Podcast Transcript - Episode 0020 - Peer Support for Addiction at Work with Marin Nelson

Welcome to the professional drinkers podcast brought to you by choosesunrise.co.uk. I'm Janet Hadley and this is for you if you're an HR professional, a business owner, or a leader who'd like to explore the drinking culture in your workplace. I'll bring you lived experience stories, expert views, and tips for creating an alcohol-safe workplace without killing the buzz. Welcome back to the professional drinkers podcast. It's getting colder and colder here in the UK. I tell you what, getting into my cold water Arctic pod everyday commitment is getting harder and harder. I have been known to squeal whilst getting into the cold water this week. I'm just feeling slightly nervous about having committed to getting into it every single day throughout the whole winter. I've bought myself a new set of neoprene gloves and socks to try and help. And I'm still going swimming outdoors once a week as well over at Leedstock. So it's definitely keeping me on my toes. And I really do feel that it's helping my mental health as well. I don't know if it's just a little bit of mind over matter, but I just really notice it if I haven't done it.

And I just feel like it is... It's a bit like pressing the reset button where you can't really think about anything when you get into that cold water, except basically staying alive. And there's something about that absolute clarity of thought that you have afterwards that I've never experienced anything else that's given me that feeling. So yeah, if you're curious about getting into cold water swimming, I would definitely advise starting in the winter because then it just gets easier. I started in the winter and I did the whole winter. And when it got to the summer, it was just so incredibly easy and pleasant. This is my second winter now, so I know I can do it. And it is a challenge and it's so worth it. So I wanted to just bring you a little bit of opinion from summer news from this week. So you may have seen that Uber Eats have got a new advert out, and it is all about wine. And seriously, this advert, it's got close-up shots of wine, the wine being poured in the glass, the woman who's just got into an empty house, who sends out for, instead of groceries, sends out for wine and just sits in a recliner chair and drinks wine.

And I just think alcohol advertising has got out of control, actually. I think if you were to run that advert and replace the wine with cigarettes and imagine someone getting you back to an empty house, Oh, there's no one else in. Great. I'll order some cigarettes and sit and smoke them, or I'd order some crack cocaine and sit and take that. I mean, it's an addictive carcinogen that is being marketed to us day in, day out, and it's showing the glamour. It's positioning itself as something that can help you relax, help you unwind at the end of a stressful day. It's a treat. I just think it's really sad, actually, because if advertisers had to show people waking up with hangovers, people being late for work, people snapping at their children, people being anxious and having mental health issues, people getting breast cancer, all of these realities that people suffer as a consequence of drinking alcohol. I think the adverts would be a little bit different. So along with some people from the Sobe business network, we are going to be looking at how we become a little bit more vocal about our opinions on alcohol advertising over the next few months.

So if you're interested in getting involved in that, just give me a shout because the more of us there are, the louder voice we can have. So if you're up for a bit of disruption, then please do let me know. So onto our guest for this week, I am so excited to have Marin Nelson as my guest. Marin is someone who I've been watching via LinkedIn for some time now, and she is the only other person who I met until recently actually, who had set up another peer support network for people who want to reassess their relationship with alcohol in the workplace. Similar to what I did with the Co-op, Marin set up something called Soberforce when she was the VP at Salesforce. So she was in a very senior job, a VP of Sales, being sober herself, noticed the workplace drinking culture, noticed the lack of options at events, noticed the not very recovery-friendly policies, and just saw the same opportunity that I did to set something up in the workplace and reach people who are desperately wanting to find somewhere to go to help them with their relationship with alcohol, but far too scared to put their hands up and admit it.

And by being that senior leader who says, This happened to me, I'll share my story, I'll support you, it is incredibly powerful. I am absolutely thrilled that Marin has been my guest for this week, and you absolutely do need to watch what Marin is going to be doing next because there is something very special coming. So over to you, Marin. Hello and welcome, Marin Nelson. I am so excited to meet you. Like, so excited. Welcome to the podcast.

Me too. It's a long time coming.

It really is, isn't it? We've beenbeen like, not exactly in touch, but we've been liking each other's posts and watching each other on LinkedIn for ages, haven't we? And just going, Oh, you're doing what I'm doing? And I'm doing what you're doing. And you look pretty awesome. So it's really, really.

Cool to meet you. We've been cheerleading.

From afar. Exactly. It's cool to meet you. It really is. It's very, very exciting for me. I have to say, I am in awe of you, actually, because when I saw what you'd done with Sobeforce, which we'll talk about in a minute, I just thought that is so impressive, and I just thought you will be saving lives. You really will be saving lives with that. I just thought this is what the world needs. Absolutely love the work that you do. Thank you. Do you want to just take a minute to introduce yourself? Then maybe you could start us off with, What the heck is Soberforce? Is perhaps what people are wondering.

Well, thank you for that very kind introduction and welcome. Thank you for being open to my super delayed response and getting back. I've been in this space of doing the work and then... Anyways, it's a long... That's a long conversation, but really coming full circle to like, no, I have to do this work full-time. Thank you to you for really being part of the inspiration to me of what it looks like to really dig in and do this work continuously because I dip my toe in it in a pretty big way, I guess I jumped in the pool with Soberforce, but I wasn't yet... If I'm just going to pull on that. I wasn't yet swimming laps. It feels like this... It really has felt like I have to do this work. To your point, it is life-saving. I don't say that with ego. I say that actually with a tonne of humility. It almost is too big to absorb. But people are dying and COVID just really accelerated people's substance use. It just has felt like and I can't not do it. Hi, everyone. I'm Marin Nelson. It's really lovely to be here. I'm based in Minnesota, and I am someone in long-term recovery.

