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Forging health in the
unregulated drug crisis
through real f**king talk.
SEASON 4
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"Season 4 Sampler" is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and at tradespodcast.com/s4-ep7. PLEASE SHARE!
The Season 4 Sampler lets you get a bit of each episode:
1) Anthony’s Story
2) Constructive Coercion Pt 1 – Dr. Jeremy Milloy
3) The New PPE (C. Michael Kinsella’s Story)
4) 100 Good-bye’s with Dr. Nicole Anders
5) James’ Story (Pain BC)
6) Constructive Coercion Pt 2 – Jeremy Milloy
While Season 4 spanned a wide variety of expertise and geography, the themes of pain, loss, grief and hope tell the story of every worker and every family in the Off the Clock Toolbox Talk family.
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James Boseley grew up in rough and tumble rural Alberta. Pain or having an IV plugged into his arm was no reason to stop working. Dealing with pain on a daily chronic basis, James’ mental health rapidly deteriorated to where he was considering suicide.
Because of his severe pain, James left Alberta to haul disposal bins in BC for half of what he was making in AB. Here James was injured again, breaking and tearing multiple hard and soft tissues throughout his body. With James’ high pain tolerance the medical system downplayed his injury. Not only did he not receive appropriate medical treatment, but he was shamed and discouraged from voicing his pain. James had to fight tooth & nail for his basic benefits at Worksafe. Despite acknowledging the severity of James’ injuries, Worksafe only treated a fraction of the injuries and denied the rest. Being off work for years, James didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer, and ended up living in squalor, creating even more challenges for his healing journey. Adding to his long list of injuries, James was psychologically devastated when he was told he should just be thankful that he has what he has.
Karen, James and Trevor discuss the additional emotional injury that occurs when our physical injuries aren’t validated and treated. They discuss the additional injury that service providers add by putting the burden of wellness back onto the client when the injury doesn’t heal at first treatment.
James ties up with his excitement at the Pain & Trades program he is developing at https://painbc.ca/ . He can be contacted at James.Boseley@painbc.ca
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Dr. Jeremy Milloy tells us about constructive coercion: a concept created in the 1960's and 70's from concerns that Vietnam veterans would return from war unable to navigate the workplace due to opioid addiction. Industry leaders believed that people (primarily men) would be incentivized to get treatment through the workplace in order to keep their jobs. Assessment of who had problematic substance use then fell on worksite foreman to identify who needed to be sent to see a counsellor and go into treatment.
Employers and workers then began this complex, codependent relationship that we now call extended benefits. If the employee comes forward asking for help, the employer has a duty to support the employee. But if the employee gets caught with a positive drug test, then they are fired and no longer have access to recovery benefits. The only way to access affordable treatment is through the employer, but workers feel obligated to hide their drug use so the employer can continue to be profitable.
The story becomes even more convoluted when we look at drug testing at remote work camps. Jeremy refers to the dance of drug testing as theater where only capitalism wins by creating a drug testing industry and fake urine industry. But neither the employer nor the worker benefit from the practice of drug testing. Furthermore the entire drug testing practice completely ignores the issues of pain and trauma that underlie the vast majority of substance use and employee wellness.
Dr. Jeremy Milloy says, " Constructive coercion proceeds from a story that work and problematic substance use are disconnected... rather than acknowledging that drugs are helping people meet the demands of the job... The call is coming from inside the house."
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Constructive Coercion Is a Thing features scholar Dr. Jeremy Milloy who studies the history of how we got to have the kind of workplaces we have (good and bad). His work is motivated by the fact that our jobs have a such a huge effect on our lives, our identities, our health, and our life outcomes.
Jeremy’s original work started by studying the concept of violence in the workplace, specifically how seemingly average humans get to the point where they ‘go postal’. And while Jeremy did discover a number of under-reported obvious violence such as shootings and stabbings, he also discovered that workplace violence was much more subtle. His original work targeted North America’s auto manufacturing industry, but the parallels of his findings are widespread across all workers, including construction trades. Themes of hazing, ‘paying your dues’ and enforcing codes of conduct after hours in places like the bar are prevalent amongst most workers, blue collar, hospitality, transportation, everywhere.
Part One of the conversation winds up as we begin talking specifically about substance use in the trades, and Jeremy brings up the concept of Constructive Coercion that was utilized in the 1980’s, as it was thought it would motivate workers to stay off harmful drugs.
To find out more about constructive coercion, catch "Constructive Coercion Is A Thing Part 2" which is being released on November 18, 2024.
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C. Michael Kinsella talks about how he owes his whole life to his Red Seal. When school wasn’t working out in junior high, Michael went straight into construction at the ripe old age of fourteen.
After an overdose at age sixteen, Michael found a father figure in the construction industry and formed a chosen family around him. Michael and co-host Trevor discuss the value of the family they both found on work sites. And its from that family perspective that The New PPE works; teaching and normalizing care for other humans from within the construction family.
Trevor and Michael share some of the physical and psychological stressors of the industry, and the toll it takes on a person and their biological family. And substance use is a regular part of that life. Michael talks about how he learned how to behave at work, with his own physical, social and mental health. He encourages other tradespeople to foster a culture of wellness and humanity amongst their crews as well.
Michael encourages everyone to check out www.thenewppe.org and start demanding that every work site.
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When psychologist, Dr. Nicole Anders, lost her beloved brother Cody to overdose, she navigated her grief through writing daily love letters to Cody. Her book, One Hundred Goodbyes is a collection of those love letters, bridging the personal and clinical dimensions of her grief.
Nicole discusses that she frequently talks with her kids about their Uncle Cody. She suggests answering questions about a loved one’s overdose factually, but also keeping the answers simple for young children. She says when kids are older, discuss that their loved one took a medicine and didn’t know what was in it. Co-host Daniel emphasizes the centrality of people taking a substance and not knowing what’s in it, and how this drug poisoning crisis is entirely preventable.
Nicole coaches that grief doesn’t make sense, but our brains continually wrestle with it. In her own bargaining stage of grief, she wishes she would have been more loving in her interactions with Cody. In her humanity, even though she’s a psychologist, she wishes she would have dropped her judgement and frustration and just listened to Cody more. She now utilizes the phrase “how human of you” to disarm her own shame, and the shame of others she works with.
The conversation wraps up talking about the importance of person-first language so we see the human in front of us and don’t identify them by one particular struggle.
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Anthony shares his story of growing up in a family of tradesmen where hard work and thick money were at the center of their way of being. And with the hard work came hard substance use.
As a teen, addicted to alcohol and cocaine, Anthony went to his parents to ask for help when he realized he was in more trouble than he could handle. His father’s solution was to send him to Fort McMurray where Anthony’s cowboy lifestyle cemented in. After decades of remote work, burning down one town and moving on to the next, Anthony found himself alone and using dangerous opiates. With a six month old child now in his life, he realized he had to do something different and reached out to an aunt who helped him get into recovery.
Anthony’s recovery experience was not straightforward, and he feels that after one year of recovery, he was just beginning to thaw out from decades of substance use. It took several years for him to figure out how to start living his life. Anthony discovered his son was in foster care at two years of age and knew he had to do the right thing and break the cycle of inter-generational trauma. He took some parenting courses and did more personal work so he could be a better father. Anthony and his mother were able to gain custody of his son, and Anthony continues to learn and grow beyond the harmful patterns he learned from his dad and uncles, creating a better life for himself and his son.
SEASON 3
SEASON 2
SEASON 1
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