75: Wellness at Work—Addressing Addiction and Mental Health in the Workplace, with Benjamin Dobbs

Ever wonder how addiction impacts the workplace and what companies are doing to address it? 

In the fourth episode of our series on wellness at work, Benjamin Dobbs, the founder of True Addiction and Behavioral Health, discusses how addiction often goes unnoticed until significant behavioral changes occur, and the proactive measures companies are taking, such as increased mental health days, wellness check-ins, and educational programs. 

We talk about the significance of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in providing essential support, and the necessity of combating stigma and being proactive in offering assistance to employees struggling with addiction. We discuss the essential role of mental health care, effective coping mechanisms, and community connection in mitigating workplace stress that can lead to addiction. And we also examine the prevalence of socially accepted addictions like alcoholism and the importance of maintaining a balanced work-life dynamic to build resilience and well-being.

Benjamin Dobbs moved from hopeless and homeless to restored and transformed. He is the founder of True Addiction and Behavioral Health to help the next struggling person with addiction and mental health struggles he once lived with and overcame. He had a passion and mission to go and serve the same people who lived the lifestyle he once lived in hopes of knowing lives could be saved, families could be restored, and communities could be changed. 

You can call True Addiction at 615-338-6235. 

You can learn more about Ben on the True Addition and Behavioral Health website, on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram or by emailing him at ben@trueaddictionbh.org.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Addiction Awareness in the Workplace
• 5:25 Workplace Responses to Addiction Challenges
• 11:09 Addiction and Recovery in the Workplace
• 24:51 Building Resilient Organizations Through Compassion

Transcript

Benjamin Dobbs: 1:13

Now we're at a place where four out of five of your heroin or fentanyl users started off with pain pill addiction that is prescribed by their primary care. We're seeing a lot of high school or ex-high school athletes that caught a mild little injury during high school sports and they get put on pain pills and now it's a heroin addiction. So you're seeing a lot of things to where it's more balanced, to the factor where the stigma is still going to be there.

Manya Chylinski: 1:43

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. Today is another episode in our Wellness in the Workplace series, and our guest is Benjamin Dobbs. He's the founder of True Addiction and Behavioral Health. He used his experience with addiction to help others, and today we talked about how addiction shows up in the workplace and how workplaces can help those who are dealing with addiction. I think you're going to find this really interesting, ben. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited that we're chatting today. Thanks for having me, it's an honor.

Manya Chylinski: 2:25

Before we get started and we dig into this very important topic, I want to ask you if you could have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be and why?

Benjamin Dobbs: 2:37

My first response would be Jesus, and the reason being is I'm a follower of him and I would like to know, you know, really, we read about him, we know a lot about him, but just how it was for him and his personal view when he was walking the face of the earth, yeah, that's a good one. And since it's a big historical figure, then you know and some people are like that's unreasonable I would say Martin Luther King, Dr, Martin Luther King.

Manya Chylinski: 3:03

Okay, I think either one of those would be amazing. Look, if I could make it happen, I would absolutely. I'm sure Jesus would be make himself available. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's the kind of person that he was. That's what we read about. Yeah, that's the kind of person that he was. That's what we read about. So, yeah, okay, those are two amazing choices, I think. So I do wish I could make it happen. So we are here today to talk about wellness in the workplace as it relates to mental health and addiction awareness and acceptance of addiction. So we'd love to just hear how you come to this topic and how we're thinking about the concept of addiction in the workplace.

Benjamin Dobbs: 3:47

Yeah, I think the main thing is is working in self and in general can cause stress-related environments.

Benjamin Dobbs: 3:54

You know, and there's a lot to say about that, when we look at mental health care, you got to look at the dynamic of a person, which is the internal family systems, the external family systems, work-life balance, things of where we can extend outputs is what we call them for our stress, whether they're hobbies, activities, anything like that.