I've been sober for 18 years. I got sober at 24 in New York City. Nothing big and dramatic, just sick and tired of being sick and tired, and was really lucky to have an example of sobriety before me. My dad and my uncles are both in long-term recovery. I had an example growing up of what that looked like and the that provided my father and my family. I really was saved from years of torture by getting sober young, knowing there was another way and another path for.

Me to take. Do you know, I'm just going to come in there and say that is incredible because 24, I wish I'd stopped drinking when I was 24. That would have just been 10 years of drinking, done and out. And instead, I waited till I was 44. How much more would I have done with my life? So hats off to you for doing it so young and the importance of having a little bit of inspiration, which is actually what our work provides to a large extent. I think that little bit of a spark for someone of going, Oh, maybe I could do that, is so important.

Yeah, exactly. This is exactly why and what was behind the creation of Soberforce at Salesforce was I have always recognised and been incredibly grateful that there were family members right in my immediate family and with my uncles and then my cousin who went before me, who showed that there was another path to take. I also had an example of a family member who didn't stop drinking and has really struggled to put even 30 days together sober. I had a very clear example in my own family of what an active drinking life looks like and what a sober life looks like. I'll tell you at 24, it wasn't an easy decision. It still was a terrifying prospect to give up what was really my best friend. Granted a very toxic, abusive best friend, but a best friend who I could turn to no matter what, which was alcohol.

To put that down was scary. But the thought of the living in the pain, it almost would make me cry. The thought of having to endure more suffering was, thank God, scarier for me in that moment and led me to asking for help and saying, I think I have a drinking problem and I don't know what to do. I called my family and asked for help and I haven't had a drink since, which is really a miracle. I am really grateful because I've watched a lot of people struggle to maintain their sobriety. I don't take it for granted and I don't treat it lightly and I do tend to it. It is a chronic condition. For me, that means I'm very active in a 12-step programme and I still am, because it is a very insidious disease that will tell you don't have a disease. It will tell you that you're fine and you can do it this time. This time you can drink normal. I'm grateful that I'm not delusional into thinking that I am different than the millions of people. There are 21 people in recovery in the United States. I don't know what the UK stat is, but in the US, there's 21 million people who consider themselves in recovery.

There's 47 million who are still active in substance use disorder. I really want to reach those 47 million, 70% of whom are employed full-time, so they're in the workforce. We talk like they're not in the workforce. They are in the workforce. 70% of 47 million in the US are in the workforce. With Soberforce, it was like I was the... I was the lucky one who had examples before me and my family that saved me from what would have been what you just described another 20 years of drinking. Because I still had a job and I had my rent paid and I had loads of friends and there was no intervention. No one came to me saying you need... I didn't go to treatment. I was able to stay sober through meetings, but only because I have this example. It's like, how can I be that example to others and the spaces that I occupy by sharing my story out loud?

Because too often those of us in recovery keep our stories to ourselves and don't share them publicly. I actually think that that creates a lot of... It's like on one hand, I respect it. Everyone needs to determine for themselves what's safe. But I know that representation matters, and I know that there's a significant power in storytelling, which you obviously know running a podcast. We hear ourselves and other people's stories, and we need to be telling our stories. We're better than in the workplace where we spend most of our time then to share our stories with each other and to show others that there is another way and that they can get help if they.

Need help. Absolutely. 100% agree. Tell me about your journey at Salesforce then. You were in quite a senior role there. I believe you were in that senior role when you set Soberforce up. Is that correct? How did it come about? What happened?

Yeah. It was COVID. It was pre-vaccine. It was late summer 2020. What we knew from the data that came out the following year was the amount of alcohol consumption had increased. Something like 30% of drinkers reported increasing their drinking during COVID. Alcohol sales were through the roof. People were relapsing. I was watching it in my own community because of the isolation and the fear, not being able to physically get to meetings. Someone had posted on LinkedIn, a fellow co-founder, about the 10 things he learned in 10 years of sobriety. It was his own personal coming out about his recovery. He had never publicly shared or shared in any work setting his recovery. Through that connexion, there's four sales leaders at Salesforce, none of whom I'd met before, who we all got on a call together and we all had long-term recovery. We all just shared our own lived experiences in that moment of how we were getting through, how we were staying sober, what were we seeing in our own communities? By the end of the conversation, it was such a meaningful call for each of us individually. We're like, We got to do more than this.

There are people suffering and silence who don't know where to go. Everyone's working from home at this point. How do we reach our fellow colleagues who don't know that there is another way? And a big motivation for me personally in that moment was that there were a lot of virtual wine tastings happening. And I had never in my career experienced it in my face in such an aggressive way as I did during COVID with virtual wine tastings because in the real world, I could just not show up or I could go to the event and get a seltzer and have it in my hand and not feel so exposed. But when you're sitting on a screen with everyone's faces there and you can see if they're holding a wine glass or not, that felt really uncomfortable. I opted out. I didn't go to those. But I recognised for myself, I had the to your point around my position, I had the privilege and the access to power to be able to confidently opt out. I also had a lot of recovery at this point. And so it still felt unnerving. It still felt really vulnerable and scary to say, It's why I can't go to this event, because that's really vulnerable.

