Careers for people in recovery

Second Sunday Series – Editor’s Note: This is the first of 12 columns on job search and career building during recovery from addiction that will appear in the next 12 months – one each on the second Sunday of the month, from September through August. As a reference, last year’s Second Sunday Series focused on work in the trades, while each of the preceding series highlighted issues of special concern to millennials and mid-career workers.

Are you addicted to something, or in recovery from an addiction? I’m not talking about the joking way you might describe your weakness for chocolate bars or dill pickle potato chips – although food addiction is a real condition.

I’m talking about the definition used by Medical News Today and other sources (www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323465.php) that call addiction, “The psychological and physical inability to stop consuming a chemical, drug, activity or substance, despite psychological and physical harm.”

We have a way of joking about recovery and addiction that both helps and hinders. On the one hand, lightening the message can provide a way into conversations that can seem impenetrable. But the same technique can also remove the teeth from the topic, making it difficult to discuss real issues and solutions.

When it comes to jobs, job search and career building, the dangers of a soft approach can’t be overstated. Individuals who don’t account for their addictions or recovery process when they choose their work might be prescribing their own failure. How could it be otherwise? We spend 40 hours or more each week at our jobs. If that labor is something that triggers or encourages an individual’s addiction, or hinders recovery efforts, work will always be part of the problem.

Like most career counselors, I’ve worked with job seekers in recovery. I’ve also developed and taught job search classes at a Hazelden facility for people in rehab. This was a curriculum I had to adjust almost weekly to account for the astonishing variety of work histories and career wounds I found in the clientele. Some were highly-placed executives who had been able to hide their issues for years, while others were nearly unemployable because of the public nature of their mistakes. Everyone, it seemed, had a lot to learn about navigating the employment process.

As an employer, I’ve hired and trained people from alcohol recovery programs, including one who broke my heart when she died from the disease while working for me. It was a consolation to tell her family, who had been through so much with her, that she had been a valued and productive employee who was not defined by her addiction. One of the problems with addiction is how hidden it can be, even to the person who is addicted. Sometimes the issue is one of degree – are you alcohol dependent, or are you an alcoholic? – and sometimes the source of the addiction causes confusion. Can you really be addicted to shopping? The answer is yes. Whether the addiction is to drugs (legal or illegal), alcohol, gambling, food, shopping, pornography, or video games, the problem is real. Sometimes the addictive substance has the potential to kill the user and sometimes it will “only” cause financial or social ruin.

The slippery-slope factor adds to the confusion, as there’s no clear sense of when someone might be moving from enjoyment to dependence to more serious stages of abusing a pastime or substance. Multiple addictions are not uncommon and the cycle of relapsing from abstinence or recovery can be repeated many times for some individuals, creating a false narrative of being “cured.”

For all of this ambiguity, there is one thing I feel I know: job search and career building while in recovery takes extra planning, vigilance and self care.

Some of the issues are strategic, such as how much to tell employers, or how to handle awkward gaps, criminal records and career switches on the resume. Some issues are rooted in the Mobius strip of selfworth, confidence, shame and mental health that may have opened the door to addiction in the first place. And some issues are simply practical in nature: which jobs might be the best fit for individuals who need to manage their recovery while also managing their workload?

This is the subject for my Second Sunday Series this year, which means that every month for the next 12, I’ll be devoting the second Sunday to a topic related to working or finding work while in recovery.

I’d like to hear your ideas, questions, resources and experiences around this issue, whether you’re in recovery yourself or you work or live with someone on this journey.