Back in May of this year, Scott Carlson, senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote a story about substance abuse among college professors. As a former professor who struggled with addiction for years, I read Scott’s story with great interest. Although I’d published a memoir a couple of months prior in which I discuss addiction in academia, Scott’s article prompted me to do more.
I contacted him, and we had a thought-provoking discussion about stigma toward addiction, which exceeds stigma toward any other mental health condition. I blogged about it afterward, but that didn’t seem like enough. Fear of stigma kept me in the closet about my addiction for 25 years, and two things science tells us are that (1) academics tend to hide almost any disability at almost any cost; and (2) stigma thrives on secrecy. Reducing stigma requires people to share their stories, putting human faces on them. Not everyone, however, is in a position to do this.
I reached out to Louis Essig and Aaron Garnes, who kindly hosted me on their popular Get a Grip podcast, which explores life before, during, and after addiction. The podcast is unscripted and often raw. Guests expose their private struggles with addiction in ways fellow travelers can identify with, and in ways others without addiction can gain insight from, even if they can’t fully understand.
Almost immediately after my episode dropped, the avalanche started: emails, instant messages through Facebook and LinkedIn, and contacts through my website. It included graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early career, mid-career, and senior faculty members struggling with substance abuse and addiction and keeping it secret—just as I had for 25 years, and just as the literature suggests. Almost everyone expressed paralyzing fear that their careers would be over and their reputations forever tarnished if they came out. Stigma runs deep in higher ed.
I’m both surprised and unsurprised by the number of academics who, in such a short time, contacted me. Surprised that so many reached out, but unsurprised that so many are affected, including, undoubtedly, many more.
This is my shortest blog post to date because I don’t know what comes next. I have another podcast to record, and a couple of public appearances in the works. I’m thinking hard about what to say. If you have ideas, please send them along.
Smart people have been working to reduce stigma toward addiction for many years. We rename disorders, compare addiction to less stigmatized diseases, and frame relapse as normal. We conduct public awareness campaigns, yet year after year, stigma just seems to increase.
We need a new approach. It’s hard to know what that might look like, but putting human faces on addiction will surely play a part. One thing’s for sure: Human lives both inside and outside our profession are at stake.