Addiction at work: Are our workplaces part of the risk or part of the recovery?

“Everyone thought I was waving, but in reality I was drowning.”

If our workplaces are repeatedly depleting people’s energy, health and psychological capacity, I think we need to be willing to ask ourselves a difficult question: what happens when people no longer have enough left in the tank to cope well?

Work-related stress and burnout don’t cause addiction. Addiction is far more complex than that. But the environment around us absolutely matters. Work can affect our vulnerability, influence the ways we cope and either protect or slowly strip away some of the things that keep us well.

We need to change what we think addiction looks like

The new Addiction in the UK 2026 report from The Forward Trust and Crest Advisory should make employers think differently about who is affected by addiction.

Polling cited in the report suggests that more than one in ten adults said they were currently or had previously struggled with addiction, potentially representing around 5.5 million people across the UK. Another Forward Trust and Ipsos survey found that 45% of people surveyed who had experienced addiction or dependency were in full-time employment.

That statistic really matters to me because nobody wakes up one morning on the street with an addiction.

I worked in adult addiction and recovery services for many years, long before I experienced addiction myself. Every person I worked with had once simply been a child. A son or daughter. A school pupil. Later perhaps an employee, a husband or wife, a parent, a colleague. They had stories, ambitions, relationships and lives that existed long before addiction became the thing people used to define them by.

Substance use may begin as part of someone’s social life. It may help them feel confident, connected or relaxed. It may become a way of dealing with trauma, emotional distress, untreated mental illness or simply the pressures of life. Somewhere along that journey, for some people, the thing that appeared to solve a problem starts creating far more serious ones.

Then can come what I think of as the demise journey. Health deteriorates, relationships begin to fracture, work becomes more difficult, finances become stretched and life gets smaller and smaller around the addiction.

Our stereotypes tend to show us the very end of that journey.

The homelessness. The job loss. The family breakdown. The crisis.

But those are possible consequences of addiction. They are not where addiction starts.

For those people in the report who are still in full-time employment, we shouldn’t reassure ourselves that because somebody still has their career, salary, family, home and professional identity, they must be okay.

I know from personal experience that high functioning is not the same as unharmed.

And sometimes being high functioning is part of the problem, because success can hide how serious things have become.

What does Human Sustainability have to do with addiction?

Quite a lot, I think.

Human Sustainability is about whether the way we design and lead organisations protects and replenishes the human energy, health and wellbeing they depend upon, or whether we continually consume those resources faster than people can restore them.

We already understand much more than we once did about work-related stress, burnout and poor mental health. What I don’t think we talk about enough is what happens afterwards.

How do people cope when the working day supposedly ends?

If you’ve worked until eight o’clock, you’re mentally exhausted, you’ve carried the day’s problems home with you and you barely have the energy to talk to your family, what genuinely feels easier at that point?

Is it putting your trainers on and going for a walk? Going to the gym? Cooking a nutritious meal? Ringing a friend and talking about how you feel?

Or is it pouring a glass of wine?

I’m not making a judgement about the glass of wine. I’m asking us to understand human behaviour.

The healthier things we encourage employees to do still require capacity. When work repeatedly depletes that capacity, we shouldn’t be surprised if people start reaching for whatever offers relief most quickly.

Again, that doesn’t mean work causes addiction.

But it absolutely means addiction belongs in our conversation about prevention, work-related stress and workforce health, rather than only appearing when somebody breaches a drug and alcohol policy.

We have also made alcohol part of working life

There is another contradiction I think we need to be more honest about.

For decades, alcohol has been woven into British workplace culture. Friday drinks, client entertainment, networking, celebrations, conferences, the Christmas party, doing the deal and opening the champagne.

Even the language is normalised.

“God, I’ve had a terrible day. I need a drink.”

We spend the daytime telling people to look after their wellbeing, then often use alcohol as the accepted way to celebrate, socialise or escape the heaviness of the working week.

I was thinking about this recently when I spoke with Darren Grady, who contacted me after reading one of my previous articles about addiction at work.

Darren’s story

Darren has recently retired following a long corporate career in London, including senior leadership roles.

He is also fourteen years sober.

And for most of those fourteen years, hardly anybody at work knew.

Darren described arriving in London’s corporate world as being like “a kid in a candy store.” Alcohol was everywhere: corporate hospitality, sporting events, entertainment, celebrations and networking.

He told me about being taken through work to Champions League games and major events. In 2011 he attended the Great British Beer Festival, and it ended terribly and predictably with him being carried out by colleagues.

Looking back now, he asks, with that very particular humour people in recovery often develop:

“Who sends an alcoholic to the Great British Beer Festival?”

It sounds funny when you hear Darren tell it now. But what was happening underneath wasn’t funny at all.

He would arrive at events already thinking about the drink. Was there going to be enough? How quickly could he get to the bar? Could he get another one?

At the same time, he was still performing professionally.

