Page 40 - February 2020 FOP Magazine

Mental Health and Wellness Support
A resource guide for Chicago Lodge 7 members
A message from EAP
Professional Counseling Division CPD Employee Assistance Program
312-743-0378
Widely trained clinicians and addiction counselors available 24/7/365
Peer Support Team
312-743-0378
The peer support team includes 300 officers who have taken a 40-hour training
Call for help
Female officers
have their own
path to addiction
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
Look at the female officers at roll call. Look at the female offi- cer sitting in your beat car. She may be hurting, stressing, fum- ing and medicating more than you will ever know. More than even she knows. She has been drinking, binge drinking perhaps, and not just to take the edge off after another tour filled with responding to trauma, pressure and all the influences that lead Chicago Police Officers to a post-watch cocktail or two.
You know her as outgoing, funny and passionate, but she feels like a failure because she is exhausted from working third watch then coming home and having to get the kids off to school, hit- ting the grocery store and keeping house. And the house is a mess. So she figures a just reward for cleaning the house on her day off is a glass of wine or two.
At the sexual assault incident you caught yesterday, she re- sponded to the victim, took her statement and had to digest the gory details. Because you didn’t want to. And she couldn’t get it out of her head. Not without a glass of wine. Or a bottle.
And she is angry because she wants to move to a Tac team but was told “no” because the team already has a woman. That only adds to the long list of reasons and excuses to drink at.
The path to drinking too much – or alcohol use disorder – for women in the Department continues to be hidden under fe- male officers’ fear of failure, of feeling like they have to show
their strength all the time, of not being one of the boys. So as alcohol addiction – not to mention other addictive behaviors – for female officers increases every year, it is clear that they could
use a lifeline, including making use of additional resources from the Department’s Professional Counseling Di- vision.
“I don’t think women want to look weak on the job, so we feel the need to be emotionless,” a female officer with 18 years on the job submits.
You’re standing over a kid who had his head blown off and you have a connection to the mom, who is on the side scream- ing. That piles up. So you start using because you are trying to
cope. And then you are emotionally depending on it after a hard day of work. You are developing the phenomenon of craving.
Female alcohol use disorder in the U.S. increased by 83.7 per- cent between 2002 and 2013, according to a 2017 study spon- sored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcohol- ism (NIAAA).
The NIAAA also reports that more than 5.3 million women age 18 and older have an alcohol use disorder. High-risk drinking – defined as women drinking four or more drinks in a day or men drinking five or more drinks in a day on a weekly basis – rose by
40 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2020