He claimed bankers felt hated by the public and were being put under increasing pressure by their own bosses. He said: “Banks and financial institutions are using lower profit forecasts to cut staff bonuses, salaries and jobs.

“Denial is the name of the game in the City. No one — and no company — wants to admit there’s a serious addiction problem.”

In addition, evidence is already growing to support the theory that workers are less fearful of the future and are recording higher levels of job satisfaction than before the recession hit.

Richard Kingdon, director of City Beacon, which treats white collar addicts, says that the service has seen a rise in the number of people facing addiction problems. They are not only suffering from dependence on drugs and alcohol but also from addiction to their jobs.

‘Workaholism’ has been increasing globally, and Workaholics Anonymous, which runs a 12 step programme for addicts, now has 2,500 members. But counsellors say that, following treatment, those seeking help will be better equipped to cope with future pressures and will become more considerate to their colleagues and loved ones.

“People are becoming more aware of their work/life balance, but that realisation usually happens when they have reached rock bottom. It takes a crisis to alter your priorities,” says Kingdon. “A crisis often allows people to let go of what they have been caught up in. A lot of people think having the trappings of wealth will fix them but come to realise they are hollow.”

Career insecurity has affected the national workforce deeply with many people working longer hours in an effort to appear indispensable. An ICM poll of over 5,000 employees, carried out last year, found that one in five were working longer hours since the start of the recession.

The increased strain on employees is thought to be the cause of a spike in mental health problems. A recent survey recorded that 77 percent of GPs have noticed an increase in new mental health cases due to the downturn.

The problem is magnified in the City where work pressures are acute. In recent months, the Square Mile has seen a spate of suicides and Kingdon confirms an increase in clients. He personally sees between 20 and 30 people and has other counsellors working with him.

Kingdon explains: “A lot of clients have workaholism issues. Workaholics use work as a fix just like they would use drugs or drink or gambling or sex. They use it to numb themselves. I have seen families and marriages devastated just as much through work as through drugs and drink because the person who is addicted to their job is not there emotionally.”

Through one-to-one sessions, City Beacon helps clients identify the triggers that feed their addictions and teaches them relapse prevention. Some also need to learn time management and how to take care of their emotional wellbeing. Counsellors build up a rapport with clients and help them set goals.

Each session is an opportunity to check whether the client is achieving those goals and to nudge them forward to the next target. Clients pay £135 for an hour-long one-on-one session with Kingdon and £500 a day if they want to follow a residential course. He also offers auricular acupuncture as a complementary treatment.

“When people face the type of problems we are seeing in the City at the moment and overcome them, they come out the other side as better people,” he says. “They become more productive, more reliable and more focussed. They become more valuable to employers.”

“A lot of them are selfish when they first come but don’t necessarily realise it,” Kingdon adds. “That is the nature of addiction.” He has found that their recovery begins when they start to take an interest in their environment and the people around them. “I’ve worked with some very selfish, ruthless people and I’ve seen them become lovely, kind, considerate, generous human beings.”

It is hoped the latest government figures, which show that the country climbed out of recession between July and September, will now start to give the workforce respite and ease fears.
Kingdon comments: “It looks bleak but there is hope.”

According to new information, workforce resolve is improving. The recently published ‘29th British Social Attitudes Report’ showed that workers today are demonstrating higher levels of satisfaction in their jobs than ever before with employees scoring an average satisfaction level of 7.3 out of ten — a significant jump from the 6.9 figure reported in 2006 before the recession hit.

by Nick Harding

Statistics show that middle-aged people working more than 55 hours a week are at higher risk for dementia.

The signs were all there. Sarah* a journalist, missed putting her 18-month-old son to bed again because she’d opted to work late. She was seven months pregnant with her second child, but refused to slow down or even leave her desk for lunch. “You’ll give birth there if you don’t start going home earlier,” her colleagues joked, but it was really no laughing matter.

She only just arrived home from the office when she went into labour a month before her due date. Sarah was still filing stories and answering emails while she was having contractions, and was back online just hours after giving birth.

Three weeks after her daughter was born, she turned up at the office, placed the newborn in a pram by her desk and only left her computer to breastfeed her baby in a private room when she woke.

The amount of time she dedicated to her career was spiralling out of control, leaving her exhausted and causing friction in her marriage. She had no hobbies, and family activities and exercise took a backseat to her work.

