One of the most common concerns people have when deciding if they’re going to get treatment is whether or not they’ll be able to continue working while they attend rehab. Fortunately, some programs can be completed while you continue to work while in treatment. There are also laws in place that protect those that take time off of work to attend a treatment program.

Can You Work While in Rehab?

Understandably, many people are hesitant to sign up for treatment because they don’t want to risk losing their employment. A lot of individuals that seek treatment for an addiction or mental health have homes and families that they’re responsible for, so being without an income for the weeks or months they need to focus on their recovery could cause serious problems for their loved ones. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways that someone can continue to work during treatment.

Legally Protected

The good news is, that employers cannot legally fire an employee just for attending rehab. Further, any discrimination about attending rehab from an employer against an employee that takes a medical leave to attend treatment for their mental health or substance use diagnosis is illegal. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) both provide protections against discrimination to those that are battling addiction or serious mental health issues. 

The ADA secures your job while also ensuring your employer will not terminate you due to receiving treatment and missing work due to this reason. If your employer goes against this and still fires you, you can sue your employer for discrimination. FMLA provides employees who meet certain qualifications to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for several different medical reasons.

Your Right to Discretion 

There are also laws that help protect your right to privacy in seeking treatment. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a law that requires patient information not to be disclosed unless the patient provides consent to do so. You may feel more comfortable knowing that when you take off work for medical purposes and seek treatment, your employer doesn’t have to know the specifics. 

Alternative Treatment Options

Attending an inpatient rehab program isn’t the right fit for everyone. Taking time away may not be feasible if you have a career, kids, or other commitments. If you don’t have a severe mental illness  or long-standing addiction, there are several alternatives to residential treatments, including:

• An Intensive outpatient program (IOP)
• A Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP)
• One-on-one meetings with a mental health therapist or substance abuse counselor 
• Support groups and meetings

There are also some residential treatment programs that are able to customize a patient’s schedules to meet their work needs and others that allow cell phone use to help with ongoing commitments. These programs may be a great alternative then a conventional residential treatment setting. 

Notifying Your Employers About Treatment

Whether or not rehab is going to impact your work hours or not, it is up to you if you want to communicate with your employer about your participation in a treatment program and disclose information about your mental health or substance abuse treatment. However, there are times you may want to disclose some information. The time you’re attending treatment may not interfere with your work schedule, but the possibility of withdrawal and other uncomfortable symptoms of detox or starting new medications could have you feeling under the weather and unable to work.

While you do have protection over your medical conditions and employers can’t legally fire you over your addiction or mental health treatment, you can inform them of what’s going on if you have concerns your job performance has been affected. Even though your job does have legal protections, it may be  important to be transparent with your employers so you aren’t let go due to poor performance.

Returning to Work After Completing Rehab

There are a lot of ways you can still work while getting treatment for an addiction and mental health issues, but sometimes you need to take time off in order to truly focus on getting better. If that’s the case, you can utilize FMLA time and return to work once you’ve finished your treatment. Fir those seeking addiction treatment, some employers will require a return to work agreement, which could include the employee committing to some of the following:

• Drug screening
• Abstaining from drugs and alcohol
• Accountability for work issues that are not caused by their substance abuse

Help is Available

If you’re ready to get help recovering from your addiction  or healing from trauma or a mental health disorder,  we are here for you. At Capo Canyon, our main goal is to help individuals find true healing and be able to move forward with their lives in a positive way. Contact us today to start the next chapter of your life.

Living with an addiction can be incredibly stressful for everyone involved. The emotional and psychological toll that addiction can take on those close to the individual, can rival the emotional and physical toll of the one addicted. While making the first step toward recovery and seeking treatment is optimal, many people with substance use disorders may hesitate or decide not to obtain treatment because they believe that they will need to check into a facility for weeks or even months. 

While in some cases, some form of inpatient treatment may be needed to help stabilize the individual through a challenging detox period, most situations can be handled with a highly versatile approach called concierge rehab. This is often seen as the ideal option for busy professionals and those with significant family or other responsibilities. We’re going to take a look at just what concierge rehab is, and what the benefits are for people that want to finally get out from under the burden of addiction.

What Is Concierge Rehab?

Concierge rehab is a revolutionary form of rehab that allows patients’ needs to help frame the structure of the recovery program. Knowing that you need help and being able to find the support you need are two very different things, and a concierge treatment program like Capo Canyon understands this. We’re ready to help you down the challenging road to recovery.

Concierge rehab is all about removing barriers to the patient’s recovery. These barriers can be of any type or root cause. There can be physical barriers where a patient needs to live at a facility rather than drive to multiple times each week, and the treatment will be adjusted to eliminate that barrier. If there is a barrier to being a busy professional that needs to maintain an active pace, we’ll make sure your treatment plan is built around your work hours so you can continue in your career while you begin to heal.