To say, Hey, even as someone in long-term recovery, even as someone who's a sales leader here, this isn't a safe thing for me to be a part of. But what about the person who's new in their career, counting days sober, and is terrified to say no to their boss? Even if the company's message would have been like, We care more about you than your participation in this event, as an individual.

- Yeah, it's so scary.

Because you don't know that, and you think you're obligated to be there. And then what do you do? You're freaked out, right? So anyways, that conversation, all those little moments that seem really innocent but are actually really harmful.

Led us to.

Going like, We need to do something. We need to create a community here, and we need to help people see that they don't have to participate in that virtual wine tasting, or they can say no to the bottle of wine getting.

Sent to them. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, the bottle of wine. Every time, every thank you. And this, I have a real issue with this. I think- Me too. Can we stop using alcohol as a reward? Please. It's like this is...

You're basically- I'm snapping, Janet. I'm snapping. At least make an option. Here is a big campaign we ran as a result of Soberforce and working with the marketing events team, is we would even just to socialise, ask people, don't assume. Just like we need to not assume someone's pronouns and we now state them, or at least we should be, as a very vocal transgender advocate and ally, I'm a big believer and don't make assumptions. Don't make assumptions. Ask people. So same with alcohol. Can I send you a bottle of wine as a thank you, or can I send you a gift card for food?

Exactly.

Let people opt in.

Yeah, absolutely. I think when I was growing up, people would offer cigarettes around, and then eventually people would say, Do you smoke? Rather than just offering them. I sense with the younger generation, I see people saying, Do you drink? And this is great. I'm like, Let's change the conversation from, Why are you not drinking? To, Do you drink? And it's great.

Oh, my gosh. Don't even get me started on the, Why are you not drinking? That's another thing. Would you ask that about anything else in someone's life? It's none of your business. But here's what I do find is that people who ask that tend to be someone who's doing some self-evaluation of like, Do I have a problem? They want the big dramatic story of like, Were you arrested? Did you lose everything? Were you hospitalised? I think it's really unnerving when I'm like, Yeah, no, I was employed. No job performance issues, but I was really sick and I was really... I couldn't stop drinking. That's really all my story is. I couldn't stop. But yeah, so the younger generation gives me hope. There is definitely a trend in the US, and maybe it sounds like there is in the UK around younger generations just not drinking, which I think is amazing. To your point around smoking, think about the dramatic change we've experienced in our lifetimes around smoking being normalised and everyone's doing it to actually pretty ostracised. At least here it's like if you smoke, it's like that's not a good look.

No, it's not. It's not cool at all. Although vaping has taken over. It was so cool in the 90s. I was watching porn fiction with my kids the other day and I was like, Smoking was really cool in the 90s. In a way that it just isn't now.

Now it's like so gross. I'm like, Okay, there's hope. That gives us... That gives me.

Hope, Janet. It really does. I'm really fascinated to hear a bit more about what you did in the group. Presumably, you set up some network where people could come and join, and then you would have had meetups virtual at first, I'm sure, with COVID.

Totally. We had the framework of employee resource groups to use, and we just leveraged that for the structure. What I mean by that is we had a leadership team and there's four of us, so each of us took a role. We described what our vision statement was, so who are we trying to serve and what was the purpose of this? What was our objective here? And what were going to be our obstacles? We named those, we wrote them. I think that's really important for structures to know who you're trying to serve. I've heard of other groups within organisations, companies that are like 12-step meetings. We were not that. We were not trying to replicate or replace any pathway for recovery. We were trying to create a community for sober, curious, and sober allies to destigmatize addiction in the workplace and to destigmatize recovery. What that meant was when we had our first membership meeting, so we did a meeting every month on Zoom, and someone asked in that first meeting, I'm not someone who suffers from substance use disorder, but I am in recovery for sex addiction. Is this group for me? We're like, Absolutely 100%.

However you define sober for yourself or sober curious for yourself or recovery for yourself, you're welcome. Then the person who's like, Hey, it's not me, but it's my brother. We're like, Yes. Or, Hey, you know what? I'm just a supporting friend and colleague, and I want to learn, is this for me? Yes. My belief is we need everyone in the boat. It can't be left to the individuals who have recovered from or are suffering with substance use disorder to educate everyone. Just racism is not up to the individuals who have been the recipient of racism to educate, I believe in white people need to educate white people and have the uncomfortable conversations at your dinner table with your family members. That's on us to educate. I feel the same way about substance use disorder. We need everyone in the boat understanding, seeking to.

Understand to.

Normalise this conversation to remove the stigma because it's a stigma that stops people from reaching out and asking for help.

Exactly that.

We had a membership meeting that was once a month. We had a way to join that meeting that was anonymous. That was really important because there are people who didn't feel comfortable being associated to it because of that stigma and shame, who wanted to join and hear the content but didn't want their name to be seen. We facilitated that. We had an ongoing conversation that took place on Slack. That was really powerful because we set that up on a... We made it intentionally public. You can make Slack private or public. We said, We're going to make this public because we want the people who are too scared to be associated with it. Even when we're saying, Hey, all are welcome, you being part of this group doesn't mean you're automatically someone in recovery or someone who struggles. Because of the power of that stigma, there are still so many people, either people in recovery who never shared their recovery or people who are struggling with their drinking who didn't want to be associated but who wanted access to the content. We created a public Slack channel. What was so... It still gives me goosebumps. It was so powerful to watch people come out on the Slack channel and say, Long time listener, first time caller.

