Episode 174: Alcohol and Work
/“I would never advocate for removing alcohol from the workplace. But...if we are not going to make it so that the person who goes out to the bar the latest gets the best bonding experience and opportunities, we have to be conscious.”
“It’s a whole gender role thing, right? We’re supposed to be good women, good mothers, good wives. So we’re demonized I think, when we have these issues. ”
Lisa smith
A lot of workplaces use alcohol as social glue. My abiding memories of my first job involve copious glasses of red wine drunk at the pub at lunchtime on Fridays. I don’t remember much about the insurance industry, but that job did teach me how to hold my liquor. There was definitely social pressure to drink. A lot. But drinking is easier on male bodies than female ones.
When Lisa Smith started out as a lawyer in the '90s she spent multiple late nights out drinking with colleagues. But the pressures of work had her drinking at home too, and by the time she was in her thirties she was an alcoholic. Today, she’s the author of the memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar, and she works with law firms to make their cultures less alcohol-dependent, and to break the stigma around addiction in the legal profession.
And we meet Dawn Nickel of She Recovers to talk about the issues women face in seeking treatment for substance use, and how the pandemic has affected women in recovery.
You can also read a transcript of the show.
Further reading: She Recovers offers support to women in recovery from substance use, intimate partner violence, eating disorders and more.
American Bar Association study on substance use among lawyers in the U.S.
New York Times piece on how drinking rose during Covid, and how to cut back.
Stress in America, a report from the American Psychological Association on health concerns that have arisen during the pandemic. The report states that 29 percent of mothers report an increase in their drinking during the past year. 48 percent of fathers say the same.
From NPR, a piece about the big rise in alcoholic liver disease in young women during the pandemic.