Benjamin Dobbs: 4:15

And then we also have another form of addictions, which is process addictions, which is behaviors without really evaluating the consequences, although knowing the consequences. So when we talk about work-related stress and addiction, it is a bigger scale and some shocking statistics is alcoholism is a big one where it's so socially accepted, yet some think it's normal because they still have a regular, normal life where they can come home every night and have a cocktail, glass of wine, type of thing. Reality is is we are humans that are built to process our stress internally with coping mechanisms and skills that we have. So when we do look at addiction, most of the population is people that lack in those areas and then also just having a sense of belonging to community social aspects. So when we're at work and that's all the only thing we're doing, we're coming home and, um, you know, I would say on social media, just watching the tv and there's no really connection value. This is when we can see a struggle definitely within the workplace as well.

Manya Chylinski: 5:23

Yeah, absolutely so. When we say the word addiction, I think people automatically go to substance abuse and alcoholism, for example. So we're thinking about those in particular, or addiction in general. How does that show up in the workplace, or how does that change how somebody shows up in the workplace?

Benjamin Dobbs: 5:45

A good question. I I will say this it's hardly revealed it's. If you do come to work intoxicated, your behaviors can definitely present themselves to be off of it's not your normal state. And then we have your functional alcoholics and functional drug users. I will say one of the biggest things that you can maintain and still be functional is probably pain pills. Pain pills is the big one where you can still be functional as long as you don't take too much. The only downfall is when you don't have them and you're going through withdrawals. You're definitely not going to present to be normal.

Benjamin Dobbs: 6:20

I would say the way that it does reveal and present itself is through behavioral. It's always going to be through those behavioral demographics. The other part with alcoholism is some people do function and maintain with it and some people think that's just how they are and from the person that's committing that they'll hide it with masking agents from mouthwash, any mints or anything like that, constantly hand sanitizing their hands. But it does eventually reveal itself. We've seen a lot. We've worked with employee assistant programs in my career I've been doing this 14 years and it does eventually reveal itself. And then there's some workplaces that just kind of mask that underneath the rug. When it becomes a presenting problem that's affecting other areas or other people, they kind of address it and in some cases it might be too far gone.

Manya Chylinski: 7:08

What are you seeing how workplaces are dealing with this when they discover that there is an employee or employees who are dealing with addiction? What are some of the steps they're taking to be helpful? Or maybe you're seeing steps workplaces are taking that are harmful.

Benjamin Dobbs: 7:25

So we'll say it's very encouraging that in the past and I'm going to say probably five years in the past five years pre-COVID and we've seen better results post-COVID actually, where some companies are looking at more mental health days, giving those periodically to people, doing well-being and life balance check-ins with them, whether it's through their HR, checking in with them once a month and asking them how their workload is going, any new stress along the way within there. How could they do better things? There's also employee assistance programs and HR human resources doing we do these two. I've been to several companies already with true addiction where we speak on behalf as a mental health professional and we talk about self-care and value. So some of the EAPs employee assistant programs are doing a lot of what is like a wellness educational piece, whether it's an hour to three hour type of once a month thing just to get them educated so they can say that they are offering that two step. Now, when it gets into, that's a prevention model. When it gets into, okay, we have a problem.

Benjamin Dobbs: 8:33

More companies have been more lenient in what is the FMLA, the Federal Medical Leave Act, to where their employees can qualify for that and they have the ability to leave and take care of their medical situation without the possibilities of being terminated. Okay, Now there's criteria to that. Some EAPs will implement that after six months three months but the law states after 12 months. Caps will implement that after six months three months but the law states after 12 months. So that's one of the things. Short-term disability is another way that when it is a presenting problem and they want to try to help the employee along the way, then employers can actually pay a short-term disability what's covered through the FMLA? Okay, and say they give them 30 days or 60 days leave to go to a treatment center, they will pay them short-term disability so they don't lose any or get behind on their bills as well.

Manya Chylinski: 9:25

Okay, and FMLA is the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Benjamin Dobbs: 9:33

I believe so, yeah, yeah, and it's a federal law, so I always call it like the Federal Medical Leave Act. But yeah, that's the case. Now I will say from a harmful perspective is those that aren't doing those things right, like, and then that's the equivalent. I could, we do better, absolutely. But you know, there's a lot of uh, there's a lot of bells and whistles and little gaps and and gidgets that go with that to within any companies we tend to see. Some of the smaller companies, family-owned, are more receptable, but something that's harmful is really. I think the biggest harmful thing, which would summarize all the other categories, is not being willing to help the employee.

Manya Chylinski: 10:18

That's a barrier in a lot of ways, right. And I wonder about stigma specifically around the addiction piece. I mean, we know there's still stigma about mental health issues and many people are chipping away at that from different angles. But I'm curious if addiction itself, as a coping mechanism, has a particular stigma associated with it.

Benjamin Dobbs: 10:33

It definitely does, and I would say we got to look at kind of how it stepped on the scene and the way that it stepped on the scene as being a huge problem. We've had alcoholism and drugs have been a problem since even the 50s and 60s, but more so when in the 80s, when cocaine and crack pop on the scene, the equivalence of everything that follows in addiction is equated to kind of that stigma. The low-end barrel it's not your blue-collar, white-collar people, it's those that are on the streets, those that are living that lifestyle and that stigma still kind of carries to where. Now we're at a place where four out of five of your heroin or fentanyl users started off with pain pill addiction that is prescribed by their primary care. We're seeing a lot of high school or ex high school athletes that caught a mild little injury during high school sports and they get put on pain pills and now it's a heroin addiction. So you're seeing a lot of things to where it's more of a balance, to the factor where the stigma is still going to be there. Yeah, it's, people are still going to equate it and I agree with them in some sense. It is a choice. It's a choice to continue on that.

Benjamin Dobbs: 11:49

But there has to be an understanding of the influence. Some people have been through traumatic events. They're looking for that outlet. They don't know they're misunderstood, they don't know the complications and some of these things with addiction right now is somewhat with alcoholism. Alcoholism, opiates and Xanax is big ones. So where some of those things is when it's when you get too far gone. You weren't aware, you weren't ready for that. Some of the statistics with pain pills is you have average middle-class family members that go and have a surgery and really, if you look at the statistics, five days of a frequency of taking pain pills throughout the day at a high dose you can become addicted. So you know. And then that's where they start to say there's a lot of trust in our medical field. So we start trusting in the doctor when my doctor says I need this and this is what's going to help me, and then we're addicted and then we have a problem.

Manya Chylinski: 12:48

Right Addiction is a complex issue. It's not something that, as soon as someone recognizes what's happening, that they can just stop doing what they're doing. And I'm curious, you know how you know. And I'm curious, you know how you know. And it isn't the workplace's job to fix their employees. But how can workplaces build inclusive environments and wellness? A culture of wellness can support people as they're going through these kinds of difficult experiences.

Benjamin Dobbs: 13:22

So the first thing is and I know this from setting up company they have to check. First of all, you're going to have to check out your liability policies. That's one thing, and those aren't complex. So one of the things that we teach when we do go into some of these organizations is start open formats of maybe an onsite AA group. That is non-discriminatory, non-bias, and just because you're in that meeting, we're not going to pull you in the HR and say that you have a problem.

Benjamin Dobbs: 13:49

Right, do whether it's weekly mental health check-ins with the staff. If you have a big organization. I ran a company where we had 250 employees. We were a treatment center, so we believed in what we taught to our clients we taught to our staff. So weekly the department heads would check in with all their staff and make sure everything was okay, and it did create like an intimacy in a sense, where we got to know our staff better, and so we did implement a mental health self-help group once a month. So they can do these things. It's very easy. They can. Also, if they don't want to bring the groups or the meetings on site, they can at least supply the resources, and HR can simply send these resource lists, so it sends, so it still stays anonymous and they can talk about the resources in the community where they can go out and check in with those things and attend those meetings autonomously.

Manya Chylinski: 14:40

Right Now you mentioned. The first thing you said after I asked this question was talking about liability policy. Are there legal concerns for organizations when they're dealing with somebody who is dealing with addiction?