I've been watching the Slack channel for months, and I'm happy to share I'm celebrating 90 days sober. It was just like profound. People were finding their pathway to support and help because they saw it normalised in the workplace. There were people who come to me and say, I didn't realise I could have a sales career and not drink. I thought I had to wine and dine my customers. I was like, Well, of course you thought that because we've been doing that forever. So, of course, you assume that's part of your role. Exactly. But guess what? I've had my entire sales.

Career sober.

I've never drank with a customer.

I would say that about half of the private coaching clients that I've ever coached on recovery have said, I have to drink for work. Which is shocking, actually. Quite often in the legal sector over here in the UK, where in commercial law, where you do wine and dine your clients, it's just what you do, they feel that they cannot do their job without drinking. And they can. When they break it down and they think about it and they talk to their employer, they have that conversation, inevitably the employer is supportive. But it's like you say, they're so scared because the stigma is so real. And also because alcohol makes you- Because.

You don't have stories.

And also because alcohol does make you anxious. You feel more anxious about it, and then for people like myself and you who haven't got any alcohol in our systems, our levels of anxiety will definitely be lower as a result of that. And so we can be more confident and more bolsy about it. And that's where they end up after the coaching. But it's a scary place to be. And without help- It.

Is pervasive.

Yeah, without help, people just suffer in silence for a long time, which is where I was actually for a long time.

This is where I think the power of representation matters so much because unless you're someone who hears... Because I had that power of representation, right? In my own family, I saw a dad who was incredibly successful in a sales capacity for his whole career and was a leader in the space, sober. I knew it was possible, but that's not everyone's experience to have that lived example in front of them to say, I can be... When you're in a culture that is heavily centred on alcohol as being the bonding function where deals happen, I mean, just look at Mad Men or whatever. You know what it's like? In Granted Gas that took place back in the day, but that's still very true today. There's still a lot of like, let's go to the pub or let's go to the bar after work. There's a way to be in those spaces I also want to name. There's a way to be in those spaces sober. I have spent a lot of time at dinners with customers sober. My lived experience is that no one cares if I don't take their drink away. As long as I'm not removing your wine glass from your hand, you really don't care that I'm not drinking.

You probably don't even notice it.

If you don't say anything, people don't actually notice.

It turns out people aren't all looking at us.

There's a woman on a podcast over here. She's actually in Australia, but she's a ex-UK resident, what do you call it? An expat. And she says that she used to, for the first six months of being sober, she used to buy a bottle of beer in the pub and just hold it and just not drink it because she really didn't want to tell people. But no one ever noticed that she wasn't drinking it. Ever.

See, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. It's so interesting. I would feel too freaked out that I take a sip. But I would order whatever, cranberry and salsa, and people would just assume there's vatkin in it. I think that that's, again, it's such a small little thing, but for me, the way I've been able to maintain sobriety through all the years and through all the different sales roles and sales functions is nothing comes before my sobriety, full stop. So if there is a night that I don't feel so stable in my sobriety, I just don't go. It's never cost me a promotion. It's never cost me a deal. It just doesn't. I did a lot of business in the UK. You and I were talking about this before we started recording. I ran a global account for Salesforce, and so I spent a tonne of time in London. And yeah, there is definitely a pervasive drinking culture. Let's just name it, that is true. We have to have the brave ones who are willing to go out and show to others that it's not required. I'll actually name a story specific to the UK.

I was at a dinner there in London and didn't drink because I don't drink. Someone who I was with noticed, and I didn't know that he had noticed at the time, but when we launched Soberforce, he was the first phone call I got with someone who had been at that dinner with me in London. He said, I just saw. How we launched this is I basically posted my own personal story of why Soberforce. What was our mission with Soberforce? What community were we trying to create to welcome people to join us? It was a terrifying moment for me to because I'm posting for potentially all 75,000 people, including the CEO, to see this very vulnerable, authentic version of me. But I just kept hearing in my head what we had said as a leadership team, which is if we help one person, this whole thing is worth it. I post and within minutes—I'm no exaggeration—minutes, I get a text message from this guy. He's the guy who had had dinner with in London with a whole bunch of other people, customers and colleagues. He said, I just saw your post. I was looking for anything with the word sober in it on our company platform.

I found this and I saw your story and I remembered you not drinking at that dinner. Here is the representation matters kit, right? I noticed you not drinking because he's someone who had a problem with alcohol. I didn't know why you weren't drinking, and so I didn't want to assume your story and call you. But now I see that it almost makes me honestly, it still makes me tear up because it's like, he's like, I saw your story and I knew you understood. And I'm counting days sober. I'm six days sober. I think it was six or five, whatever. And I don't know what to do. This is my second time trying to get sober. I don't know what to do.

How do I do this? Amazing. Amazing. You're just there at the right time for someone.

Exactly. So it was like the universe was like, Okay, you're concerned about your.

Own ego. Yeah. Yes, it will work.

