2, and Salvia. These damn substances can be purchased online by anyone.


The point is, your training program can't be a simple educational experience with just signs and symptoms and drugs of abuse required by the DOT regulations. Sure, you will meet the "technical requirements"  for DOT Drug and Alcohol Training, but you will leave your organization at risk. Supervisors are scared of confronting employees. So you need to give them some take-away tools.

You must to go further so supervisors walk out the door really "getting it." The DOT got hung up on  semantics and terms when they wrote the regs. For example, they are using terms like "alcohol misuse" in the workplace rather than another term that could be far more useful and descriptive. Most addiction experts never heard this phrase used in any practical way until the DOT came up with it.

The US DOT offers only a few sentences that describe the educational mandate for workplace substance abuse education, but the employer will remain at risk if you do not address many other issues associated with substance abuse. So let's talk about how you can beef up your training, make it interesting, and do some real good with DOT wellness tip sheets and handouts associated with substance abuse education of supervisors. READ MORE . . .