In fact, one of the most interesting things Darren said to me was that, for a period, alcohol actually seemed to help him at work. It gave him confidence. He became more willing to take risks and some of those risks paid off. People saw a bold, high-performing employee.

Darren knew something else was happening.

As he put it:

“Everyone thought I was waving, but in reality I was drowning.”

That stayed with me because it describes high-functioning addiction so well.

Sometimes the person who looks as though they are thriving is simply still capable of performing while everything underneath is becoming increasingly difficult to hold together.

Mental health and addiction were never separate

This is another area where I think workplace wellbeing has created artificial boundaries.

The report found that 74% of people in drug treatment in England have an identified mental health need. The relationship can move in both directions. Substance use can cause or worsen mental health problems, but substances can also become a form of self-medication for psychological distress.

I had understood that professionally for decades.

Then I lived it myself.

My story

I had undiagnosed Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, PMDD. At its worst, my psychological symptoms had taken me to places where I wanted to harm myself.

Because I’d worked in drug and alcohol services, I knew a lot about ketamine. I had also researched how it was beginning to be used therapeutically for some mental health conditions in America and had come across its use as a treatment for PMDD.

When I began taking very small amounts at the worst point of my monthly cycle, the relief was immediate.

And this is something I wish more people understood about addiction.

We can tell somebody that a substance is dangerous. Sometimes they already know.

I knew.

But when something gives you almost instant relief from a problem that feels unbearable, the risks somewhere in the future can feel very far away compared with the relief you are getting right now.

So perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask isn’t simply:

“Why are you taking this?”

It is:

“What is this doing for you?”

Because if we only remove the substance without understanding the problem it has been solving, we may be asking somebody to surrender their coping mechanism while leaving them with the very thing they were trying to cope with.

For me, the environment then changed dramatically.

The impact of the pandemic

The pandemic removed almost all of the things that had helped keep me healthy. I exercised regularly, sometimes twice a day. I saw friends and family. I had movement, connection, structure and freedom. Suddenly those things disappeared while, at exactly the same time, I was carrying the enormous stress of keeping a business going through completely unprecedented circumstances.

The healthier ways I had learned to regulate myself disappeared.

The solution I already had didn’t.

What had started as episodic self-medication became a three-year ketamine addiction.

It took me around ten years and, ultimately, an addiction before I finally received the diagnosis and treatment for PMDD that I had needed all along.

Addiction and work

My business didn’t cause my addiction. PMDD didn’t cause it on its own. Neither did the pandemic.

But I would be lying if I said the environment around me played no part in increasing my vulnerability.

Darren and I had different addictions, but there were similarities.

Our stories are very different.

Different substances. Different careers. Different routes into recovery.

Yet during our conversation there were moments when we immediately understood what the other person was describing.

Darren talked about alcohol quietening what he called the “white noise” in his head.

Ketamine did something similar for me. My mind is naturally incredibly busy. Ketamine quietened it. For a while, the world felt softer and easier to exist in.

And both of us continued functioning.

My business was still operating. I was walking the dog, cleaning my house and doing what needed doing. From the outside my life looked normal, in many ways more than normal because I was still professionally successful.

Darren continued his corporate career.

So addiction didn’t look like the stereotype in either of us.

It looked like two people continuing to do their jobs.

And recovery itself can affect work.

This was something Darren said that I don’t think employers hear enough.

His final drinking episode came after corporate hospitality at the London Olympics in July 2012. The following morning he attended a recovery meeting in the City and then went into work.

He didn’t tell anybody.

But giving up alcohol didn’t immediately turn him into a better employee.

Quite the opposite for a while.

The confidence he had associated with alcohol disappeared. He started doubting himself and second-guessing decisions. He described moving from being chaotic but high performing into sobriety and initially feeling as though he wasn’t performing as well.

It took around a year for that confidence to come back.

I think that’s really important.

The road to recovery

We can sometimes imagine recovery as a straight line: someone stops drinking or taking drugs, problem solved.

It doesn’t work like that.

You may be learning how to socialise again. How to regulate emotions. How to deal with stress. How to make decisions. How to live inside your own mind without the thing that has been changing how you feel for years.

I remember returning to what I described at the time as a world with sharp edges after stopping ketamine.

My recovery pathway ended up being completely different from Darren’s too. Peer fellowship and the twelve-step programme became an important part of his recovery. I tried that route and quickly realised it wasn’t the right fit for me. Recovery coaching eventually gave me the individualised approach I needed.

That is another lesson for workplaces.

There isn’t one route to recovery.

Employers don’t need to decide what someone’s recovery should look like. They need enough knowledge to help people find the right specialist support and enough flexibility to support them while they do it.

Addiction comes to work through families too

Another part of my conversation with Darren made me think about how narrowly we define “addiction in the workplace”.

It isn’t only about the employee experiencing addiction.

Darren talked about what his drinking did to his wife’s peace of mind. She would call when he was out because she didn’t know where he was or whether he was safe. He sometimes avoided speaking to her and texted instead because, in his words, “you can’t slur on text.”

