Overcoming Your Addiction Without Losing Your Career

How do addictions link to careers?

Addiction is a severe and far-reaching disease that slowly impacts your day-to-day functioning. Managing addiction is challenging in any setting, but its impact on work performance can be especially difficult to control.

Many people may drink after a strenuous day or week at work as a way to unwind. Increasing the amount and frequency you drink can quickly lay the foundations for a dangerous addiction to form. This is also true for addictions to harder drugs, gambling or pornography. When control is lost, a person may need to prepare for the ramifications on their professional career.

Alcohol and drug addictions will inevitably interfere with your work performance over time. In the early stages of your career, the impact of alcohol and drugs may be easier to manage the next day, but eventually, an addiction is likely to overpower your work performance. Drinking or using drugs to cope with stress from work can lead to burning the candle at both ends and bleed into your physical and mental health, your relationships and your finances.

If you feel you may be using a substance to cope with work stress and aren’t yet suffering severe effects, getting help before the addiction worsens may save your career. If you do feel you’re approaching or at rock bottom, seeking addiction treatment is still the best option.

The most common ways addiction affects work performance

If you’re progressing into your career or own your own business, an untreated substance abuse disorder (SUD) can be a slippery slope to destruction. Some of the specific ways an addiction affects work performance include:

• Becoming forgetful and absent-minded: Addictions impair your brain’s ability to remember and make decisions at key times.
• Becoming depressed or irritable: When coping with an addiction, you are more likely to swing into negative moods at work, affecting your relationship with coworkers and bosses.
• Absenteeism and tardiness: Addictions will impair your physical health, leading to more days off needed. Your career can hit roadblocks through more late days and missing deadlines.
• Shifting priorities: As with managing enjoyable and healthy hobbies, addictions can quickly rise to the forefront of your priorities, making you see work as less important.
• Severe exhaustion and worsening hygiene: Battling with an addiction is exhausting. They will sap you of your energy, forcing your work efforts to slip. You may physically start to look tired all the time, and you may take hygiene less seriously.

Addictions may also make you start to affect your finances, making you become dishonest and risking the trust needed with your colleagues and boss for career progression. Deeper personal issues like family relationships can be strained, increasing the stress you feel and making you want to turn to a substance more. Here, a destructive cycle can take hold.

How can I seek recovery without jeopardising my job?

Opening up to your employers about an addiction can be nerve-wracking. You have worries that disclosing the addiction will set back your career or cause job loss. Thoughts may be racing in your head as you envision reactions and repercussions, yet you may be more supported than you realise.

• Know your rights: In the UK, the government reports that drug and alcohol dependence are recognised medical problems. In general, you have the same rights to confidentiality and support as you would with any other medical or psychological condition. However, you should consider your own legal position if drug misuse has involved breaking the law at work. Speak with your GP
• Research treatment programmes: Treatment for alcohol and drug addiction can be inpatient or outpatient. An inpatient programme means you’ll be living onsite after each treatment session. Inpatient programmes involve staying onsite after each session for stable and constant recovery. Both options will require time off work, usually up to one month. Speaking with your GP can give you clear medical advice, and you may be eligible for sick pay if your GP provides proper documentation.

A sacrifice today for a stronger tomorrow

Depending on which career stage you’re in, you may evaluate the risks of addiction treatment with varying severity. However, if your work performance starts to become impaired by substance use, it may only be a matter of time until the consequences become too much to handle. Tragically, people caught in the grip of addiction often overlook their health and well-being. Help must come before control is lost to a downward spiral and intervention is needed from friends and family. The longer an addiction is left unaddressed, the greater the risk to your professional career, so ensure you make the first step toward the help you need.

How can I bring addiction up to my employers?

Starting the conversation with your employers can be difficult, but they should handle it professionally and respectfully. If you know you need to bring your addiction up to your employers, these steps may help you:

Where can I find help for my addiction?

Don’t let addiction become the ultimate decider of your future or cause career instability. If you’re struggling to balance work and recovery, getting the right support at the right time can be key.

Here at UKAT, we offer confidential, flexible treatment options designed to fit around your professional commitments. We’ve developed outpatient and inpatient programmes that help you recover, reset and rebuild. Our staff deliver expert care to make sure recovery is the self-investment you need for better health, career and future.

Take the first step today. Reach out to UKAT and start your journey to lasting recovery.