But still, Sarah refused to slow down. When a colleague pointed this out to her, suggesting she take some time off to recuperate from the birth and spend time with her family, the 32-year-old gave her a look that said, ‘Are you crazy?’

“In fact I am wondering if I can reduce my five-hour sleep and come to work earlier,’’ she was overheard telling another colleague in the pantry while waiting for the coffee to boil.

Anan Bakir* is no different.

“I can look back today and see there was a problem long before it was labelled ‘workaholism’,” she says. “In the first job I ever did, I remember being surprised when I was told to go home at the end of the day. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to stay until every task I needed to do was completed.”

Anan, 48, a self-employed building contractor says, “I couldn’t tell you how many hours a week I worked. Usually I was working well into the evening, and if people asked me to stay on and do other jobs I would always agree.”

With no family or responsibilities to go home for, Anan became obsessed with keeping busy. “I would sign up to courses, join groups and volunteer. I went from one thing to another so I never had to be alone. I wanted to do everything there was to do in the world.

“Whatever I did, I would feel terrible because I would be fretting about all the others things I felt I needed to do. I wasn’t enjoying any of it because I was never in the present moment. I was aware things were not right and was craving activity.”

Anan was addicted to being busy – a condition she now recognises is a type of workaholism.

“I’d heard the word,” she says. “But I didn’t understand the impact of the condition.”

While it is good to be interested in the work you do, it’s bad to be addicted to it, say psychologists adding that workaholism has come to be an ‘acceptable addiction’.

To many it is still not even viewed as a problem; rather something to be admired and aspired too. Many people wear the workaholic badge with pride. However, the line between hard work and compulsive behaviour can easily blur, and increasingly workaholism is being treated as a condition on par with drug addiction and alcoholism.

The condition manifests itself in business centres including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Manila, London, New York and Dubai where career-focussed people are immersed in cultures that encourage long hours.

Earlier this year, the Regus Index Survey revealed that the work/life balance of people in the UAE is below the international average – a key indicator of the conditions that can give rise to workaholism. More than 50 per cent of those surveyed in the UAE stated they spent more time at work than they did at home.

When the survey was published Samineh Shaheem, assistant professor of psychology at the Human Relations Institute Dubai, told Gulf News, “If no other activity satisfies you as much as work, you are never fully disconnected from work. You are always drawn to work issues even when at home and you cannot stop thinking about work.”

Taking stock

For Anan, salvation came in the form of a work-related injury, which forced her to stop. She injured her foot and was unable to walk for several months. The enforced hiatus gave her the opportunity to take stock of her life.

“I knew the injury was a result of my lifestyle and of the rushing around and stress I was putting myself under.”

She researched workaholism online and discovered an organisation called Workaholics Anonymous (WA), which runs programmes similar to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, for work addicts.

Workaholics Anonymous has 2,500 members and runs online and face-to-face meetings in countries such as the USA, the UK, Ukraine, Thailand, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden. Anan began attending meetings and now follows WA’s 12-step programme for recovery.

“My life is immeasurably better,” she says. “I feel so much more at peace. I also believe it helps me work better. I am more focussed on the tasks I am doing. I am more inclined to look after my health and I am less ego-driven.”

She admits that there is still a stigma surrounding the condition. “It’s difficult telling an employer I am a member of WA because they may think I should be working harder.”

Understanding is key to countering the growing problem of work addiction. Overwork is viewed by society as a worthwhile attribute, and hard workers are inevitably praised and rewarded. Subsequently, denial is common and often the last people to realise there is a problem are workaholics themselves.

Author of Chained to the Desk, Bryan Robinson, calls the acceptance and reward of workaholism, “the glorification of an illness”.

Thankfully the problem is coming under increasing scrutiny and people are becoming aware of it thanks to several recent studies. In April, Norwegian and British researchers developed The Bergen Work Addiction Scale, a standardised criteria aimed at helping people identify if they have an addiction.

And in March, Psychology Today cited recent research that outlines four basic types of work addict; the manic perfectionist, the stress junkie, the muddled multitasker, and the worker who never seems able to let a project go.

Identifying the problem is the first step to tackling it. According to Dr Amy Bailey, a Dubai-based clinical psychologist, “workaholics will often deny there is a problem, despite feedback from loved ones and deteriorating relationships. ”.

