Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid leave to deal with an acute cancer treatment or recover from a kidney transplant.
Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid leave to deal with alcohol addiction.
Measure the immediate reactions and future performance review and employment outcomes of the two groups. Do you expect them to be the same as each other? I don’t and I think it comes down to “I or a family member could get cancer or kidney failure” vs “alcohol addiction is a choice” thinking.
Apples and bowling balls. As I said in another comment:
While substance abuse is an illness and should be treated as such, it's not leukemia or muscular dystrophy. It requires an active participant to make a concerted effort to obtain and abuse an addictive, destructive substance. So it's no surprise that substance abuse might not be given the same level of sympathy.
I think many managers would prefer the latter because getting sober should have mainly positive effects on my employee's health and performance whereas an organ transplant or cancer seems much more likely to come with longterm disability and accommodation needs...
Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid leave to deal with alcohol addiction.
Measure the immediate reactions and future performance review and employment outcomes of the two groups. Do you expect them to be the same as each other? I don’t and I think it comes down to “I or a family member could get cancer or kidney failure” vs “alcohol addiction is a choice” thinking.