August 2024
“I didn’t give up. I just couldn’t carry on. There’s a difference.”
Firstly, my name is Bruce and I am an alcoholic.
At a recent support group meeting, the daily reading touched on something that I know very well, that being professions that are soaked in booze. It’s a little scary just how many professions out there have a culture of alcohol consumption built right into them. Whether it’s a well-stocked bar in the office, or alcohol-soaked lunches, or after work socializing at a bar where attendance is expected for team building purposes, there are a lot of professions where alcohol plays a prominent part of daily life.
Critics have praised the TV series Mad Men for portraying this part of the Madison Avenue advertising world of the 1960s very well.
My father served in the Canadian Militia, now called the army reserve, in a time when, as a young junior officer, he was told that the sign of a good officer was based on how much you could drink.
In addition to serving as a police officer, I served in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve, an entity that has long had a connection to alcohol. Sailors used to receive a daily rum ration, which back in the days of sail, when a lot of sailors weren’t there willingly, was likely used to keep you so drunk, that you didn’t know where you were.
In the military, you are required to belong to a mess, where alcohol is consumed at every function. I served at a time when it wasn’t frowned upon to get blasted in the evening and show up for work the next morning hung over. Unless you did something really stupid, the worst that would happen the next day is that your colleagues would just make fun of you.
I wasn’t in policing at a time when being drunk or hungover at work was acceptable, but after work socializing was expected. Whether at a bar or tailgating in a parking lot late at night, you weren’t considered part of the team if you didn’t show up, most of the time at bare minimum. Luckily, this was at a time when cell phone cameras weren’t yet a thing, although it was reported in the media that some citizens did verbally complain about officers in a neighbouring service tailgating one night.
All this, of course, is in addition to the drinking that results from the stressors that police and military face every day. That was ultimately let me to the point where I had to make the choice of getting help, or facing some really bad outcomes, including my own death.
I did get sober and have been since 4 March 2016, but for the sake of my sobriety and my health, including my mental health, I had to hang up my badge. It’s a shame that I never received any help from my former service, because it didn’t have to be that way. I’m sober through my own determination to get sober and stay that way. I finally realized that I was either going to end up in handcuffs, or hurting someone, including myself. Every alcoholic and drug addict has to reach their own bottom and although things could have gotten much worse, I went “to the end of the movie” and didn’t like what I saw.
I’m glad that I finally decided I couldn’t continue on the same path and got the help that I needed. Having gone through what I did, there is no shame in admitting that I couldn’t “suck it up” anymore and just carry on. I was sucking it up; a lot of booze, that is!
I certainly not advocating for any alcohol prohibition. Taken in moderation, alcohol has its place in socialization, relaxation and celebration. I just couldn’t consume alcohol in moderation anymore.
I’m also not blaming anyone else for the fact that I consumed alcohol in dangerous ways because policing is one of the professions that seems to openly condone alcohol consumption as a part of its culture. However, there is something that command officers and frontline supervisors can do to lessen the impact on officers under their command.
It’s not enough to say that officers who are having problems should come forward and alert their supervisors. The suffering officers have to trust the person they are opening up to and know that they will be treated with compassion and understanding. Someone non-threatening can go a long way in helping a suffering officer open up. It’s hard to say now what would have gotten me to finally open up now, as the suffering officer has to be ready to open up and ask for help, but it’s a better option than not.
While good order and discipline must be maintained, and problem officers may have to be dealt with through punitive measures, up to and including Police Services Act charges, stop using them as your first course of action.
Some supervisors/command officers go out of their way to target certain officers to set an example, creating discipline problems that didn’t exist before, frequently abusing their authority in the process. Some supervisors/command officers think the only way to gauge a subordinate officer’s performance is through the number of arrests made and Provincial Offences tickets handed out. Some of those same supervisors/command officers think the only way to show how well they do their own job, is to show how many reprimands and PSA charges they hand out to subordinates.
Lastly, to Police Services Board members: You need to better monitor the command officers heading up your services. If you don’t already, demand to see monthly reports for all formal and informal disciplinary matters. If a particular officer’s name keeps coming up month after month, ask your command officers why this is happening and what is being done about them. Sometimes, the supervisors/command officers are the ones who are actually the problem.