She identifies a number of destructive ways in which workaholism manifests itself including neglect of family and friends, the urge to talk about work constantly, reluctance to take sick days and the desire to be busy all the time.

‘The last addiction to be dealt with’

While Workaholics Anonymous offers one form of treatment, psychotherapy offers another. Adrianna Irvine is a London-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating people with addictions, including workaholism.

She explains, “It’s usually one of the last addictions to be dealt with. The addict supports it because it helps him or her to feel like a viable, upstanding worker. Treatment usually begins with self diagnosis, as no one else can stop the workaholic.

“One knows because often there is little else going on in life except work, which is the function of the condition; to drive away all the alternatives while apparently feeding the individual’s esteem, respect and worth.

“Workaholics usually have no hobbies, little social life, fewer and fewer friends and a furious family as many engagements get broken.

“Ultimately, it rebounds by taking away the feelings of esteem, worth and respect that were initially being achieved. Just like drugs, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia, and gambling, immersion in work achieves varying degrees of relief until it no longer achieves this, no matter how frantic the behaviour is. A hard worker can take time off and feel good regardless of the outcome, manage their feelings if the project goes wrong, or gets cancelled whereas the workaholic feels as if their life depends on the success of it.”

There are often deep-seated reasons why someone becomes a workaholic. As UK psychologist Jacqueline Hurst explains, “Often people will use work if they are lonely, or if they cannot face something else in their life. They will build up their work life to mask other problems.

“I recently started seeing a client and initially, from the way she spoke, I assumed she ran a large bank. It turned out she was an administrator. The issue was that she was very lonely and she masked this with work.”

Family relationships are one casualty of workaholism. Health is another. The immense stresses workaholics put themselves under often results in conditions such as sleep deprivation, hypertension, anxiety and depression.

A recent global study found that over-workers are between 40 and 80 per cent more likely to suffer heart disease, while research in New Zealand found that people who work at least 50 hours a week are up to three times more likely to have alcohol problems.

Figures also show that middle-aged people working more than 55 hours a week tend to be more slow-witted and are at higher risk of dementia. In Spain, researchers predict that the number of workaholics will rise from the current 4.6 per cent to 11.8 per cent in 2015.

These Spanish figures are worrying as they hint at what is possibly the main reason for the growing number of people who are addicted to work; the global economic turndown.

In Spain, a country teetering on the edge of financial cataclysm where one in four people are unemployed, workers are driven to longer hours by the fear of losing their jobs.

In the financial district of London, addiction counsellor Richard Kingdon is on the front line. He has first-hand experience of the damage career insecurity can cause as he runs City Beacon, an addiction therapy service in London. He says an atmosphere of fear pervades the business hub and predicts that mental illness as a result of stress and anxiety could reach epidemic levels.

 “As a conservative estimate, I would say there are around 60,000 people in the Square Mile suffering from, or at risk of mental illness, but that number could easily be 100,000,” he says.

“Workaholics use work as just like they would use any banned substance. They try to change the way they feel and shut down emotionally. They use it to numb themselves. They get lost in it and it becomes their world.

“I have seen families and marriages devastated just as much through work as through drugs and drink because the person is not emotionally there.

“They are caught in a trap and can’t get out, then they burn out. They don’t look at the health implications.”

While employees should rightly be encouraged to work hard and be rewarded accordingly, employers should be wary of people who push themselves too far, to the detriment of their health and the company in the long term.

Sex, drugs, drink and the City slicker

In the Square Mile, temptation is never far away. But Richard Kingdon is helping financiers to tackle their addictions

It’s ego. It’s fine wine, champagne, cocaine. It’s all about alpha males and excess up here,” Richard Kingdon says. “Third week of January is a killer. It’s a classic: on New Year’s Eve they say: ‘Right, this is my last binge. Next year I’m going to sort myself out, sort out my debts, maybe try for a family.’ Then third week in January, when they get paid, they’re off again because the resolve has gone and because they ain’t got no tools.”

Helping City workers to gain the “tools” — or life skills — to be able to give up binge drinking, cocaine or sex addiction is Kingdon’s speciality. “People think it’s about willpower, that you’ve just got to say no,” he says. “As if it’s that easy. That’s nonsense. Of course it ain’t.”

Suited and booted, a larger-than-life character with a confident, talkative manner, he could easily pass for a City broker himself. It is only the tattoos glimpsed, as he gesticulates, beneath his shirt sleeves that hint at a more colourful past.