You said, if you help one person, here's your one person, keep going. It was really the message. Here's your one person, keep going. I went to a meeting the next day. At that meeting, there was another guy from London. He's like, I found... He was from London. I think he was from the UK. If he hears this, he might be like, I'm from Ireland. Do you ignore an American?

I think he's from the UK.

He was from the UK, I think. He called me the next day and he's like, Oh, my God! I just had this most amazing experience. I felt like people understood. There was another guy from Salesforce at this meeting by happenstance. There's another guy, another Brit there, and he's still sober. And he was the top performing salesperson in his group the next year.

Because he was sober. Yeah. This is such a good point. As an employer, you are going to get so much more out of your people if they stop drinking. I'm not suggesting that you need to make your whole workforce go sober, but my goodness me, there is a correlation between high-performing people and sober people. Massive.

Can I tell you this? Dad on this from the US Department of Health and Human Services, actually. There is a 22% lower turnover rate for employees in recovery.

Wow.

Twenty two % lower rate. That's incredible. And people in recovery take 10% fewer days off than the average employee.

This is good stats. I'm going to have to look up this data for the UK.

But yeah. The US Department of Labour and the US Department of Health and Human Services have.

Tonnes of amazing stats here. I mean, it won't be wildly different, I'm sure, in the UK, but that's really interesting. It's a little bit like when you employ someone who's disabled, actually, you get longevity, you get loyalty, you get engagement, you get low number of sick days, and yet people go, Oh, it sounds a bit difficult. It's like, Really? Try employing a middle-aged white man who goes home and drinks every night. That's...

It's too hungover to go to work. And your stat that you shared on a previous podcast was really stuck with me. The 40% of workplace injuries being connected to alcohol, whether they're hungover or their act, it's still in their system, right? Oh, my gosh. Yes. The amount of times I sat in the bathroom with my head and my hands, just like, How am I going to get through.

This day? Yeah, me too.

Versus the employee I was after I got sober was a dramatic difference in productivity.

Absolutely. I could do my job standing on my head once I got sober. I was like, This is quite easy, actually. Everything got easier. Exactly. I can think clearly. Right, bish, bash, bash. Oh, yeah, all done. And what should I do next? And I.

Think the other part of this conversation is the amount of people who say, Well, not in my workplace.

I.

Was on a flight to go speak actually at the Michigan. Michigan had their annual summit for substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, mostly attended by health care professionals, but also with some corporate presence in the audience, HR presence. I'm sitting next to this guy, and I'm clearly preparing for my speech, looking at flashcards, and he's like, Oh, so what are you delivering a speech on? I tell him, and he's like, Oh, that's really interesting. I'm the CFO for a manufacturing company in Minnesota, but we don't have that problem in our workforce.

No, of course you don't. Of course you don't.

It was hard to not laugh. I smirked, I'm sure. I said, Oh, that's really interesting to hear. Why do you think that you don't have this? Why does this not touch you? Because in my experience, people with substance use disorder really are everywhere. And in fact—and I told them this to add—in fact, of the 47 million people in the US who have substance use disorder, 70% of them are fully employed. So tell me why they're not in your workplace. Well, we're just such a great family, culture. If someone had a problem, we would know. But you would. Meanwhile, he's drinking next to me.

Of course.

Then I said, Okay. I'm like, I'm not going to fight this battle. I just go back to preparing. Then he taps me and goes, Sorry, can I just talk to you about one thing? Yeah. He goes, I'm really worried about my daughter. She's 22. She drinks really hard. I'm worried. What do I do to help her?

Oh, blimey. Oh, what a story.

What a story. Uh-oh, did I lose you. Oh, no.

Interesting, isn't it?

I'm so sorry I lost you. Oh, no.

I lost.

You for a minute. Are you back now?

We're back. I'm back. I'm back. I'm back. Yeah, let's go. I'll cut that bit out, obviously. Actually, it probably will be recorded because this is why I use this software, it records us both at source. But I'll just ask you again. So where should we go from? So if I-.

It's not in the workforce talking.

Yeah. So some employers believe that they don't have this issue in their workforce. That's right.

I think that, and then again, we think about the stigma, and that's a part of what I want to try to help smash, is the talk track from the top that's not our company.

Yes, exactly that. And do you know what? It's quite prevalent. I'll tell you some of the things that I hear from people who don't buy from me, basically. So we don't have that problem in our workforce, is definitely one of them. It's like, yeah, you don't know about that problem in your workforce. Interesting. Okay, you definitely need us, but you're not is what I would say to that. And then people won't want to talk about this at work is another one. What would you say to that one?

I would say that within five short months, we had 500 active members in our group who were talking daily about this and who were able to be productive and committed employees because they had a community that understood that they could talk about it with. Wow.

Good answer. I love it. I will-.

People are too scared to go to HR. They're not using their employee assistance programmes. They're not going... Because they don't trust that even though... There's a lack of education, and I think there's different... I think I've heard you talk about different disability recognition in the UK, but in the US, you are part of the American Disabilities Act, which protects you from discrimination if you have a substance use disorder. So we are literally protected in the workforce. People don't understand that. Most people don't know that. But even if you do know it, there is a lack of trust, and I don't know if the same exists there, but I'd say that there's a branding problem that HR has here, or I don't know what framing you want to use, but HR is understood to be the entity that protects the company's interests, not the individual's interests. Right. And I know lots of lovely people in HR. This isn't a comment on people who occupy the CHRO position because I know a lot of people who deeply care about individuals, and that's why they do the work. I'm just talking about the branding of that department, broadly speaking, is a lack of trust as an individual.