Benjamin Dobbs: 14:55

I mean there can be in a sense of if you the liability would be if you bring someone, if you bring someone in from your organization that is having a problem and you offer these self-help groups, right, and then you see someone's overly sharing in a group and someone goes out and kind of violates the structure of those meetings and reports it to their HR. That could be a liability. That's kind of like a bait and switch type of thing. The other part is how complex is their open shares as well, right? So that would be the biggest thing of liability and you're really opening up the door to possibilities, people kind of compromising in a sense of what is maybe the substance abuse policy within the company and the structure, because a lot of companies and organizations have those.

Manya Chylinski: 15:42

so oh, so companies have policies that you will not be using drugs on, yeah, while you work here or on our site or yeah, they'll have a substance use policy.

Benjamin Dobbs: 15:54

Maybe if you're organizing or using heavy machinery or anything like that, it might be in a sense of where some companies you have to take a urine analysis beforehand okay so they'll say the reason why we do that is to make sure that you're abstinent off of, you know, any substances, including alcohol.

Benjamin Dobbs: 16:12

They might also say that if you are on any of these and you have medications to prove it, please, you know, submit those right. We do randoms maybe it's in what companies where it was a rotation, where once a month we did two individuals and it was like alphabetical order. They might not see another random for six to eight months. And then some of those subsidies policies are drafted to where they have it, to, where if you violate once, it's a coaching and or they give you a resource list to get help. Violation number two is kind of like a no tolerance. So they do have different ones and each organization has a kind of drafted up. It's still if you violate it, you violate it.

Manya Chylinski: 16:52

Right Interesting you mentioned, for example, if you operate heavy machinery. There certainly are workplaces where it would be dangerous for yourself or others if you were impaired at work. I'm thinking, though, if you're working in a company that has maybe a zero tolerance policy, or they have a specific policy about substance use, then there would be a lot, I imagine a lot more fear about being open about your own struggles.

Benjamin Dobbs: 17:24

Yeah, I mean that's the key thing is now to back it up, though, because I'm an advocate for those that struggle with addiction, because when we get to that spot, we can tend to feel hopeless and that there's no returning from it. That being said, is, as we engage into a place of employment, we read the guidelines or the boundaries of that. We should be prepared to uphold to that standard right, and I would say people should ask more thorough questions upon hire. Now we know things happen, life happens, mistakes happen. That's different, but make sure that they're also upfront, and that's where some of the policies and some substance abuse would protect the employee, and that's something that I would recommend for everyone to just make sure just in case of that, and then this way here before they go and present that to HR. I need help and everything.

Benjamin Dobbs: 18:17

Make sure that they do their due diligence on that.

Manya Chylinski: 18:20

Right, because it can be complicated depending on where you're working and what their policies are, and but you're right, life happens and sometimes. I mean you mentioned some statistics about people who started out because they had an operation or they had an injury and they were on painkillers and then that turned into an addiction and I can imagine that that would be really hard. I mean, I think it's all hard if you're addicted to a substance, but I can imagine if you were sort of going along with your life, thinking everything's okay, and then kind of finding yourself addicted and not knowing what to do about that.

Benjamin Dobbs: 18:58

Yeah, it's a different thing and you're already the majority of people in addiction and even with mental health struggles. Deal with what we call a shame core belief system, undeserving lack of self-worth.

Benjamin Dobbs: 19:11

And the reason being is, no matter how we want to try to mask this, in America like and just in life in general, like from a kid, your parents are asking you simple questions Do you like the ketchup or do you not, right? So you're starting to learn to judge, and then you're watching TV, you're in school and society is creating what we believe in some perspective of normalcy, and then so when you start an addiction, you already know it's not normal and so you start shaming yourself. You have a lack of self-worth, a lack of values, and that can really defeat a person and make them feel like they're worthless or hopeless. So it is.

Benjamin Dobbs: 19:45

I mean we've seen a lot of times where patterns of when people see themselves spiraling out of control or, to the place where they're out of control, it could take months, even years sometimes, before they actually are able to have the confidence and boost themselves up to address it.

Manya Chylinski: 20:01

Absolutely, and you mentioned shame. That's such a that's such a powerful emotion and we can all do a lot of things feeling ashamed of who we are, what we've done. That can be difficult. Well, as you do the work that you do, what is giving you hope about addiction in general and addiction recovery, and maybe even in the workplace and maybe even in the workplace, the biggest thing is seeing the transformation live in time.

