Workers in recovery from alcohol addiction face persistent pressure in American workplaces where after-work happy hours, corporate parties, and client meetings at bars remain expected in many industries, treatment professionals and workers who have abstained from alcohol said. The anxiety employees in recovery feel about career advancement and social judgment at work is natural but manageable, those professionals said.
Treatment professionals and recovery advocates say that setting firm limits, leaning on a growing non-alcoholic beverage culture among younger workers, and pushing employers toward recovery-friendly policies can help people in recovery protect their sobriety without sacrificing their careers — and that companies stand to benefit from those changes.
Setting limits without overexplaining
The most important discipline for workers in recovery is declining to justify sobriety at length, according to Lisa Smith, a former lawyer who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction while working at a prestigious law firm in New York.
“We say in recovery a lot that ‘No’ is a complete sentence,” Smith said.
Smith said she found that most co-workers cared less about what was in her cup than she had imagined they would. Those who pressed her to drink were often heavy drinkers themselves who were “looking for a comrade to drink with, to sort of make them feel better about their own drinking,” she said.
In her early years of recovery, Smith said she skipped events she expected to be uncomfortable or left early, then followed up with colleagues she wanted to stay connected with over coffee the next day. She now runs her own advisory firm that helps organizations and law firms build more recovery-friendly workplaces.
Drinking is also widespread and often celebrated in the entertainment industry, according to Ermanno DiFebo, a production designer in Los Angeles who said he struggled with alcohol addiction for many years before getting sober. When he was newly sober, DiFebo said, he offered excuses rather than disclosing his recovery — a medical appointment the next day, an early morning. In friendlier settings, he would say he had partied too much and had stopped.
The way alcohol was marketed in that industry, DiFebo said, was that “if you are good, you can handle it. If you cannot handle it, you are weak,” and that “the treatment facilities are for people that are weak.”
He now encourages people to approach alcohol addiction as they would a food allergy: the body cannot process the substance, regardless of intent. “Alcohol makes you sick and manifests itself in compulsion to continue beyond reasoning,” he said.
Younger workers shift the culture
Younger generations have helped normalize not drinking by entering workplaces already familiar with mental health and substance use discussions, and by expanding the range of non-alcoholic options available at social events, Smith said. Mocktails and non-alcoholic beer have made it easier for people who are not drinking to hold something in their hand without announcing why.
Smith also said that once she stopped drinking, she noticed far more people around her who were also not drinking — whether for religious, health, or personal reasons — than she had previously recognized.
Employers benefit from recovery-friendly workplaces
Employees in recovery who are actively working a program can be among a company’s most reliable workers, said Heidi Wallace, vice president of recovery services at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California.
“Individuals in that recovery process that are working a program, they’re actually the most productive workforce,” Wallace said. “They’ve done so much work to get to this place, and their program actually has been sitting in a space of gratitude and a place of being of service.”
Research cited by Wallace shows that people actively in recovery programs are less likely to call out sick and more likely to volunteer when management needs help. Companies can support those employees by creating space for virtual recovery meetings during the workday or hosting meetings on-site, she said.
DiFebo said he attended on-set recovery meetings at Warner Brothers and Universal Studios while working on movies, and discovered through those meetings that far more colleagues were in recovery than he had realized. “I realized that there were a lot of people in recovery around all the drinkers. I just didn’t see them before,” he said.
Rethinking how companies design social events
Smith said she works to show employers that team-building events do not require alcohol to be engaging. Hiking, wellness activities, and non-alcoholic beverage options have all expanded in recent years. Wine tastings can proceed with non-alcoholic wine alternatives. At events where servers carry trays, placing mocktails on those trays alongside cocktails removes the extra step of requiring non-drinkers to seek out an alternative at the bar.
“There was always this assumption people made that when planning events that alcohol equals fun, right?” Smith said.
The responsibility for making those events inclusive belongs with organizers, not with attendees who are not drinking, she said.
“It shouldn’t be incumbent upon the person who chooses not to drink on any given night to make themselves feel comfortable in that setting,” Smith said.