THA 102: Second Chance – Working with and Supporting Addiction

Your Learning Curve Never Sounded So Good

The Panel:

• Matt Fanslow is the diagnostic tech/shop manager at Riverside Automotive in Red Wing, MN
• Eric Ziegler a Mobile Diagnostician owner of  EZ Diagnostic Solutions Inc in Peoria, IL. Also, an instructor for Automotive Seminars and The Driveability Guys
  
• Rob Rowsell, shop owner, owner of Family Auto Service a four shop group in the La Mesa, CA area. Author of the book ‘Addicted To Life’, How I Went from Homeless to Extraordinary Success and Happiness in a Short Period of Time. Find a link to Rob’s book on the book page on the website HERE.
  
• Tanner Brandt, owner Tanner’s auto Clinic LLC, Mobile diagnostics and programming as well as teach for CTI

Key Talking Points

• The panel consists of two former addict and two ‘normies’. The ‘normies’ have a close friend or family member that is in recovery and has had an impact on them.
• Myth: People who struggle with addition come from a bad or broken home and have no support.
• Truth: Until an addict says ‘Done’ no one can help them. Your heart may say you are done but your actions must demonstrate it.
• Addiction can come in many forms:
  • Caffeine
  • Sex
  • Germaphobe
  • Gambling
  • Video Games
• We worry about it when it becomes difficult to perform our daily functions.
• Look at science. It starts uniting things.
  • How you are wired
• Drug testing for your people or new recruits is dependent on state laws.
  • Gray areas in states where marijuana is legal.
• You can put up a sign that says ‘We are a drug-free workplace.’
• An addict’s descent into relapse occurs long before they take in the substance or activity. Talk to people to learn the signals of relapse.
  • Usually, performance at work suffers and that is a signal.
  • You must call them on it. If you ignore it will not go away. It is their addiction.
  • You must protect the business.
  • The success rate for addicts beyond the first time is not good. The success rate can be less than 10%.
  • Faith-based success rate is over 80%.     
  • There is a 12 step program at Vision KC.
• There are many programs out there to help. If an addict plays the denial card there is no hope.
• Having the right culture in the company will help a recovering addict.
  • The Christmas party is not at a bar.
  • Do not ridicule the addict
• Opioid addiction can start with a prescription for pain because of an accident or the like
  • If you are wired for an addition your pain killer can set you off.
  • We are in an opioid epidemic in our country.
  • Opioid addicts have treatment that others don’t. They can go on an alternative drug to get their life back, their job back, their family back.
• Our reward system is designed, in our brains, to give us big rewards, a dose of dopamine. We can find ourselves finding alternative ways to provide us the dose of dopamine.
• If you expose yourself you will become; In Rob’s book he talks about ‘The Law of Exposure’. It is as reliable as the Law of Gravity
  • If you hang around bank robbers you will become a bank robber. If you hang around God-fearing men, you’ll become a god fearing man.
  • Don’t risk a relapse by hanging out in the wrong environment.
• The way out is you need to believe in yourself.
  • Myth: People believe that there is a moral shortcoming because you are an addict.
  • Addiction is a family disease.
  • The negative energy that destroys an addict’s life can be used to focus on recovery.
  • By healing the addict the family heals.
  • There is more going on than just a lack of willpower or corruption of a person.
• If you had an employee leave work to go for cancer treatment would your perception of the person going for addiction treatment be the same?
• The hard part of an addict is living life without.
  • 10% is the drinking – 90% is the thinking.
• Mental illness, driving people to self medicate.    

Link to National Drug-Free Workplace

Resources:

• A special thanks to  Matt Fanslow, Rob Rowsell, Tanner Brandt and Eric Ziegler for their contribution to the aftermarket.
• Books Page HERE
• Leave me an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one of them.

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