bonami

Hi, I am new to these boards and find them very helpful, and I wish everyone here much luck with their own recoveries. I came here to learn more about alcoholism and recovery because a very dear friend and coworker is currently in outpatient rehab. We have worked together for a very, very long time, but I have not spoken to him since the incident which caused him to go into treatment, so I do not know how he is doing or how his recovery is going. I have gotten some very helpful counsel from the Friends and Family threads but I thought I would also post here.

I think his treatment will be over soon and as far as I know, he will be allowed to return to work by our boss. what is it like for someone in early recovery when they return to work? we are a small company and everyone has worked closely together for many years. On a pure business level, his crisis and having to leave for rehab was disruptive, and I know it was very disappointing to the boss and some of the team members who have had to step in and take over his duties. I think they expect him to pick back up where he left off once they catch him up, but if he's been thru all sorts of therapy in treatment, his whole attitude towards the job may have changed? I guess I am just wondering what to expect when he returns to work, assuming he wants to after treatment and assuming they want him to come back. I care about him as a friend as well as a coworker so I just want to learn more about early recovery. thank you.

Dee74

Hi bonami

I have no personal experience to share as I've worked for myself for many years, but I rather suspect everyone's experience will be slightly different anyway, as it must be a pretty individual thing.

Hope it all goes well for your friend

D

bonami

Hi Dee74, thank you for the good thoughts and for responding. We are a small company and my friend was the boss' right-hand man, so it's been strange without him and I know his return is not going to be easy for him or the rest of us. Some days I feel like I might be his only advocate in the office.

leo21

I have no experience with any rehabs, but speaking as a person with a career I found that after I quit and got out of the fog I was approaching my work from a much better perspective. I had clarity, energy, purpose and drive. I personally believe it depends on this persons' personality. For me, I grabbed it cause I'm a shoot from the hip type of guy.

bonami

leo21, thank you for your reply. He's been pretty functional at work up until his recent crisis, and he is the driven type; partly due to him, we are having a good year which is hard to do in this economy! So I hope he returns, as you did, more focused and with more energy. I think I have been worried that the opposite may happen, that all the therapy he's having to fix his problem might take away his energy for work. I would hate to see everything he's worked for up until now just disappear, although I realize that is sometimes what does happen to alcoholics.

silly

bonami,
I can only tell you how I felt when I returned to work after 7 weeks off for outpatient rehab and therapy.
First, I was very well aware that my absence left my work on others to pick up. I'm sure it was disappointing and disruptive for them. I felt terrible. Really guilty and extremely anxious. It was one of the biggest reasons I did not want to get help. "What will they do without me at work? I can't just take weeks and weeks off!" But really? What was the alternative? I was very sick.
I was terrified to walk in the door my first day back. I didn't know what questions would be asked and I didn't want to offend people if I politely declined an answer. Really, I just wanted to get back to work as quickly as possible. I wanted to be treated just like I'd always been treated - a valueable member of the firm.
Let's be honest. It's not anyone else's business except his, the boss and HR. In some cases, even the boss doesn't have a legal right to know why an employee needs to take medical leave. I believe my HR person actually broke the law by telling my boss because I wasn't in trouble at work or anything like that. Of course in your case if the condition affected the work, I'm sure the boss knew. Friends or not friends, it's a professional environment and legally speaking, his privacy needs to be respected. He will probably appreciate it most if you let him know you're glad he's back, you hope he's feeling better and then offer to help him get back into the groove any way you can.

p.s. I felt very rested and relaxed when I went back to work. I would be suprised if he lacks energy. If I changed at all it was the perspective I gained in rehab. My work and my career are not what mends me when I'm sick and it's not what will pick me up when I fall. If my work is the most important thing in the world to me, I will remain a lonely person and I will be missing the things that keep me sober - friends, family, a loved one, all the things that money can't buy.

Fenris

Bonami,

I was away from my job for over a month at an inpatient detox/rehab facility and after I returned to work at the beginning of June, I've also been in an outpatient program and attending AA meetings daily during my lunch hour. It was my experience that while my coworkers were worried about me in my absence (as per the law they had not been told why I was gone -- only my immediate supervisor and office manager knew), after I told them what was going on, they essentially looked at it and treated it like a medical leave (which it was), as if I have a disease (which I do), had to go to a medical facility to be treated for it (which I did), and happily welcomed me back. Even today though, alcoholism is often looked at as a "moral problem" or a problem of weak-willed people, even by some alcoholics...when in fact, it's a treatable, but incurable, disease.

I was a little nervous about going back to work, but like Silly wrote, I also felt rested and relaxed and energetic, ready to deal with whatever came my way. Your coworker may decide he wants to move on from his job, he may not -- the process of treatment and recovery made me closely analyze every aspect of my life, including my career. Personally, I was a much better version of myself when I re-entered my life, but that's not always the case. Some alcoholics become "dry drunks" after treatment, and are basically miserable and angry because they aren't drinking but haven't found another way to fill that void. I didn't (thanks to my Higher Power and AA), but some do.

I would just recommend that you welcome him back, let him volunteer any information he wants, and leave it at that. I hope that helps.

--Fenris.

bonami

Silly and Fenris- thank you both soooo much for sharing your experiences!! Your posts are extremely helpful to me, because I do care about my friend on both a personal and professional level, and I've been struggling with my own reactions to his absence; we've known each other a long time.

I do agree that his absence from work is not really anyone’s business and I think only a few people do know. But his condition did affect the work and ended up being my business, because as a result of the crisis he had at home, he went on a binge and did not show up or communicate with any of us for a couple of days. I was one of the people trying hard to reach him (because in the past, he has reached out to me, but not this time), so I eventually found out the reason he had disappeared. And the boss absolutely knows the entire story.

I am glad to hear that both of you felt rested and relaxed after your rehabs; I hope the same for my friend, and Fenris, that he also comes back as a better version of himself, since I do guess that he’s probably in the process of analyzing everything about his life, and this job is a big part of that. I also do hope that the job does not make him more miserable because he does not have alcohol to ease the stress. There is a culture of drinking within his team, so I wonder if it will be hard for him to return and continue relating to people he has worked with for over a decade, or if he can shut that out and focus on the work itself.

Both of you have offered good advice on what to say when he returns and it’s consistent with other advice I have been receiving here on SR. So I am preparing to welcome him back and then let him tell me how I can help him. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts!