PRESS RELEASE: Is Alcohol Spiking any different to Drug Spiking? And is alcohol spiking a sackable offence?

As a Grey Area Drinking Coach, I’ve worked with thousands of people all over Australia to support them to change their relationship with alcohol.

I’ve never come across this scenario before.

One of my clients, who is 3 months sober and reaping all the rewards of this lifestyle change (she never defined herself as an ‘alcoholic’ but was drinking too much and it was negatively impacting her mental and physical health so wanted to take a break), was recently at her work Christmas Party. One of her colleagues, after questioning if she was ‘still being boring and not drinking’, to which she replied happily and proudly ‘yes I’m still alcohol free’ went to the bar to ostensibly buy her a mocktail, but deliberately opted for the alcoholic version which contained 2 alcoholic spirits. She returned with the drink, delivered it to my client telling her it was alcohol free, therefore deliberately misleading her from knowing it contained alcohol.

Luckily my client was told by another colleague what had happened and didn’t have the drink. When she confronted her colleague about her deception, the woman laughed it off and told her to ‘lighten up’ and ‘stop being so boring.’ My client did not have health concerns that would have made her ill from having the alcohol, but many of my clients do. Many take a prescription drug that makes them violently sick if they drink alcohol. Many are so fragile in the early days of sobriety that something like this would completely derail them.

When I shared this story on my instagram account, over 25,000 viewed the video with over 350 comments, many saying they felt this was a sackable offence.

it raises the question ‘is alcohol spiking as serious as illegal drug spiking and is it a sackable offence’?

It also says a lot about the peer pressure so many people come under when they decide to remove alcohol and the ongoing narrative that a work christmas party is only fun if alcohol is involved.

As we learn more about the health risks of alcohol (now being linked to over 60 chronic and acute diseases) isn’t it time the Australian workplace culture offered more alcohol free alternatives at Christmas and worked on changing the internal culture around alcohol?

To discuss this in more detail, contact Sarah Rusbatch
0451 055147
[email protected]