Benjamin Dobbs: 20:29

So in the majority of our not just where we're at here is True Addiction Behavioral Health. This organization we're fresh.

Benjamin Dobbs: 20:36

We're open up just past 90 days now, but the majority of us that work in this field do have these own personal life experiences ourselves. So that's always hope, because you see people living their life out there and you get to hear the feedback. Some of them might have five years clean and sober, 15 years clean and sober, and they're still they're. They're more vulnerable and transparent. So, like you hear the rawness of what their life is and, yeah, and you have like a little insight of knowing that at any time they can go out there and do it. And we I try to stay away from that word normalcy in a sense of we teach our clients that, hey, you're normal, by the way, but the normalcy of like you know, sometimes people would be like I wish I could be normal and I could go to work and then maybe have a nice little bourbon or a cocktail after work every now and then.

Benjamin Dobbs: 21:23

So, with people in recovery. It's different to where some have the fear that if they embrace that it could turn out. And then the majority of us that get into that recovery aspect of knowing our purpose in life, we get to the place where it's not an option. We don't want it right, we don't desire it, so just to hear. The hope for me is always listening to the feedback from our staff and then also understanding that what we do on a daily basis for me as a leader, we always have to check in with each other and make sure that we have a good self-care balance. And then the biggest thing is the clients. We see clients that come in speak in the hopelessness and the fear factors, the shame it's written all over them. They're carrying it and just getting them to believe and trust in the process. And then us there is no magic number. We can't say by day 14, this is what you're going to look at Day 28,. I've seen people do a 90-day program and on day 88, the lights go off and they're like I think I get it now.

Benjamin Dobbs: 22:20

The hope for me is always that for those that don't get it, there is those that can and that do get it and go out there and make amazing lives out for themselves. And I will say this is I don't rely on this. But one of the biggest things that continually keeps me growing and I share these things with my staff is just some hidden Facebook messengers sometimes, or texts that come from ex-clients or anything like any type of communication they can outlet with me and just letting me know that, hey, you might not, they always start. You might not remember me, but five years ago you said X, y, z and this is what happened. But this is where my life is today and I can tell you this just in the timing for me. I'm a heavy believer in God's timing for me. It's always a time where I might need that. It comes at the right timing to where, man, what we're doing is good stuff. You know it's great stuff.

Benjamin Dobbs: 23:10

There was a guy I shared with my staff. There was a guy that shared on Facebook that he has seven years clean and sober and he lists. You know he tagged a bunch of people on there and he lists the people that helped him along the way. The majority was like his AA 12-step support network and then he lists me as like one of the only guys within the treatment center that he remembered and helped him and it was cool just to be like, hey, man, I impacted him and really we just we go every day in life as we serve this population and hoping that we can impact them, but knowing that as long as we give it 110%, those will be impacted and some will not, and it's up to them to have the agreement to do so. But to have the reassurance and the validation it's always cool and it keeps the fuel on our fire, that's for sure.

Manya Chylinski: 23:55

Absolutely, ben. You do such important work, so thank you for doing that, and can you share with our listeners how to reach you if they want to learn more about you and what you do?

Benjamin Dobbs: 24:08

Yeah, how to reach you if they want to learn more about you and what you do? Yeah, so they can go to our website, which is a true addiction bhorg. We're on all of our social medias. On Instagram, we have it's at true addiction, bh. Okay, they can go to our website, put contact on there. There's a contact form where they can submit the information. Our missions will reach out to them. There's phone numbers, always on our website. One of the phone numbers they can reach us directly is 615-338-6235. And then on LinkedIn and Facebook, we're just listed as True Addiction and Behavioral Health.

Manya Chylinski: 24:43

Excellent. I will put links to all of that in the show notes so anybody who's listening will be able to reach out if they want to connect with you, ben, thank you so much. This has been a really eye-opening conversation and I appreciate you sharing these insights.

Benjamin Dobbs: 24:58

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and honored to have you on here. Thanks, thank you, take care.

Manya Chylinski: 25:05

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion, and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.