Medicine: Business & the Bottle

The battle of the bottle is one of the business world’s trickiest problems. Every year U.S. industry loses more than $1 billion from the absenteeism, accidents and substandard work of 2,000,000 problem drinkers. Not long ago the typical company damned the alcoholic worker as a weak-willed degenerate, and fired him instead of helping him. But no more. Last week in Manhattan, at a symposium sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism, doctors and officials from two dozen blue-ribbon U.S. companies, including IBM, RCA and Esso, agreed that the corporation can cure the alcoholic, told how it is being done.

Help from the Clinic. In Manhattan, Consolidated Edison, Standard Oil (NJ.) and others have joined to underwrite a local industrial alcoholism clinic for their employees. Eastman Kodak and International Harvester have their own in-plant programs for finding alcoholics, also contribute to community clinics for treating them. Allis-Chalmers has set up an alcoholics control team of welfare workers, psychiatrist, attorney, “problem counselor” and “alcoholic counselor.”

Like many another company, Du Pont pays for the worker’s diagnosis and early treatment in an outside alcoholism clinic. But how does the company spot the man who needs treatment? Answered Du Font’s Alcoholism Advisor David Meharg, himself a member of Alcoholics Anonymous: “When a man—or woman—stops bragging about how much he can drink and begins sneaking and lying about it, that’s when he is an alcoholic.”

Help from A.A. Du Font’s model assault on the bottle problem was detailed by its assistant medical director, Dr. C. Anthony D’Alonzo, in The Drinking Problem (Gulf Publishing; $2.95). The company first looks for certain giveaway signs: “Frequent absenteeism (characteristically on Monday); a gradual and appreciable drop in efficiency; a change in general appearance and dress habits; frequent disappearances from work.” Next, Du Pont medics approach the alcoholic sympathetically, tell him that the company views his alcohol problem as an illness, not unlike heart disease. The company then sends the drinker to its own psychiatrists and to Alcoholics Anonymous—and it holds that A.A. is ten times more effective than the psychiatrists. “One who has never indulged in drinking has a poor chance of succeeding with alcoholics,” says Dr. D’Alonzo.

Only when the drinker refuses treatment or returns to steady elbow-bending is he fired. “An employer who frequently threatens termination, but does not follow through, furthers the alcoholic’s continued drinking,” Dr. D’Alonzo believes. “Sometimes this act [of firing] is the trigger that suddenly brings the alcoholic to his senses.”

But firing is rarely necessary. Du Pont has treated 900 problem drinkers under its program. The cure rate: 66%. The cost: less than $100 per rehabilitation.