Then how do we reach those people who are too scared to go to HR because they're scared their job is going to be in jeopardy if they self-disclose? We have to find other pathways to reach them. Through this Soberforce community was a really fantastic vehicle to reach people and help people who are suffering in silence.

Exactly, yeah. It's such an important inclusion topic, actually, as well as everythingelse, but yeah. And you're right, with the HR in the UK, we have... Alcohol Change UK are constantly campaigning to make being in recovery a protected characteristic, but it isn't. In fact, it's specifically called out as not being, but it's quite complex because a long-term mental health condition is a protected characteristic. So the way I know, I know. What? Exactly.

Is substance use disorder not considered part of a mental health condition in the UK? It's part of the.

Day of the year. No, it isn't. Oh, really? So you can argue that because of a long-term mental-health condition such as anxiety or depression, you were drinking too much, or because you were drinking too much, you had a long-term mental health condition such as anxiety or depression, you were drinking too much, or because you were drinking too much, you had a long-term mental health condition such as anxiety or depression. But you cannot argue that I am drinking too much, therefore Itend to have a long-term mental health issue. Even though the data clearly shows that if you draw a Venn diagram of people with anxiety and depression and alcohol use disorder, their overlap is just so huge. Huge. In the UK, we've just had some data out from the ONS, like the Office for National Statistics, and it shows the number of people who are absent from work is really rising quite dramatically as a percentage. It's been going down for years and years and years, and then they've got the huge uptick since COVID. The most common reasons for people being off are alcohol. Sorry, well, they are alcohol, actually, but the anxiety and depression.

You put that next to a graph that shows the number of deaths from alcohol, which is going exactly the same shape, down, down, down, down, down, up. You go, Why is nobody... I don't understand why people.

Don't get this. I'm not a statistician, but I feel like I'm seeing a data trend here.

Yeah, it feels-.

Anyone want to look at this?

But there's like a collective amnesia. Also, there you go. And I think because so many people are drinkers, and especially in those more senior positions, you just get this complete blind spot to it. It's like, all the alcoholics are on park benches, drinking vodka in the mornings, they're not in our workforce. This is nothing to do with alcohol. This is COVID. This is, I don't know, stress, whatever, but it's nothing to do with alcohol. We don't need to look at this. It's so bizarre. Wild. Yeah, it is wild.

The power of denial is what I hear when you are naming all of that. The fact that people in decision making authority positions are also just like us, meaning there are also one in ten, I've heard even stat saying one in seven suffer from substance use disorder. So they're in the senior leadership too, right?

Yeah, they are, yeah. And occasionally you find them. And they, well, I've had quite a few people who are clients where they have someone who is sober in a really senior position who's advocated for bringing our company in, and we've been really successful because we've had that power from the top. The other angle that I think has worked really well for us as a business has been where they've got a very active diversity and inclusion team, and we've been brought in primarily as an inclusion topic. So we've taught, we've gotten in and educated about things like why it's not okay to ask people why they're not drinking, which sounds really obvious, but it happens all the time. So you have to bring it out in the open and you have to do some storytelling. And people can make really small shifts that have a big impact on all the non drinkers. And having a look at, like I have... I have this download on my website of 50 ideas for a sober, inclusive event, and that's really popular because people are like, Oh, yeah, we could do something that isn't just drinking. And again, that's a really small shift for an employer to make that really can make a big difference to people like me and you.

You feel catered for. I love that.

You're putting that out there because that was my experience too. I think it's not... I don't think that there's a desire to harm. I think a lot of the harm that gets created is super unintentional, but also really critical we solve for, like not sending wine to someone's house who is counting days sober and you just created a relapse situation. It's like that is how harmful that what it wasn't intended to be a really.

Kind.

Offer and gift actually put a loaded gun in someone's home. It's education. What I hear you talking about is education.

In.

Providing ideas to help people think differently. We started shifting virtual wine tastings into cooking classes, into volunteering, into things that truly bond people, whether you have a drinking.

Problem or not. Yes, exactly.

Everyone bonds more when they're doing service for others, for example. There is data that backs that up around the feeling of belonging as a result of volunteering together. What we're trying to solve for is connexion in our teams and feelings of belonging and inclusion. Then stop using alcohol as the way to do that. There are so many other ways to do it that will have a longer-lasting impact on your company culture. To me, it's an education. Drinking is the easy button. Then people like you and I can help inspire other ideas that then companies go, Oh, yeah, that's actually a really good idea.

Let's do that. Let's do something different here. Yeah. And do you know what? I'm not advocating banning alcohol. I'm not advocating removing it from the equation. It's about decentralising and it's about having alternatives and it's about having conversations about difficult and taboo stigmatised topics and bringing them out into the open. Those are the things that I'm really.

Passionate about. Yeah, this is.

Not the prohibition moment. I mean, it really... No, that would be a disaster, actually. It really was a disaster. We're not.

Going back to bathtub touching. This is not the prohibition movement. My husband can drink normally. He also just chooses nothing most of the time because he feels better when he doesn't. I also want to name that... Also what we witnessed in this group was the amount of people who joined who were sober for religious reasons. I think about the number of Muslim individuals in the UK. Many of them were colleagues of mine who then were ostracised left out because they didn't drink. They weren't the pub culture. There is a diversity inclusion component to this, which is really critical. There are a lot of people who just choose not.