How Does Concierge Rehab Work?

Each concierge rehab treatment plan is going to be different, and unique to the individual it’s built for. The first step in building a personalized treatment plan is meeting with addiction and mental health treatment rofessionals, and having an open discussion about the variables involved. Common subjects of discussion include:

• The patient’s current health and medical history
• The addiction profile of the patient, including how long they’ve been using, how often, dosages or amounts used, and so on
• Lifestyle attributes and scheduling needs of the patient, including professional obligations, educational obligations, home, and family needs, and more
• Underlying mental healthy challenges that may be contributing to their addiction or a root cause

Not only will this help your treatment team to begin building an effective treatment plan around the needs of your daily life, but it will also be the beginning of the introspective work that will need to be done. For many people, taking an objective look at their busy life and how much they try to fit in, can sometimes leave them speechless. Viewing the stress this can cause is a powerful motivator for many patients to make their changes with vigor.

Benefits Of A Concierge Rehab Program

While each patient will undoubtedly find benefits that they appreciate, some of the most commonly reported benefits of participating in a concierge rehab program include:

• Knowing that their treatment was personalized and that their recovery mattered enough that people created a complex treatment plan
• Increased empathy and support 
• Intense focus on a long-term recovery strategy for better results
• Having an easy and accessible way to minimize the negative experience of detox, while having support immediately available following acute withdrawal
• Being able to receive treatment in total privacy and confidentiality, so that your private details stay private
• Having a customized treatment schedule so you can still address professional or personal responsibilities that otherwise would make attending a treatment program not possible 

Create A Concierge Rehab Plan Today

If you or someone you are close to is struggling with addiction and underlying mental health issues and is open to participating in concierge rehab, reach out to professionals immediately. Contacting Capo Canyon today can put you in touch with experienced, addiction professionals within minutes.

So many people hear the term “workaholic” and think it’s being used in a complimentary sense in buzzword-driven offices. It’s even highlighted in many online publications as a sign of being a part of “hustle culture” and the side-hustle economy. But the truth is, work addiction is a serious illness that can have devastating effects on your life, both personally as well as professionally. 

Many people wonder how they can recognize the signs of work addiction, and how it’s different from just being a hard worker or model employee. There are some definitive indicators that someone may be addicted to work, but there are also some very actionable tips on how they can start to overcome a work addiction. We’re going to take a look at these as well as what to do if you think you, or someone you care about, may be living with a work addiction.

Common Signs Of Work Addiction

Spending Most Of Your Time At Work

There are nearly 170 hours in a single week, and your workweek should only take about a quarter of that. If you start to approach 50%, you may need to step back and reassess.

Work Comes Home

Work coming home consistently is a good indicator that you cannot enforce the boundaries between personal time and professional time. This can result in you missing important family moments.

You Work To Escape Or Cope

If you work as a way to escape potentially unpleasant feelings, like depression or loneliness, it means you’re leaving those feelings for just when you’re at home. It also means that you’ll begin making more and more excuses to avoid going back home. 

You Work To Feel Good

We don’t mean your career is fulfilling, we mean that you work because it is one of the few, or maybe the only, way that you can feel good. Completing work is rewarding for the brain, and that can create an addictive reward cycle for an individual. 

Not Working Creates Stress For You

If you avoid stopping working because when you do, all you do is think about work, you may have a problem. If you don’t take enough breaks of meaningful length and distance from work, overtime you may see your productivity and quality of work plummet.

Tips On How To Overcome Work Addiction

The first thing you can do is make a firm commitment to fix the problem. For added accountability, you can make this commitment to or with someone else, who can help keep you focused. You’ll have a much easier time if you are clear from the outset that it will be a difficult journey, and allow yourself plenty of room to learn and make mistakes. 

If you’re seeking treatment for your work addiction, it may be a good idea to inform your boss (if you have one) that you’re seeking treatment for work addiction. Not only will it let them know you have a problem, but that you’re seeking help and may need support on their end in regards to your work schedule or taking time off. It will also let them know why they may not see you burning the candle at both ends, so to speak.

Begin setting boundaries for yourself, such as scheduling intentional rest, pledging to not access work email from home, and so on. This can be a challenge if you are a remote worker, but that extra effort reminds you how important the separation between work and life is.

Work Addiction Is No Laughable Trend

If you or someone close to you is living with work addiction, it can mean missing some of the most important parts of life. Reach out to the experts at Capo Canyon, and we can help create a personalized treatment plan that won’t disrupt your life but will help connect you with the resources you need to heal.