REJECT TO REHAB

For Recovering Addicts Self-Esteem Is The Big Issue, As Jim McIntosh
And Neil McKeganey Explain

Drug testing of employees is increasingly common as large and small
businesses try to identify workers using illegal substances. In many cases,
the discovery of such use leads to instant dismissal. Yet the government is
encouraging employers to offer jobs to former or recovering drug addicts. Is
this a case of contradictory policies?

There are good reasons why employers should respond positively to a request
to give an addict a job. Research we have carried out in Glasgow shows there
is one good reason in particular: helping an addict find work can make all
the difference between their recovery and relapse.

We interviewed dozens of addicts who had managed to overcome their
dependence on illegal drugs. One thing that came through time and time again
in their stories was the importance of building a sense of personal self
worth. Years of drug use, it seemed, had not only broken relations with
families and friends but had also, in most cases, broken the individuals
themselves.

Angela, who had been addicted to heroin for nine years, was typical. "I was
really sick of life revolving around drugs and just sick of the things I
would do to get drugs, sick of drugs being the main thing in my life," she
said. "Drugs came before anything. They came before myself, the house, my
family. I hated the folk I was associating with as well, the lifestyle. But
I would still do it because I was getting the drugs. I hated the lying and
the cheating, sleeping with folk I didn't like because they had drugs on
them, and I just hated having no self-respect. I really hated myself."

Once the initial pains of drug withdrawal are overcome, the recovering
addict is faced with what is often a much greater challenge: to build a life
that does not revolve around illegal drugs. One of the ways in which working
can be so important for the recovering addict is in opening up the chance of
meeting people who are not focused on illegal drugs. Such new-found
friendships can present something of a challenge in their own right, as the
addict faces the dilemma of when, or whether, to reveal the details of past
drug use. Difficult as such decisions can be, they are an improvement on
being known universally as an addict and having other addicts as the vast
majority of your friends.

Finding work is important in other ways too. If the devil finds work for
idle hands, it is equally true that there is probably no greater temptation
for addicts to resume using illegal drugs than sitting for hour after hour
in a house or a flat with nothing to do. As Marion, another recovering
addict, said: "You can't just come off drugs and sit and do nothing. If
you've got something constructive to do, that gives you something to
concentrate on, to blank out the drugs." Bernadette, a third interviewee,
agreed: "I think if I hadn't been working, I would probably have stuck it
two days. Working gave me something to focus on - if I hadn't been working I
don't think I'd have lasted. I'd have been away chasing the drugs again."

Another way in which work is important to the recovering addict is in
allowing the person to develop a sense that, for the first time in their
life, they have a future which stretches out further than their next hit.
Work opens up a future of opportunities, of things to do, people to meet and
places to go to. This sense of a future, which most of us take for granted,
is in many instances entirely new for the recovering addict.

It is easy to see why many employers are wary of responding positively to
encouragement to assist recovering addicts by finding them work. Helping an
addict is unlikely to be high on most employers' list of priorities. But it
is difficult to overestimate the value of that help, where it is given.

Our medical and social work services can do a lot to help people come off
drugs, but they cannot build a life for the recovering addict. Nor can the
addicts do that themselves unless they receive the help of those who can
find them work. Yet none of us should have any illusion about what an
employer is taking on when they give a recovering addict a job. The term
"recovering addict" is favoured by addict self-help groups because it
reminds everybody that relapse is an ever-present possibility. Each day of
their life, the addict has to reaffirm their commitment to stay drug free.
It is a war constantly fought, but never won.

Falling back into using illegal drugs is an outcome made that much more
likely if the addict is left on the margins of society, constantly looking
up at the achievements of others but denied the opportunity to show what
they are capable of themselves. The wider public may also be resistant to
the idea of addicts being helped in this way. There will be many who say
that if any help is being offered in finding work, there are others more
deserving of it. But even conceding that point, somewhere along the line we
will need to offer help to recovering addicts if we are serious in tackling
the drug problem.

Drug testing of employees will continue to grow in a climate where people
may fear the consequences of addicts driving our buses and trains, piloting
our aircraft or serving in our military. These are all legitimate fears and
drug testing in such circumstances is a way of increasing all of our safety.
But if drug use automatically disqualifies an individual from any and every
job, then there is very little prospect of recovery and many of those who
may have been able to beat the dragon of their own addiction will fall back
to their old ways.

Those employers who have set aside their fears of employing recovering
addicts can be quietly proud of what they are doing. They are never going to
earn a fanfare for their initiative, but that is not their expectation. What
they are looking for, and what we should all be looking for, is the quiet
sense of achievement when a recovering addict has been able to build a life
for themselves and can say: "I am so much more than the addict I was".