To.

Because they just feel better, or they have a health condition where they can't, or the medicine that they take that they can't drink on. It's just to your point, it's like normalised, not drinking as an option. And that doesn't mean that anyone's taking your wine away. Drink your.

Wine, but.

Don't have it be a wine tasting every time. Have it be something.

With more inclusive. I'm so glad that you did have all those people come and join. When you create the safety of sharing your own story and being a little bit vulnerable, people do flock and say, I feel safe now. I can talk about what's going on for me. Similar to you, when I set up the SoBeCurious Society at the Co-op, it was very similar. I'd been talking about my own sobriety because I actually stopped during COVID, and it was when we all went back to the office and we were face to face again for the first time. Obviously, I then had to tell people because lots of people were meeting in pubs and drinking, and I would have been the centre of that, so they all knew me as a drinker. And so I had to tell people. And I did find that I almost had to tell a little bit more than I wanted to in order to get people to not say things like, Well, you will still have one drink, though, won't you? And I'd be like, No, you don't get it. Only I can remember. Yeah, you were like, You will still have a drink at the Christmas party, won't you?

No. No, definitely not. So I had to tell them a little bit more about how I was really feeling and how it had become something that was a problem for me, which is the stigmatised bit, and I had to be really quite vulnerable. But then what happens when you do tell your truth and you are vulnerable is people actually get behind you and actually support you in a way that they might not have done if you hadn't been so open. And a little bit like you, I was in a fairly senior position, probably not as much as you, but in a senior management role with a team and well-known within the company. And so I ended up with bigger and bigger platforms to talk about this. And eventually I thought, I'm going to see what happens. I'm going to set up a peer support network, and I sent it out from Colleague Communications, and they sent it back to me a couple of times What are you doing? I was like, Look. I'd spoken to HR, I'd spoken to... We had a wellbeing team, and they all had approved it. And I was like, Look, just send it out.

Come on. I'd set it up on Eventbrite, and I booked a room for, I think, 12 people. So I put 12 is the maximum number. And then I sent it out. Someone rang me within about an hour and said, I've been trying to book on and it says it's full. I was like, I must have said it up wrong. Let me have a look. And I looked and I was like, No, there's 12 people have signed up in an hour. I was like, Oh. So I changed it to virtual and I put 999. Let's see how many we get. And there were 78 people for the first meeting, which is, that's in an office of maybe, what areso maybe 2,000 there, something like that. But 78 out of 2,000 in meeting one with one piece of comms, literally one email. I was like, wow, this is going to take off.

Turns out people want to have the conversation to your comment around getting that feedback of like, do people really want to have this conversation? Yeah, people need resources. People need to want to better understand. One in three families have substance use disorder in their family.

One in three. We had a lot of people in the group with family issues going on at home and being worried about friends, daughters, husbands, all sorts. Yeah.

And guess what? That impacts your employee.

Productivity, too.

Because if you think about who's doing the caretaking, and usually it's women in the US still who are providing the care for their spouse, their children making the appointments, the doctor's appointments. The stories I'd hear are people who are spending hours of their work day just calling treatment centres, trying to find a bed, trying to find something covered by insurance, trying to... That I want to solve for. That's what I'm going off to try to solve for is there is an abundance. I'd say, well, there isn't an abundance. There's a shortage of mental health and substance use disorder support. But there is help out there. What lacks is any clarity of how to go about this. At what level do you, as an individual, need the care or your family member need the care? Because not everyone needs inpatient treatment. Some people need counselling weekly. Some people need meetings. Some people need outpatient care. We need to be able to meet people where they are and not make it such an incredibly confusing maze. I don't know how it is in the UK, but it's definitely a maze in the US navigating healthcare. That needs to be simplified because guess where they're spending their time doing it?

At work. Because it's only open during working hours.

It's during working hours. Cfos, CHROs should be motivated to bring this conversation in to help their employees navigate to the care that they need because it's happening whether you want these individuals in your workplace or not. If you take the really cold-hearted approach of not our workplace, and it's like, well, the ones who are looking at their health care spend or their leave of absences or their productivity or their turnover, they should have a sense of it is in your workplace. And so now what are you going to do to help people?

Exactly that, yeah. And there's the whole prevention is better than cure? What about picking people up before they get anywhere near to needing those services? What about the people who are sitting, they know they're drinking too much, they're worried about it. There's no way they're going to say anything because of all the stigma. They're just going to try and manage it themselves because everyone else can drink normally. Why can't I? Those are the people I think who, from what I've seen as a result of what we've done at Co-op, those are the people who send me emails and say, I would never have gone out and looked for help, but because you put it in front of me at work, I took it, and now my life is so much better. And that, for me, is the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my whole life.

It gives me chills. It's like, that's exactly it. Harm reduction. Let's reach people sooner. Why are we waiting until they're at a full crisis moment? Let's bring the conversation in, normalise the conversation, do everything we can to change the stigma, do everything we can to decentralise alcohol so that people can make choices that are right and good for them before they've lost everything. We don't need to be waiting for that moment. We can reach people sooner. It's health. It's just basic health.

