Fifty-eight-year-old Lori, a veteran high school teacher, successfully beat back an alcohol addiction decades ago. A passionate teacher in a troubled part of town, Lori uses lesson prep time to address the needs of struggling students. “We solve real-world problems, like a student who had trouble completing assignments because her family fled to a hotel to escape violence in the home. It’s hard to concentrate when dealing with that kind of trauma.” Despite the stressors and in the face of what she calls a culture of drinking within education, Lori remained sober. “The work is all-consuming so Friday nights we all decompress at the bar. During our team building exercises, even bowling, there is so much drinking. Drinking is woven into everything we do.”
And then COVID hit. Overnight, teachers were expected to deliver lessons online, which meant a steep technological learning curve and a lack of connection with the kids. “Because our board gave students an option to leave cameras off, I couldn’t see my most vulnerable kids,” said Lori. “I took to raffling a gift card available only to the students who turned on their cameras. One did and there was a naked man asleep in her bed. I started thinking about the implications of the naked man in the bed. What if he got up? What if other students see him?” It became increasingly more difficult to help the students most at risk. “Because of the stress, the loneliness, and isolation, I began drinking again. All the teachers talked about doing the same thing. Our admin said do the best we can. We were all treading water.”
As the pandemic progressed, Lori’s drinking amped up to a bottle of wine a day. “One night I blacked out and totalled my car. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital yet, unbelievably, the police did not charge me. That was the wake-up call I needed to get some help.”
Lori is not alone. Several studies of teachers’ working conditions during the pandemic found stress was off the charts. A University of Ottawa-led study called the Healthy Professional Worker Partnership has researched the mental health of thousands of professionals, including teachers, since 2015. Teachers cite work overload, digital stress, and poor interactions with administration as the biggest stressors. Teacher burnout is at an all-time high. But a shocker is what the data revealed about substance use—alcohol, cannabis, or other drug use or dependence. “Responses to our surveys told us teacher substance use had more than doubled during the pandemic,” according to Dr. Kristen Ferguson, professor of education at Nipissing University.
This is a much higher rate than any other study of substance use during the pandemic. Canadians reported an 18 percent increase in drinking during COVID and an American study reported 41 percent increase in drinking in women. The majority of teachers and teaching assistants in Canada and the U.S. is female.
That substance use has more than doubled for teachers does not surprise Dawn Nickel, the founder of the women-only non-profit She Recovers Foundation. She Recovers welcomes women seeking recovery from life challenges including mental health issues, trauma, and substance use.
“Throughout the pandemic, we’ve witnessed a huge increase in alcohol consumption across our community. It’s a socially sanctioned way to release stress, particularly as it relates to professionals (healthcare, education, and legal). The demand for support and resources from these groups has increased accordingly, possibly even doubled.”
“You need to decompress,” says teacher Lori. “The culture tells us you deserve it.” But teachers battle other issues too. “Our data tells us teachers have very high expectations of themselves,” says Senior Research Associate Dr. Melissa Corrente, of the Healthy Professional Worker Partnership. Yet many have very low opinions of teachers. “The vitriol that teachers face, the bullying, the harassment from parents and the public all take a toll.”
“I hear, ‘oh I drank way too much last night,’ a lot from other teachers,” says Lori. “Yet, if you develop a problem, the stigma is huge. I could have gone to rehab, but there is an unspoken rule, you really shouldn’t do that. It’s not a good look. If admin ever offered help, it’s unlikely teachers would accept. We’re very suspicious of admin,” a finding confirmed by the Healthy Professional Worker Partnership data. “In that environment why would you ever admit you have a problem?”
While progress has been made in destigmatizing mental health, attitudes towards substance use lag far behind. “It’s estimated only one in ten sufferers receive the care they need largely because of stigma,” says Elliot Stone, the President of ALAViDA, a LifeSpeak company and completely virtual evidence-based substance use treatment provider. “That means a substance use disorder goes untreated until a crisis.”
Substance use makes up 33 percent of all mental health claims and the physical toll grows too. Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen, like asbestos and tobacco. There is a strong scientific consensus that drinking alcohol causes several types of cancer—like esophageal, colorectal, liver—and is increasingly implicated in a growing number of breast cancers. New evidence tells us women—the majority of teachers—who drink between puberty and first pregnancy face a significantly higher risk of breast cancer—up to 34 percent.
It all makes the need to deliver evidence-based, compassionate, and confidential treatment to teachers urgent. Experts say addiction should be treated pre-disability, like any potentially life-threatening disorder, with early intervention and plenty of treatment options.