Sitting in a small, nondescript office in an unmarked serviced block just a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, he explains how his own chronic drug and alcohol addictions led to him becoming sought-after by those with addiction problems in the Square Mile.

“Right now they’re using alcohol and drugs more as an anaesthetic,” he says in a broad southeast London accent. “Before, it was Ferraris and Lamborghinis — you know, all ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’, ‘loads-a-money’, whereas now everyone is terrified.

“I work with some senior people up here and there is a massive fear. We’re in uncertain times and no one knows what to do. People are scared of losing their jobs, losing all their investments. The bankers and brokers are getting an absolute kicking.”

His clients tend to be City workers in their late twenties and thirties who typically turn to him for help after 10-15 years of alcohol and drug misuse. “At the end of that, it’s costing you more than money,” he says. “It’s costing you your home life, your career, your kids, your health. The four Ls — liver, lover, livelihood or law.”

Many of the City high-flyers who learn of Kingdon’s services by word of mouth have “a whole package” of addictions including alcohol, cocaine, gambling and sex (extramarital affairs, sex addictions and/or visiting prostitutes). Heroin use, though, is “very, very rare”.

Kingdon founded the addiction counselling service City Beacon with the backing of a City professional whom he helped to overcome his demons two-and-a-half years ago. He says it was obvious that there was a growing alcohol and cocaine problem, and no services where people could seek one-to-one help while continuing to work in the City.

“It’s great doing role-plays and all that in a rehab setting but it’s nothing like real life, which is what I do — I’m up here with the clients and we are dealing with real life, whatever is going on, not what might possibly happen when you leave treatment.”

“I’ll go out with clients to bars. They know they’re safe, they know there is someone right here, right in the middle of the City,” he says. Clients pay £135 for an hour-long one-on-one session with him, and £500 a day if they want him to go away with them. He will see them in the middle of the night if necessary, and won’t charge them for “emergency calls”. Clients might telephone for help from black-tie events at the Grosvenor, he explains, or entertaining business associates at the lap-dancing club Spearmint Rhino.

Kingdon, 42, who describes himself as an addiction specialist rather than a counsellor, uses many of the techniques that helped him overcome “years of alcoholism, drug addiction and criminality” which began at the age of 12. At 26 he had a breakdown: “I knew it was do or die. It was a crossroads.” After years of rehabilitation and therapy he decided to dedicate his life to helping other addicts in a variety of settings, including maximum security prisons and rehabilitation centres, and as a private consultant to musicians, City workers and people on the council estate where he grew up. “Why was I saved when others died? I’m thinking maybe it was because I needed to do what I do.”

His background helps people to trust him. “They realise I come from a non-judgmental place. It’s about empathy.”

He sees clients personally, helps them to recognise their high-risk situations and triggers, and teaches them relapse prevention. Some also need to learn time management and how to take care of their emotional wellbeing. “I want to empower people, give them the tools so they can get on with their lives. It’s really about raising people’s self-awareness — that’s what people did for me. They got me to look at myself and encouraged me to take responsibility.”

Our meeting is interrupted by a mother keen to get help for her heavy-drinking son, but Kingdon is adamant that it is the drinker himself who needs to seek guidance: “Lots of people need help but unless they want it, it ain’t going to work.”

He is reluctant to talk about success rates, as he doesn’t “play the statistics game”. He says: “I’ve worked with lots of people who have sorted themselves out and never looked back. And I know people who have stumbled here and there, engaged again and redoubled their effort.”

Although most of his City clients pop out of work to see Kingdon for half an hour or an hour, he will go away with people if he feels that they could benefit from intensive help “for maybe a week, ten days or two weeks — just me and them, somewhere quiet where there are no distractions. You’re not going to be missed at work, are you, if you go away for a week or so? Whereas you go away for two months to rehab, that’s pretty on top, ain’t it?”

“There is a nasty side up here too, with people ready to put the boot in [if they think a colleague is going to rehab]. Everyone wants to go up the career scale, and anyone who can find any information or weakness on you, they’ll use it. That’s why some people won’t engage in groups [such as Alcoholics Anonymous] as well.”

He is keen to point out that not everyone with an alcohol problem is an alcoholic. Many of his clients are habitual four-day-weekend binge drinkers. “They come up here as trainees and they’re all doing it. They’re indoctrinated,” he says, adding that many City workers don’t know the risks of addiction: for instance, that mixing alcohol and cocaine is particularly damaging, and that most cocaine is far from pure.

