The Foremost Addiction Prone Occupation in the usa
Gene history, childhood trauma, and stress all have been linked to increased addiction rates among individuals. Although now there is evidence that occupation choice also impacts the probability of a person acquiring addiction to alcohol or drugs. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMHSA) the professional industry with the highest rate of drug or alcohol addiction is the food service industry. The food service industry is actually accountable for the most instances of alcohol addiction and outranks the artist and entertainment industry in addition to the construction industry that also have high drug and alcohol addiction rates. Dining establishments have started cracking down on their employees and endorsing sober living programs through job training to lower the addiction rates linked to the industry.
Surrounded By Alcohol
At virtually every work station in many restaurants, an employee can be exposed to booze. Cooks often need to use wine or liquor to create dishes and to make sure the taste is correct, taste the food. The same is true for bartenders however at a much more substantial level. Bartenders need to make sure their cocktails have been prepared properly and this sometimes leads to sampling the completed product before it is presented for the patron. An additional issue bartenders have to endure, are patrons who purchase drinks for them or insist they drink a shot with them. A lot of bartenders end up leaving the job intoxicated and it turns into a routine habit, which leads to alcoholism.
Stress a big Factor
Stress furthermore has a big role in substance addiction among people in the food service industry. Waitresses and bartenders have to deal with customers directly, often having to hear their grievances and go out of their way to keep their tables happy. These jobs require the employee to be standing and walking during their whole shifts which is really physically stressful, and combined with the mental stress of handling customer problems often leads quite a few in this business to develop a dependency to alcohol or drugs. Stress at work is among the primary factors of substance addiciton for all careers.
Food Service Industry Transforming
Because of the startling rate of alcoholism and drug addiction amongst the industry’s professionals, several restaurants are beginning to make major changes to their policies. After one of their own staff members drank on the job and then was involved in a deadly motor vehicle accident, owners of Husk restaurant in SC added surveillance cameras to monitor their staff members. Many more restaurants are implementing similar practices in addition to making no-tolerance policies to fire any employee caught drinking on their shift.
The restaurant industry has started to promote sober living courses to reduce the drug and alcohol dependency rates associated with the profession. Alcoholism will likely remain rampant across the industry however, as a result of the emotional and physical stress that comes with the job. Hopefully by making positive changes inside the restaurants to monitor employees, on the clock drinking can be reduced. By that change alone, there will likely be less incidents of employees leaving work and hurting or killing themselves or others while driving home from work. Go to https://www.thewatershed.com/treatment/resources/sober-living/ for more info on sober living.
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