That’s why the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan (OTIP) has made ALAViDA available to its 280,000 members. ALAViDA connects patients with a behavioural care team that delivers personalized support straight to their smartphones. The platform’s success with the Fraser Health Authority, a large BC health region, which gave access to the confidential service to all 32,000 employees, shows that those struggling with substances will reach out if the service is confidential. “We need tools that allow teachers to get help without ever having to interact with administration,” says ALAViDA’s Stone. “We use a harm reduction approach, which allows us to meet people where they are, and when they need help.”
Harm reduction is also an approach of She Recovers, where Lori learned to manage her drinking again. “Women need to be supported to find individualized pathways and patchworks of recovery, so abstinence is not a requirement,” says Nickel. “That was a welcome surprise to me. In the past my only option was total abstinence,” says Lori. “I’m 100 percent sober now but I had a few slips and no one judged me for it. That approach is so freeing—particularly for women—we are so hard on ourselves.”
Nickel believes so many sought out She Recovers because women bore the brunt of the pandemic, juggling work at home while managing online learning of children. When COVID hit, She Recovers moved exclusively online, where it became a phenomenon. “We had a group of 2,000 at the start of the pandemic. We have over 11,000 in the online group now; many hundreds are educators. Teachers ask if they could have a teachers-only group and that’s definitely in our future. I think we appeal to teachers because we have lesson plans,” jokes Nickel.
Support for substance use is generally male-dominant but women make up over 51% of ALAViDA members, as the platform allows women to find help that fits their needs too.
While teachers have success finding help outside the profession, there are factors within that must change too. Dr. Melissa Corrente, “In our surveys, teachers told us they don’t want another Professional Development session where they learn to meditate and do yoga. They say, ‘fix the working conditions,’ which is the source of stress. Even having a break-out room, where teachers could have a few minutes of quiet would be great.”
Dr. Pamela Rogers, Director of Research for the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, says there is an urgent need for more research into the effects of stress on teachers. “We know our members are really hurting and we need more data so we can fight to protect their health.”
“If you’ve set up a truly supportive plan for substance use,” says ALAViDA’s Stone, “employees would access it just like they do their physio or dental benefit, with complete confidentiality. No one knows that I need physio on my back or a filling unless there’s a crisis. Nor should they. And that’s exactly how we should deliver substance use support.”
Fact-Checking
Only one in ten seek help:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK424859/#:~:text=Only%20about%201%20in%2010,primary%20or%20general%20health%20care
Substance Use makes up 33 percent of all mental health claims: https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-path-wants-to-reinvent-substance-use-disorder-benefits-2019-10#bruno-also-contextualizes-the-significance-of-substance-use-disorder-within-mental-health-substance-use-disorders-make-up-about-one-third-of-employer-mental-health-issues-as-employers-%20focus-their-efforts-on-improving-mental-health-within-their-workforces-itll-be-key-to-keep-that-portion-in-mind-4
Substance use affects 21 percent of Canadians, Source CMHA: https://ontario.cmha.ca/addiction-and-substance-use-and-addiction/
One in five Canadians drinking more, Source CCSA:
https://www.ccsa.ca/more-1-5-canadians-who-drink-alcohol-and-have-been-staying-home-more-have-been-drinking-once-day
41 percent of women report increase in heavy drinking episodes: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-alcohol-and-covid-19-2021040622219
Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen:
https://www.asco.org/about-asco/press-center/news-releases/statement-alcohol-linked-to-cancer-november-2017
34 percent increase in breast cancer risk: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3832299/
cut and paste from article:
However, case–control studies showed a significant increase in breast cancer risk associated with early age at which women started to drink (<25 years) [34] and with alcohol consumption before age 30 years [35,36]. Alcohol consumption before age 30 years was dose dependently associated with pre-menopausal breast cancer risk, with a 34% increase in risk for every 13 g/day (1 drink/day) of intake, but not with postmenopausal breast cancer risk
Maureen Palmer
Maureen Palmer is a Canadian journalist, author, and filmmaker whose company Bountiful Films has delivered two decades worth of award-winning documentaries. She co-wrote her partner Mike Pond’s memoir, Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist’s Fight for Recovery in a Flawed Treatment System and wrote and directed the film Wasted for CBC’s Nature of Things, which followed Mike’s search for compassionate, evidence-based addiction treatment. She’s now a subject matter expert, writing primarily about substance use. For more information on treatment: clientservices@alavida.com
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s 2023 Winter issue.