It is health. Yeah, it is. I know we probably need to wrap up in a few minutes because we've been chatting for a long time here, but-.

I know it's really easy to talk to.

It is, it's really easy to talk to you. I'm loving it. The other piece that for me is quite important as well is that we have all this shame around getting addicted to an addictive substance that has been marketed to us our whole lives. You have seen alcohol in a positive light on the TV, on billboards, in the supermarket, whenever you go to a bar, it's got beautiful labels and bottles and it's got uplighting and it's glamourised to do within an inch of its life. Of course, you're going to be at risk of getting addicted to it. If you take enough of any addictive substance, you'll get addicted to it. Imagine if we marketed cocaine like that or heroin, or cigarettes. Well, we used to, didn't we? We used to market cigarettes. We used to. I guess what happened. It just.

Is.

Really strange how society doesn't quite notice the glamourisation of alcohol just yet. I feel like the world's not quite ready to notice this yet, but it's coming.

It's coming. And I love what we talked about with the earlier, the younger generation just out, choosing not to. And there are lots of NA bottle shops popping up and N-A bars and really good N-A options that are like botanical and have health benefits. And so you can still partake in the social component of toasting and celebrating with a really lovely special drink, but it doesn't have to have alcohol in it. I love seeing this movement take off because it's like, again, this isn't just for people who have substance use disorder, this is for everyone. We've already disproven that alcohol has any positive health benefit. That doesn't mean I'm telling you I'm taking away. I still eat lots of sugar and I know it's horrific for my body and I still choose to indulge in it. This isn't me saying I'm some health guru that's like, I don't participate in anything harmful, but I'm more making the point of we just need options. This is a conversation, I think, about options and normalising, opting out.

Giving people choices, giving people the right information so they can make an informed choice. And perhaps I think, thinking a little bit more carefully about what we allow from a marketing perspective in the same way that we don't allow cigarette advertising anymore, I feel quite strongly that something like that needs to happen with alcohol. If we put it all into plain packaging, and we said, This causes breast cancer, this causes liver disease, this causes seven different types of cancer, actually. Sorry, seven different types of cancer and 70 chronic diseases. We put some pictures on of what mouth cancer looks like, those sorts of things. Then you've got an informed choice.

I mean, but here's where my hope is. We were there... I mean, when I was growing up in the '80s, we would buy candy cigarettes as children because we thought we looked so cool.

I'm.

Like, What? I was like six with like, No wonder I wanted to smoke at 14 because it was the cool thing to do. And now it's gross and it has a whole different reaction to it with the youth. Smoking is disgusting. My step sons, who are 15 and 18 are like, No one smokes. It's gross. It's so looked down upon. That feels like a really fast change in a pretty short, when you think.

About the span of time. In one generation, really, isn't it? It's just changed.

In one generation.

It's changed.

I think you're spot on. If we're marketing, it's morally offensive that we market from the time you are tiny, how luxurious and beautiful and you're going to be connected to others and have a fun life if you drink, and then we wonder, and it's an addictive substance. Anyways, and then we shame people who get addicted, and then we shame them for their body having a reaction to it because.

That's how it's set up. It's so sad. I mean, it's wild. It is wild. It is.

But it's changing.

And we're changing it, and we're at the forefront. And I'm right behind you with your new venture, whatever it looks like. I can't wait to hear more about it. I know you have a calendar, wraps at the moment. Once you've launched, you'll have to come back and talk more because- You will. Yeah, II'm super excited. I cannot wait to see what you do in this space. I just want you to know that I will do anything that I can to support you and help you because I really believe that you've got the same passion that I have for changing the world and... Yeah, let's see what we can do.

Thank you, Janet. I appreciate that. We need everyone in this work together, so thank you for your support. I feel the same about you, and this work just matters, period. Full stop. The work matters. You know the mindset of, if not me who.

And if not now, when.

If not now, when.

Exactly. Exactly.

Let's go change the world. Here we go. Here we go. Brilliant. Thank you so much for being such a fantastic guest. I will put all of your links of where people can find you on social media into the show notes. Thank you so much, Marin. Wow, what an inspirational woman. You can find out more about Marin's work by following her on LinkedIn, Marin Nelson. I am absolutely sure that whatever Maren does next is going to be huge, and I can't wait to find out more about it and potentially collaborate as well. Finally, before we go, I just wanted to give a shout out to a couple of upcoming events. I'm going to be talking at the Mental Health at Work Conference, which is being run by Westminster Insights. That's at the Institute of Structural Engineers on the first of December, and I'll be talking about ending the stigma to reduce harm. I'm super excited about that. Then if you want to join our Sober business networking group, would love to have you in the group. You can come along, get a listing in our Sober Business Heroes directory. I'll be running a networking for business growth mindset programme over quarter one of next year, so it's perfect for any small business owners who are into...

Well, you don't have to be working in the alcohol-free industry, you can be working in any business at all. You do need to be alcohol-free or sober curious, and I would love to have you on the programme. You need to be free on the 18th of January, because we'll be having our live meet-up at Love From Bar, which is at campus in Manchester. There's a couple of Zoom sessions before and after that as well to complete the programme. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to learn more about creating an alcohol safe workplace without killing the buzz, visit choosesubnights. Co. Uk and head to the HR services page. Let's end the stigma because nobody should feel afraid to ask for help with alcohol use.