Workplace substance abuse costs Americans well over 100 million dollars annually. From lost productivity and accidents to increased healthcare costs and mistakes on the job.

I recently spoke with a writer from a business journal who was doing a report on prescription drug abuse in the workplace. A well-known insurance company had issued a memo to companies to start testing their employees for prescription drug abuse. Since prescription drug abuse is the fastest rising category of substance abuse in America it is a timely topic. The problem is that many Employee Assistance Programs don’t know that addiction can be fully overcome and often times counselors feel that drugs can actually increase performance at work if taken as prescribed for certain problems. The missing information in this case is that these drugs only cover up and treat the symptoms of the real problems and don’t actually solve what’s wrong. In addition,

the drugs themselves either have abuse potential or have a laundry list of side effects.

I explained to the writer that we have seen an increase of people coming through our treatment program that got hooked on prescription drugs that were at first legally prescribed to them, many of whom went on to use illicit drugs as well. The overall goal of rehabilitation is to restore the individual to his or her former capacity, the way they were without any drugs, and that treatment had veered its course and gone into drug substitution mode. Despite the ineffective trends in mainstream substance abuse treatment, nobody can ignore the hard facts as evidenced by the recent study out of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse out of Columbia University that showed we know have over 15 million people abusing prescription drugs in the U.S.

Original post by Luke Catton