Secretaries are a hard working group of people who are invaluable to the companies they work for. A majority of businesses and corporations employ secretaries or even secretarial pools to execute tasks beneath the managers and CEOs because the upper level positions are too swamped to complete their own office work. A great deal of a business’s operations depend on secretarial positions, and sometimes secretaries are burdened with heavy stress and high expectations. For this reason and many more, secretaries can be prone to addiction and substance abuse because they have a lot of stress they want to escape from. When a secretary is struggling with addictive tendencies, they should receive the necessary help they need through services such as support groups, detox clinics and inpatient rehabilitation.

• Anonymous support groups can mean the difference between addiction and recovery in secretaries. Support groups are a grassroots way of combating addiction and have been known to be very effective. They are typically organized by someone in the community and are made up of recovering and struggling addicts who support one another through triggers, relapses and victories.
• Detox clinics can be effective ways of restoring a person’s health after they have been abusing a substance and can be an effective way of helping secretaries through substance abuse problems. If the individual’s addiction is not putting them in immediate risk and they want the opportunity to try to manage it without rehab, a detox clinic is a great way of helping the person restore their body chemistry to a healthy balance.
• Inpatient rehab is the best treatment method for anyone who is struggling with a severe addiction. It is statistically the most effective way of treating addiction and preventing relapse. Inpatient rehab involves residential living in a treatment facility for a number of days in order to receive counseling, participate in exercises and enjoy therapeutic activities in order to beat addiction.

A number of working professionals are prone to addiction, and secretaries are no different. Studies have found that a number of people who work in the secretary pool struggle with addiction due to stress and other negative emotions. This may be a character trait or it may be related to the job. Either way, addiction is a serious condition that can be harmful to the individual’s job, reputation, relationships and life in general, and it is very important that secretaries struggling with addiction receive the help they need. If you suspect the secretary in your office to be struggling with addiction, watch for the following signs and symptoms in their behavior, and let your human resources department know right away if you observe them:

• If your secretary appears to be intoxicated at work, this is the most obvious and serious sign of addiction, as far as the workplace is concerned. When a secretary has let their guard down enough to be openly intoxicated at work, it is likely that their addiction is very advanced. You can detect workplace intoxication by smelling alcohol on the person, by observing a lack of motor skills or hearing slurred speech.
• Reckless behavior is another tell tale sign that your secretary is struggling with addiction. Addiction is damaging to a person’s mental health and it will become apparent in that person’s behavior. If a person does not yet realize that they are an addict, they will probably be more public about it. If they have been called out on their problem, they will probably try to hide it.
• If you witness secretive behavior in your secretary in the workplace, this can be an indication of addiction. If spouses, significant others, friends, family members, peers or co-workers have approached the individual about their addictive tendencies, it is likely that they have felt shame over their problem but are not ready to give it up. This often makes their behavior go secretive. If you have seen your secretary excusing themselves frequently or you have caught them in a lie, consider addiction the possible cause of their behavior.

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Secretarial work is a very common and necessary position to our society, and the work tends to draw like minded people. Statistically, secretarial work is still largely female dominated, but there is a small male presence in the secretarial pool. Something less well known about secretarial work is that the people drawn to it have been found to struggle with addiction tendencies. This could be for a number of reasons related to the stress of the work or the type of person that seeks work in this profession. Regardless, it is important to be aware that this group of people can be prone to addiction and what those addictions may consist of.

Alcohol has a known addictive appeal to people in secretarial work. Alcohol is most commonly used to calm nerves, suppress emotions and give confidence. A majority of the time, when someone is addicted to alcohol, it is being used for one of these purposes. This could mean that people drawn to secretarial positions tend to have heightened emotions or they crave comforts more than the average person. It could also mean that many secretaries feel stressed by their work.

Food has a similar appeal as alcohol to the addicted secretary. Food addictions are commonly another method of soothing stress of one kind or another. This stress may be workplace induced or from the individual’s personal life. Many secretaries claim to feel that their bosses have very high expectations of them, which can lead to feelings of anxiety. Food addictions can cause serious health problems and eating disorders.

Prescription drugs are another form of addiction that centers around seeking comforts and securities. When someone is addicted to medications or medical help, it can be because negative physical symptoms give them anxiety and they would rather medicate too heavily than feel any negative physical symptoms. It is possible for a person to throw off their pain receptors to be hyper reactive to pain, which can induce a prescription drug addiction.

Secretaries and administrative professionals are a unique group of people with their own personal quirks, positive attributes and detriments. Not a lot of people are aware that secretaries as a profession are known to struggle with addiction. While their professions call for absolute composure and level-heads, their personal lives can be volatile, emotional, manic or out of control. Many veer towards addiction as an outlet for their wild side.

The administrative profession is still female dominated in most of the world, so many of the addictions that are common to the secretarial worker are also common to females in general. The most commonly observed addictions among secretaries are to sex, love, romance, alcohol, prescription medications and food. These types of addictions are thought of as comfort addictions rather than adrenaline addictions. Any type of addiction creates the brain chemical dopamine which tells a person they are experiencing pleasure, but some people find this pleasure through “uppers” and some people find it through “downers.”

If you believe that your personal secretary or a secretary who you know is an addict, you may be able to confirm this by watching for signs in their behavior. A secretary with a substance addiction will be secretive in the workplace and may look for reasons to escape temporarily. When they return, they may exhibit signs of consumption, such as the smell of alcohol on their breath or the presence of food matter on or around their mouth. Their behavior will have probably gone from agitated to relaxed, and common signs of intoxication will probably be a giveaway. If their addiction is more on the order of sex, love or romance, their behavior will come off completely different. They may flirt compulsively, develop feelings for coworkers or simply have abnormal emotional reactions over their workplace relationships.

If you or someone you know is a secretary who is struggling with addiction, it could be that rehabilitation or addiction counseling is the remedy. Take the first step and reach out for help today!