Are you on drugs?

Is someone in your family?

Someone who

works with you?

The stress of owning and/or running a business is enough to make almost anyone crazy. It’s also almost enough –and occasionally more than enough– to prompt entrepreneurs, family members, and employees to resort to drugs. Do you ever feel like sometimes the whole world is on drugs?

Just swipe your eyes over some pharmaceutical and alcoholic beverage industry numbers. Scary stuff.

Factor in all the illegal Mexican drug cartel trainloads. Add illegal outputs from Colombia and Brazil and Turkey and Scandinavia and the Orient and thousands of other supply chains around the world. Scarier yet. (Hey, look at the people running our country. Now that’s scary.) Wheee! Drugs all around. And it’s not even Woodstock!

The trouble is that talk like that draws snickers from many, and it’s just not funny. Individual lives, entire families and businesses, whole nations have been wasted and destroyed by drug and alcohol dependency problems that literally drag them out of being in touch with the present here-and-now, into past and future fantasyland.

There are very few things in life more destructive than drug and alcohol dependency –even cancer– because in addition to also being degerative, drug and alcohol addiction that’s not brought on by parental genes and/or birth conditions (e.g. “crack babies”), is a disease that is often the result of (usually unconscious) self-destruct choices.

_________________________ 

If addiction is a struggle of yours, you’re obviously smart enough to be doing something about it, or you wouldn’t be reading this. If it’s someone else’s struggle that you are somehow engaged with, be careful, first of all, that you don’t get sucked into the whirlpool, because it is not a forgiving experience.

Everyone who’s battled addiction (their own or someone else’s) knows that it’s difficult if not completely impossible to be “under the influence” and to own, operate, or manage a business of any kind without “outside” professional help to monitor and guide a structured program of rehabilitation. But shop carefully.

There are a zillion helpful individuals, groups and organizations out there ready to pounce on a tollfree call of crisis and desperation. Unfortunately though –unlike a latex glove– one size doesn’t fit all, and it seems that most of these well-intentioned helpers are, in the end, very limited in what many affected people will allow them to achieve.

Many who say they want help, really don’t want help; they want only to say that they want help! Like trying to stop decay once it starts, addiction carries an ever-increasing degree of both business and social irresponsibility. This quickly disintegrates into a growing sense of apathy for everything except the next drink, the next fix. 

__________________________

In trying to teach me to swim, my father who was a great swimmer, threw me off a motor boat a mile out into the ocean. I failed to learn anything but fear; he had to hire a swimming instructor. I spent many years as a group counselor and stress management trainer, but couldn’t help some of those most in need who were closest to me.

It’s hard to shake off emotional connections when pragmatism and self-discipline are called for.

The bottom line is that if you or someone close needs help with an addiction problem, you/she/he has to be coherent and genuinely dedicated enough to want help, and to go out and find it, and to follow the path. No one else can push anyone into a resource situation that doesn’t fit or feel right, and expect some overnight miracle.

Addiction is a mental, emotional, and physical disease. Just as it takes time to “catch it,” it also takes time to work it out of your system and get rid of it. And some never do. Regardless of caregiver credentials, pedigrees, or intentions, others truly cannot help those who are not willing and eager and able to help themselves.

# # #

Your FREE subscription:   Posts RSS Feed 

Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.   God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone!