Adam Levy 00:00
Hello, I’m Adam Levy, and this is Off Limits: Academia’s Taboos, a podcast from Nature Careers.
In this episode: alcohol.
Alcohol and academia have a complex relationship. On the one hand, in many countries and contexts, consuming alcohol is incredibly normalized.
In fact, as we heard in last week’s episode, people who don’t drink for religious reasons can struggle to find social spaces in academia that don’t centre around drinking.
And so it’s perhaps unsurprising that many academics can struggle with alcohol dependency.
But while alcohol consumption may be the norm, coming to terms with and openly discussing harmful relationships with the substance remain incredibly taboo.
And today we’ll meet with two academics who’ve not only struggled with alcohol but also with sharing this struggle with others.
But both have found ways to transform both their lives and their work, to reflect their recoveries.
The first is Wendy Dossett. Wendy is a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Chester in the UK.
Over her career, she’s investigated a number of questions related to faith.
Wendy Dossett 01:25
In the last decade or so of my career, I turned my religious studies methodologies onto the phenomenon of recovery from addiction.
Adam Levy 01:36
This is a topic close to Wendy’s heart.
And so we spoke about her journey with alcohol.
Before we start that conversation, please note that this interview does contain reference to sexual violence.
Wendy Dossett 01:50
I am a person in in long-term recovery.
I’ve been in in recovery for 20 years now, so I’m very lucky.
But looking back on my student days and my early career, alcohol was a terrible problem for me.
Much like lots of people who suffer with substance issues, I had low self esteem.
I felt different from my peers. I felt that I didn’t fit in, and substance use enabled me to function for many years.
It felt like it was giving me confidence. It felt like it was enabling me to fit in. I experienced sexual abuse at the age of 21 and I reacted to that experience by drinking more, and my problems with alcohol escalated.
I was first in my family to go to university, so I think I already had a legacy of feeling ”less than.”
I felt that I wasn’t good enough to have the roles and responsibilities that I had. And I used alcohol, really, to manage my my feelings around all that.
Adam Levy 03:04
The way you describe it is, of course, with hindsight.
Did you have this kind of understanding at the time that alcohol was something you were using to cope with these other things in academia and in your personal life?
Wendy Dossett 03:17
Not really. I think I felt like alcohol was the solution to my problems. I felt like it was the thing that was helping me to keep going. I felt I would never have a creative idea if I didn’t have the support of alcohol.
So alcohol felt like it was a fuel to my academic life. It also felt like that the lubrication for the social elements of academic life.
A lot of it is about networking, and, you know, making friends with the right people, and, you know, being able to tell people your ideas in a confident manner.
I probably had some kind of inkling that it was also causing me trouble, but that kind of remained at an unconscious level, really, all through my 20s.
And it was only in my 30s that I began to realize that that alcohol was a problem for me.
Adam Levy 04:21
Were there any particular moments which, at the time, or perhaps in hindsight, really highlighted, ”Okay, this is becoming a problem.” And actually getting in the way of the things you thought it would be helping for?
Wendy Dossett 04:35
There were some spectacular ones and some just the daily grind of waking up every morning or coming round, I should say, every morning and trying to get myself ready to go to work.
Just the awful hamster wheel, the daily grind, the effort that that took to keep going. Those were the kind of day in, day out realizations that there was there was something wrong.
But I had experiences. For example, I chaired an international symposium in blackout. You know, it doesn’t mean I was unconscious. It means that I have no memory of actually doing that.
At the end of it, a very good friend of mine, a colleague, said to me that they thought I needed to get some help, and that they were worried about my drinking.
Adam Levy 05:31
Were you surprised by this, I suppose almost intervention from a colleague?
Wendy Dossett 05:36
It was an intervention, and this was well over 20 years ago now, and I I look back on that moment with a mixture of horror and absolute gratitude that somebody had the courage and care for me, really, to actually say that they thought I had a problem.
I was mortified. Absolutely mortified. But I did get in contact with a recovery community, even though it took me several months from that point to get, to actually get sober.
Adam Levy 06:11
I mean, you mentioned shame there. Is that something that previously prevented you from speaking with colleagues about your use of alcohol?
Wendy Dossett 06:19
Absolutely. You know, who would want to admit that they were out of control? You know, especially in academia, perhaps there is a great stigma around mental health problems.
You know, we’re supposed to be the brightest and the best, you know?
We’re supposed to be making contributions moving the frontiers of knowledge forward. We’re not supposed to be struggling with cognitive issues, mental health problems. We’re not supposed to be damaging ourselves in the way that somebody with an alcohol addiction is doing. So, yes, the stigma is a massive barrier to help-seeking.
So what we need to do is, is to firstly, to normalize the problem and to notice how widespread it is in in academia. And to dismantle the stigma and make it a positive thing, to to be able to mention it, to talk about it.
I think we’ve made such great strides with, you know, especially depression and anxiety. But addiction is, is such a sticky stigma. It’s, it’s such a taboo.
Because there’s a kind of view in the general public that that we bring it upon ourselves, so that we have a choice
Adam Levy 07:41
And for you, then when you did start to seek help, is that also something you tried to keep hidden? Is that something you kept separate from your colleagues?
Wendy Dossett 07:53
Absolutely. I didn’t mention it to any colleagues for many years. Yeah, it took a very, very long time before I tentatively became open with immediate colleagues. Because academia is such a drinking culture, you’ve got a few options if you don’t drink.
You can lie about the reasons why you don’t drink. Or you can be honest about them. And I did lie for for many years. You know, ”I’m not drinking at the moment, I’m on antibiotics,” or, you know, ”I’m on some medication that that I can’t take alcohol with,” or whatever.
But over time, I became more comfortable, more secure in my own recovery status, and I think that gave me a little bit of confidence to raise it with peers and to say, ”Yeah, I don’t drink. And the reason is that that I’m addicted to it, and if I if I drink, I won’t be able to stop, so I just don’t do it”.
But it was a whole other thing to bring that up with senior members of the university. And I was anxious about many different things. I was anxious about causing myself issues with promotion or respect from senior colleagues, or, you know, trust from senior colleagues.
Adam Levy 09:22
And can I ask, I mean, you mentioned that at academic events with alcohol, at first, you found it very difficult to be open about how you were navigating alcohol. Were these events also challenging, just in terms of yourself and in terms of being in the context where drinking alcohol is not only the norm, but maybe also expected?
Wendy Dossett 09:45
Yes, it’s very difficult. I don’t know many people in recovery who are fully comfortable in an environment where there’s lots of alcohol, or lots of drunkenness.
I find it quite difficult sometimes being around drunk colleagues. I think that is changing. I think there is a greater awareness of diversity in terms of people’s drinking practices.
But certainly in the early days of my recovery I found it incredibly difficult. Not necessarily because I might be tempted to drink, but that is always a possibility, but because I just found it so stressful to be in that environment. It would cause me flashbacks to to myself being drunk. I would find people’s kind of lack of rationality quite challenging.
But as a person in recovery, you see it from a very different perspective. And it is difficult. It’s difficult to be around it.
Academia has historically at least functioned around drinking.
Also other drugs as well, especially the kinds of drugs that enhance cognitive performance in the short term. And that is driven by the kind of pressure to deliver above and beyond the usual 9-5.
In order to be competitive in an academic environment, there is a sense that people feel they need to have some kind of enhanced performance in order to deliver. And that’s a real problem.
Adam Levy 11:35
Now you’ve actually turned some of your academic study to understanding the spiritual elements of recovery and some of the frameworks for recovery.
What has it meant to you as an academic to be able to investigate these questions from this more academic side?
Wendy Dossett 11:52
That’s such a lovely question.
It’s meant the world to me. I felt as though this research really was me finding my academic voice, actually, and finding the contribution that I could make to the recovery world, and to the academic study of recovery.
So it was wonderful. You know, recovery from substance misuse is different to recovery from other kinds of mental health issues. Because that recovery scene is so inflected by ideas that people associate with spirituality.
And of course, the recovery scene is not homogenous. There are many, different ways of recovering from alcohol or other drug use. But you know, because of the massive influence of the 12 step episteme, you know, with Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous.
Those all derive from a spiritual notion that the person suffering with the addiction, their condition is a state of powerlessness, and their willpower is not sufficient to overcome the problem. So therefore they must access a higher power.
People interpret that notion of higher power in very different, personal, nuanced ways that reflect the contemporary culture that they’re in. So I was, I was trying to show how members of 12 step programs are spiritual innovators in the way they they think about higher power.
Adam Levy 13:42
What does it mean to you to begin to be more open about this subject that does have so much stigma around it? I mean, you’re speaking to me now. You’re doing this research. You also spoke to Nature for a feature published back in 2025.
Wendy Dossett 13:59
It means a lot. It’s been a long and difficult journey to become more open. You know, although I openly say I’m in recovery, I always have that, that underlying anxiety that am I doing the right thing by saying that?
Because I want to be contributing to hope. And of course, if I don’t return to use then that’s that’s great. But I also know that I cannot be complacent about that.
Adam Levy 14:29
What would you have liked to have seen from colleagues in academia? What should academics listening do to better support their their colleagues who are going through challenges with dependency?
Wendy Dossett 14:41
I’d love colleagues to become much more informed about addiction, and in particular, much more informed about recovery, and to know that recovery is possible.
In fact, recovery is probable.
Lots and lots of people do recover from addiction, and. And people should have hope and they should be encouraged.
I think I’d like to see more compassion and more empathy.
There can often be a tendency to judge people who struggle with addiction. And, of course, somebody who is not functioning in an academic team that is under pressure is a passenger. And that’s very difficult for people. That needs to be acknowledged.
I’d love it if more academics knew about the recovery-friendly university movement, and that means they’re actively seeking ways to support both staff and students who have substance issues.
You know, they are counteracting stigma. They’re saying that we are proud to have people in recovery within our university community.
I think communities are the places in which recovery can happen in a in a community where there are people in recovery and they’re known and it’s seen that they’re welcomed and they’re celebrated, then that creates its own contagion. And it means that other people can find their way to recovery as well.
So universities are actually really places where we can seed recovery for the wider community.
Adam Levy 16:28
That was Wendy Dossett. We’ll hear from her again in a later episode, as we discuss the struggles and stigma surrounding fertility.
Next up, though, I spoke with another researcher, Victoria Burns, associate professor of social work at the University of Calgary in Canada.
Victoria has also transformed her journey with alcohol into an integral part of her work. She is the founder and director of Recovery on Campus Alberta.
We’ll get to her work with this organization in just a moment.
But first we discussed how Victoria began to reflect on her relationship with alcohol.
Victoria Burns 17:07
I started to think about my relationship with alcohol more critically when I started university.
I had my first drink when I was 12, and I didn’t really drink throughout high school, but when I did drink, I was prone to blacking out.
And then I didn’t drink my first year of university.
But then my second year, I did an exchange program to France. And that’s where I really started to drink in earnest. And when I came back to Canada, (so I started going out to the clubs), and I was a weekend warrior.
I’ll say I worked hard and played hard. I always held down jobs and was an A student. But I also started to drink more, and it was actually at 19 when a boyfriend gave me an ultimatum to stop drinking because I would black out and end up in risky situations.
Adam Levy 18:13
And has that been the case since then that you decided not to drink?
Victoria Burn 18:18
No, so I did a lot more research. I said bye to the boyfriend, and thought that he was just being too controlling.
And I was mainly a binge drinker. I wasn’t a daily drinker.
And during that period, there were many, I guess, increasingly dangerous situations that I was in related to my drinking.
So I like to say every time I drank, something bad didn’t happen, but anytime something bad happened, alcohol was involved.
And I sought therapy during this time because I couldn’t, I thought I just had to kind of get my anxiety under control, and then I’d be able to drink, quote, unquote, like a lady.
But once I started, I never knew when I was going to stop. So I ended up, in my second year of my PhD, hitting my final bottom, ending up in the hospital and that’s when I stopped.
Adam Levy 19:19
You just kind of mentioned it in passing there. But did it shake you up quite a bit to end up having to seek, you know, medical support in this situation?
Victoria Burns 19:28
So yes, I did. I did seek medical support earlier on at my university.
I was at McGill University in Montreal. And after some particularly bad binges I went to the student wellness and no one really gave me supports related to my drinking.
They just told me I needed to drink less and were quite judgmental. And I ended up in the hospital a couple of times, but I was met with more shame than compassion, I’ll say.
And when I ended up in the hospital, that last time, I ended up seeing three therapists, actually.
It was the abstinence-based one who had recommended I try AA. I ended up going to AA, to to an open speaker meeting that year, and hearing, I don’t know, it’s just ready, it’s it’s just, it doesn’t really make sense why it stuck that time, but it did.
And then I found a woman’s meeting. And I had tried, actually, 14 months before my final bottom to go to rehab, but they wouldn’t accept me because I was quote, unquote, too organized as a full time student. I was married, I had a house, all of these things.
So on paper, things looked okay, but I was really dying inside.
Adam Levy 20:52
And now, after you did successfully go to AA and transition away from alcohol, how did you approach discussing, disclosing this with academic colleagues and with supervisors, for example?
Victoria Burns 21:08
So I didn’t disclose to anybody in my academic circles, except for a couple of senior academics.
And I didn’t tell my supervisors.
I was advised by senior academics. I did tell not to tell anyone noise in recovery, because it could negatively affect my job prospects.
I didn’t want to do anything that would negatively affect my career. So I really led a double life in recovery for the first five years. And I am a social work scholar. And this became increasingly unmanageable as well.
Adam Levy 21:47
Now you’ve actually done research to look at this kind of stigma that you’re talking about, in this reluctance to disclose that you’re talking about.
What do we know about how researchers who struggle with substance dependence, disclose or don’t disclose?
Victoria Burns 22:04
In 2018 I did disclose to my Dean. And I was prepared to leave my tenure track job because it was negatively affecting my recovery and my work.
I was researching harm reduction and housing first at the time.
So I was bumping up against these conversations quite often, and I felt there was a really important perspective that I was not disclosing.
