thank you to all who answered. I'll give a little background. my son worked in the family business and because it is a family seasonal business (he worked with us for five years) we had no clue he had a problem. Work was in spurts, travel involved , no 9-5 work hours so we didn't pick up on his problem. So my dh tells son up front.......don't list him (meaning dh as a reference) so that is four years and no reference right there. The last place he worked was for a publishing institution and he wrote many published magazine pieces (two won national awards with his byline) well to cut a long story short that place of employment agreed to let him go to rehab . for 30 days but it wasn't enough.....he relapsed.....so they offered him to resign rather than be fired. At first when I wanted to place blame on everybody (my fault for going down that road) I said (1) the employer was to have been in contact with son's counselor if anything looked amiss(she was told by the counselor to do this to head off any relapse issue)...she saw the signs and never bothered to alert the counselor oranyone not even son's wife. I thought that was unfeeling and uncaring on her part. IMHO I think she saw a train wreck coming and wanted a way out for her department. (2) When she offered him the resign rather than