Is Your Boss An Addict?
Amy Winehouse's death has brought out the issue of addiction--and how to help addicts--and has made many people take a look around the office in a different way.
Nearly 75 percent of all adult illicit drug users are employed, as are most binge and heavy alcohol users, meaning that users and addicts likely are in your midst.
So how do you know if someone is just a casual drug or alcohol user or if they're heading for self destruction, and how do you help, especially if that person is in upper management or the C-suite?
Dr. David Sack, CEO of Promises Treatment Centers, which works with CEOs and other highly successful people who have become addicts, describes three progressive signs of abuse.
- A highly motivated employee becomes less motivated and easily distracted. He may miss appointments, spend more days out of the office, be less prepared for meetings, fail to return emails and just seem to have a bit less of a grasp of the details of the business.
- As someone's drug or alchol use increases, he may become more emotionally unpredictable. Someone may be more irritable or swing from being exuberant one day to hostile the next.
- Lastly, an addict tends to have more medical problems, some related to withdrawal symptoms. If someone drinks heavily on the weekends, and stops on Monday, they may have chest pain, their blood pressure may go up. "Often before an addiction is known, there's a flurry of medical issues over a short period of time that are unexplained," says Dr. Sack.
Confronting an addict
This can be very complicated, especially if the addicted person is in a high level position. Since addicts can be defensive and hostile, you don't want to casually confront them. You don't want to ignore it either, because typically things only get worse. Here are some suggestions:
- Have a conversation with VP of human resources about how the company deals with addictions. Some companies have EAPs to help facilitate the problems.
- Talk to the person's supervisor. Typically the right person to confront the addict is someone who is close to that individual and in a position of authority. "It requires very high management to have that first conversation," says Sack.
Lessons learned from Amy Winehouse
"I think that the biggest lesson from AW is that drug use tends to progress," says Dr. Sack. Initially, people look past drug use behavior because in most cases it isn't progressive, but in some people, social users become addicts. It progresses over a period of months to years, so recognizing it early on is important.
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Laurie Tarkan is an award-winning health journalist who writes for the New York Times, national magazines and websites. Follow her on twitter. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sheep purple