home
> essays
> drugs
Drugs
and Work
by
Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.
"Drugs are here to stay," according to Weil and Rosen (1983, p. 1), a claim that seems all too true today, after decades of failure of the War on Drugs to end the trade. Marijuana is reportedly the leading cash-crop in California (Brandon, 2001). And if one broadens the concept of drug to incorporate not only illegal mind-altering substances, but also legal mind-altering substances, it is clear that drug use is extremely widespread in our society. Moreover, drug use is universal across societies, and every human society has made use of at least one psychoactive substance as part of its cultural practices (Weil & Rosen, pp. 10).
Drug use affects and is affected by vocational behavior. Many humans consume psychoactive substances as a means of either performing better at or coping with the demands of their work. Such usage can occur both during and after work hours. The substances may be approved by medical authorities for the individual's use, or they may be legal substances with which the individual "treats" him or herself (in both applicable senses of the term), or they may be illegal substances. Considered en toto, these classes of substance use and abuse represent a large proportion of workers across all societies; for this reason alone, but also because of potential negative consequences of substance use, this represents an important topic in vocational psychology.
Modern neuroscience has made great strides in understanding how various mind-altering substances affect consciousness and behavior (see Hobson, 2001). In this discussion, I will group several drugs according to their general effect on the nervous system: stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens (or psychedelics), and sociability enhancers. For each drug, I will briefly discuss its nature, history of use, the conditions under which it is created and distributed (which of course has a vocational context), and any occupational associations. Finally, I will discuss how Holland's (1997) theory of vocational types might serve to organize information about occupational differences in drug preferences. Such an approach is facilitated by some efforts to report patterns of drug use within specific occupations, such as Boon (2002) recent study of drug use (and abuse) among writers.
Stimulants
Stimulants include a wide number of drugs that serve to boost the activity of the nervous system and other physical systems, but generally at the price of subsequent shortfalls of energy that then need to be recovered through rest. Because work requires expenditures of energy, work productivity often benefits (at least in the short-term) from the use of stimulants. The use of stimulants is especially common when workers are expected to work unusually long periods at a time, or for longer than typical total hours per week. For example, during the recent dotcom boom, many dotcom professionals were expected to put in 60+ hour weeks; reportedly, cocaine and methamphetamine use was high among such workers (see Huffstutter & Fields, 2001), not to mention caffeine use.
Caffeine
Cocaine
Amphetamines
Ritalin
Depressants
Depressants represent a broad category of drugs, including alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, methaqualone, meprobamate, glutethimide, and ethchlorvynol. My discussion will focus on alcohol; I will not provide separate discussion of tranquilizers or anaesthetics, although they do receive some vocational use (e.g., most workplaces stock a medicine cabinet with ample supplies of analgesics). Although I classify narcotics/opioids as a type of hallucinogen, most others, such as Weil and Rosen (1983), have classified them as a depressant.
Hallucinogens/Psychedelics
There are a number of different types of hallucinogenic or psychedelic substances, including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), phencyclidine (PCP), mescaline, and psilocybin. In addition to discussing LSD, I will also discuss narcotics (and especially heroin) as a hallucinogen, although it is a also a depressant; in its vocational context the drug seems to have been used more for its hallucinogenic than depressant qualities. A more thorough discussion might also discuss the religious or shamanistic use of psilocybin by some American Indian tribes, and the use of drug-induced hallucinatory experiences by members of these tribes as part and parcel of the vocational advancement of their members, at least traditionally.
Sociability Enhancers
Although not always classified as a distinct category, number of drugs appear to facilitate social interaction, and may therefore be referred to as sociability enhancers. With some drugs, such enhanced sociability apparently occurs only after multiple opportunities for use (e.g., marijuana). In the case of Nicotine, reports of sociability are associated with its use through smoking.
Nicotine
Marijuana
Ecstasy
(MDMA)
Drugs and Holland's Theory
Career development theories based on person-environment fit seem particularly well suited for accounting for both drug use and particular drug preferences. I will focus on one widely applied and tested theory, Holland's (1997) theory of vocational choice and personality types. I suggest that individuals in each of Holland's six proposed vocational personality types have various needs that both drugs and occupations can satisfy; in a sense, both compete for the individual's interest and time. It would therefore follow that patterns of drug use might also be mapped to Holland's hexagon in meaningful ways. It would also follow that individuals in some occupations would be at relatively greater risk for certain types of drug use and abuse; such risk might arise both from occupations congruent to a worker's vocational personality (say, through workplace-supported drug use), as well as from occupations incongruent to a worker's vocational personality, when the worker might seek out congruent experiences away from the workplace, and through drug use.
Other career development theories (not addressed here) might also be applied to the problem of individual differences in likelihood of drug use. For example, diminished self-confidence (or self-efficacy) in being able to meet specific vocational challenges might increase the likelihood of drug use (either to rise to a challenge, or to escape from it). In addition, role-strain created by attempting to juggle various life-roles may increase the risk of drug use and abuse.
Conclusions
This represents only an introduction to the topic of drugs and work. I focused on four classes of drugs (stimulants, depressants, hallicinogens, and sociability enhancers) and how one vocational theory (Holland's 1997 theory of vocational types) might serve as an integrative framework for understanding vocational aspects of drug use. A more extensive treatment might have included additional classes of drugs (e.g., anabolic steroids) and additional career development theories. Also, I did not address how counselors might address either vocational issues in the context of drug and alcohol interventions, or drug-related issues in the context of career interventions.
Miscellaneous
Links
Review
of Schivelbusch's (1992) Tastes of Paradise.
Drug misuse at
work, a guide for employers, from Professional Health and Safety Consultants,
Ltd. (England)
Report: Research
on the Nature and Extent of Drug Use in the United States (2001), Drug
Abuse and Addiction Research The Sixth Triennial Report to Congress (The
National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA]).
Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA; United States).
Drug War Facts (Common Sense
for Drug Policy; United States).
References
Adverse effects. (no date). Retrieved December 12, 2001, from http://www.mninter.net/~publish/add6.htm
Boon, M. (2002). The road of excess: A history of writers on drugs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brandon, K. (2001, September 3). Marijuana farming booms in California. Chicago Tribune, pp. 1:1, 1:15.
Carter, G., & Winseman, J. (2001, July 31). A prescription for healing the whole student. Retrieved December 12, 2001, from http://www.edc.org/hec/news/hecnews/1131.html (original publication 2001)
Current, W. F. (no date). Heroin makes its way back... into the workplace. Retrieved December 25, 2001.
Frohberg, N. R., & Herting, R. L., Jr. (1999, July 20). Psychiatry: Substance-use disorders. Retrieved December 8, 2001.
Greer, G., & Tolbert, R. (1986). Subjective Reports of the Effects of MDMA in a Clinical Setting. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 18, 319-327.
Hallucination due to E? (no date). Retrieved December 8, 2001, from http://www.ecstasy.org/qanda/q52.html
Henderson, L. A., & Glass, W. J. (1994). LSD: Still with us after all these years. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hobson, J. A. (2001). The dream drugstore: Chemically altered states of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35-44.
Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3rd ed.). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
Huffstutter, P. J., & Fields, R. (2001). The dirty little secret of the dot-com world. Retrieved March 1, 2001, from http://www.latimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi
Lowman, R. L. (1993). Counseling and psychotherapy of work dysfunctions. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Lowman, R. L. (1997). Career assessment and psychological impairment: Integrating inter-domain and work dysfunctions theory. Journal of Career Assessment, 5, 213-224.
Parker-Pope, T. (2001). Cigarettes: Anatomy of an industry, from seed to smoke. New York: The Free Press.
Schivelbusch, W. (1992). Tastes of paradise: A social history of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants (D. Jacobsen, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1980)
Weil, A., & Rosen, W. (1983). Chocolate to morphine: Understanding mind-active drugs. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Wilkinson, A. (2008, March 17). Picturing Auschwitz: What does a recently found photo album reveal? The New Yorker, 48-55.
Essays
| Library | Links
Counseling |
Assessment |
Consulting
About | Legal &
Disclaimer | Editor | Contact
Updated April 27, 2008
Page and site © 2008 Andrew Carson, except where noted;
all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.