So I ended up disclosing to my Dean. He was very accepting. And he gave me a green light to conduct research in this area, because he said, out of his 26-year career, he never had anyone disclosed to him about being in recovery.
And that really surprised me and intrigued me. And I thought, I can’t be the only one, when we look at the data, the prevalence of not only people in in recovery, but the rates of addiction.
And I ended up getting a small grant and interviewed most of the Deans and other service providers about their experiences with faculty disclosing addiction and recovery.
And there are only three disclosures out of over 300 years of service of all the people I interviewed. However, there were many incidents where faculty members were showing up to the classroom intoxicated or concerns about people’s drinking or drug use, but Deans and service providers not really knowing what that process was to help them.
And several of the participants actually said, ”Well, as long as they’re bringing in grants, no one really cares.”
And it’s also problematic, because like me, I have never met anyone in recovery in academia, and I was a student for 14 years.
That fed into the stigma as well, and the misunderstanding of what addiction and recovery are.
So one of the recommendations of this work was to shift more into this vulnerable, authentic leadership and role model.
You know, recovery is not something to be ashamed of. It’s something that’s actually a source of pride, often committed to service and helping others.
So these are people you do want, as colleagues, as leaders, and that was something that came out of that study.
Adam Levy 24:29
I find it almost paradoxical, because, on the one hand, alcohol is so visible in academia. You know, there’s so many contexts in academia, at least in certain countries where alcohol and also alcohol abuse can be quite visible.
But then there seems to be a silence around both the misuse of alcohol and the recovery from that misuse.
Victoria Burns 24:53
Yeah, there definitely is a paradox around that. You’re stigmatized if you drink too. Much you’re stigmatized if you stop. You’re sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I had been sober for about two years at the time, and I successfully passed my defence and my two supervisors, the tradition was to have some champagne, and they had known me as a drinker as well.
But they had the champagne, and everyone was around ready to celebrate, and my supervisor poured me a glass and said, ”For you.”
And I said, ”No, thank you.” And he said, ”Come on, Victoria, you know you deserve it.” And I said, ”No, thank you” twice.
And then the third time I said no, thank you. He said, ”Come on, it’s not like you’re an alcoholic.”
And I took the glass and I pretended to drink it and then I threw it away, but it was such a common kind of innocuous tradition, seemingly.
But these are the kind of things we need to, I realize, educate people on how to be a recovery ally.
Because if I had not been as secure in my recovery, I think, you know, that could have been a really a shakier moment than it was.
And I’m just really grateful that I was able to kind of push through that and not pick up. But these things happen all the time.
Adam Levy 26:11
Now you’ve alluded to this already, but you’ve kind of turned this stigma for yourself around to some extent, and you are actively trying to do work to support other academics who are going through recovery.
Can you explain the work that you’re doing a little bit?
Victoria Burns 26:27
Yeah, so another recommendation from that research was to start a peer support group for faculty. I was really committed to creating a recovery-friendly workplace.
So if someone did put their hand up and say, ”I’m struggling with substance use,” that they would get the help and be met with compassion and non judgment.
There wasn’t any recovery programs on campuses until 2019.
And it was actually a student at University of British Columbia who started the first campus recovery program in Canada.
And it was through that work, I was able to to hire a part time coordinator, and now we have 10 going on, 11 peer support meetings a week. We’ve grown from that $8,000 to over $5 million.
Adam Levy 27:16
With this in mind, what’s your hope for the academia of the future, and academia where, instead of maybe exacerbating people’s issues around substances, we provide a more supportive environment?
Victoria Burns 27:31
I don’t want a student or a staff member to feel the shame and stigma of being in recovery or of seeking help.
The visibility of people in recovery, I think, is very important, because there’s still such a narrow perception of what it means to, well, A, have an addiction, and B, what it means to be in recovery.
And really, we know that one of the pillars of recovery is purpose.
So allowing folks who go to treatment, they have that community on campus where they have a safe place to go, that we’re normalizing the idea that you could have a really enriching, fun, joyful university experience without the need to be intoxicated. It’s not about prohibition.
There are many people who can use substances and safety, but there are also many people who can’t.
And up until recently, they didn’t really have that space where they could fully be themselves and be around others on similar paths.
Adam Levy 28:39
Victoria Burns there, joined, as you might have heard towards the end of the interview, by her cat Charlie.
This need to be around others on similar paths isn’t unique to alcohol.
Community can be so important for each and every stigmatized subject we’ve touched on in this series, from coming out as LGBTQIA+, to navigating research with a disability. And this is equally important for the subject of next week’s episode: navigating grief.
Speaker 4 29:12
I wished I had a grief group. I actually needed advice and directions and resources.
Adam Levy 29:22
Until then, this has been Off Limits: Academia’s Taboos, a podcast from Nature Careers.
Thanks for listening. I’m Adam Levy.