Recently they were clearing things from their home and she found a letter she had written to him in 2006, telling him she loved him but desperately wanted him to stop drinking.

He couldn’t read it.

He remembered what it said.

My husband experienced my addiction differently. He worked away from home as an HGV driver, so he didn’t always see the extent of my ketamine use.

But he carried the worry.

He could be hundreds of miles away wondering whether I was okay while simultaneously doing a job that required his full concentration because of the potential consequences if something went wrong.

What if addiction is impacting an employee’s friend or relative?

That matters to employers too.

The distracted, exhausted or anxious employee in front of you might not have an addiction.

Their husband might.

Their wife might.

Their child might.

Their parent might.

When we talk about Recovery-Friendly Workplaces, we have to think about impacted others as well.

Work can be part of the risk, but it can also be part of recovery

The bidirectional relationship between addiction and employment

One of the most useful things in the Forward Trust report for employers is its discussion of the bidirectional relationship between addiction and employment.

Addiction can make maintaining work difficult, but losing employment can also mean losing income, identity, structure, relationships and purpose. The report identifies employment as something that can help protect and maintain recovery.

Anyone who has spent time in recovery services knows the importance of boredom, isolation, connection, meaning and purpose.

That is why I think employers need to be very careful about defaulting immediately to punitive drug and alcohol policies.

Of course impairment has to be managed. In some jobs it creates an immediate and significant safety risk, and employers have legal and ethical responsibilities around that.

Being Recovery-Friendly doesn’t mean ignoring risk.

It means understanding that managing the risk and discarding the person are not the same thing.

Darren described the organisational response he has often seen as essentially two options: “rehab or discipline.”

Human beings are much more complicated than that.

What would a Recovery-Friendly Workplace actually do?

For me, this is where the conversation now needs to move.

A Recovery-Friendly Workplace isn’t one that tolerates unsafe behaviour. It is one that creates the conditions in which someone can ask for help earlier.

That means looking upstream at work-related stress and unhealthy workplace cultures. It means reviewing drug and alcohol policies so there are clear routes into confidential support as well as consequences where safety is compromised. It means developing managers who know how to recognise when something may be wrong, have a safe conversation and signpost rather than diagnose.

It also means checking whether the EAP or occupational health provision actually understands addiction and recovery, examining alcohol-centred corporate events, providing appropriate flexibility around treatment, considering impacted family members and making it clear that a history of addiction does not make someone professionally damaged goods.

Darren spent years trying to get addiction recognised through the wellbeing structures within his own organisation.

At the same time, almost nobody knew that the man campaigning for addiction to be taken seriously had himself been quietly attending recovery meetings before work and during lunchtimes for years.

There is something in that contradiction that employers really need to hear.

We’ve made enormous progress talking about mental health, neurodiversity, menopause and suicide prevention.

Yet addiction can still feel like the thing that must remain hidden.

Now Darren wants to do the opposite

Darren retired this summer.

Ten years ago, he made himself a promise that when his corporate career was over he would give something back to addiction and recovery.

He now wants to use his experience to talk to organisations and, hopefully, reach the person sitting in an audience who thinks nobody else understands what is happening to them.

When I asked what he wanted from it, he was very clear.

“I have one agenda here, one agenda, and that is to just help people.”

I understand that.

Part of my own recovery has been becoming willing to speak openly about what happened to me, not because everybody in recovery should disclose publicly – they absolutely shouldn’t – but because somebody has to challenge what we think addiction looks like.

A woman running a successful business can develop an addiction to ketamine.

A senior corporate leader can experience alcohol addiction and spend fourteen years in recovery while almost nobody at work knows.

Recovery can sit beside us in the boardroom.

So can addiction.

This is ultimately a leadership question

There is a financial argument for Recovery-Friendly Workplaces, and there is a risk argument.

But I think there is a more fundamental question for leaders.

If Human Sustainability is going to mean anything, it asks us to become better stewards of the human energy, health and wellbeing our organisations rely upon.

That means asking questions that might make us uncomfortable.

What is the experience of working here doing to people?

Are we protecting their ability to recover from the demands we place upon them?

Are we creating cultures in which someone can say that they’re struggling before everything falls apart?

And when somebody does struggle, do we see a human being who needs appropriate help, or simply a problem for the organisation to remove?

I don’t want workplaces to wait for rock bottom.

Because nobody begins there.

If someone is still working, still performing and still holding onto their family, home and career, that isn’t evidence that their addiction isn’t serious.

It might be our opportunity to help before they lose them.

We don’t need another poster telling employees that help is available.

We need better-designed work, better policies, managers who understand addiction, genuinely confidential routes to specialist support and workplaces where recovery is understood as something possible.

Because work can sometimes be part of the conditions that increase our vulnerability.

But good work, connection, identity, meaning and purpose can also become part of what helps us recover.

And I think that is where the next conversation about addiction at work needs to begin.

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