“You’re more looked down on here for smoking a cigarette than you are for doing a line of gear,” he says. “It’s easier to get cocaine than cigarettes, I reckon. It’s mad.”

According to Kingdon, thousands of City workers have some form of addiction problem: “You could have 50 rehabs up here and it wouldn’t touch the problem. HR will turn a blind eye while you’re making money, know what I mean? But now they ain’t making too much money.

“I’m not a knight in shining armour who can cure the City. But if I can pull a few people out, that’s good. Because you’re not just pulling that person out, you’re pulling that wife’s husband out, those kids’ dad out. It’s not just one person with a drink problem.”

A City worker’s tale

As a child I was riddled with feelings of fear and insecurity, I remember the constant feeling of unease and my stomach being in knots.

Looking back, after a lot of work on myself and understanding the nature of addiction, I can now see how the feeling of unease became addiction.

My childhood feelings of insecurity meant I had a deep feeling that everything was going to be taken away, so I took as much as I could before it was taken away. I became a master manipulator — “elbows up straight to the front” was my philosophy — and I got there.

I ended up at the top of a City financial institution, travelling the world, fuelled by a huge salary and 200 per cent bonuses. My behaviour was outrageous — no one could tell me I was wrong. My pay cheque validated everything I did: alcohol, cocaine, prostitutes, whatever. No one could get through to me — not my partner, family or even my children.

I would get in the shower at 6am after arriving home at 4am, riddled with shame and tiredness and terrified that my behaviour of the day and night before would be found out.

I’d sheepishly arrive at work after probably not returning the previous lunchtime — and as soon as I realised I’d got away with it, off I’d go again.

I did this for years, surrounding myself with like-minded people — and there are no shortage of those in the City and West End of London.

Inevitably the money, girls, power cars and houses slipped seamlessly into unemployment, and broken relationships with everyone close to me.My health nosedived. My champagne days of first-class travel and fast cars ended abruptly when I simply stopped functioning and ended up penniless, alone and in rehab.

When I met Richard he showed me that the indescribable feeling of loss I felt was actually the feeling of surrender and the starting point of recovery.

If you have any identification with me as a boy — if you crave approval and see outward validation — the City is to be avoided at all costs. It takes away the pain, fear and insecurity of early life. But at the time to pay, the piper will come when you’re least capable of paying.

The symptoms I had were there long before I was in the City, but the combination is lethal to all but a lucky few who come out the other side.

report by Carol Lewis from The Times on January 10th 2012 ]]> http://www.citybeacon.co.uk/2012/01/city-beacon-featured-in-the-times/feed/ 0 http://www.citybeacon.co.uk/2011/11/city-beacon-featured-in-the-guardian/ http://www.citybeacon.co.uk/2011/11/city-beacon-featured-in-the-guardian/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 11:07:33 +0000 City Beacon Team http://www.citybeacon.co.uk/?p=1441

You don’t have to be a drug addict or an alcoholic to be an addiction counsellor, but it certainly helps.

“If you were an addict desperate for help, would you want to turn to someone who has learned it all from books?” asks Richard Kingdon, managing director of City Beacon, an addiction counselling service based in the City of London.

Kingdon has plenty of experience of addiction. He started taking drugs – “anything but heroin, I never injected” – at the age of 12, was homeless and living on the streets of Soho by 16, and says he has done “everything” to fund his addiction. Then, at the age of 26, he had a breakdown, or “breakthrough” as he prefers to term it, and ended up in a psychiatric unit suffering psychosis.

He says this saved him. “I’d been involved in chaos, seen a lot of friends die or go to prison (he has a few convictions under his own belt). But somehow something was looking out for me and I came through it.

“I stayed in [the psychiatric unit] for two months, got my funding sorted out, went through rehab and I’ve been clean and sober for over 16 years. I’ve built a career, have never been involved with crime again and I’ve helped a lot of people.”

Kingdon has worked in counselling for 14 years, volunteering, detox work, outreach on the streets and in prisons. His clients have ranged from the homeless to rock stars, from serial killers to top City bankers.

One of his former clients at Belmarsh prison, Robert Kleasen, was even believed to be one of the real life murderers who inspired the fictional film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Kleasen had been sentenced to death in Texas for the murder of two Mormon missionaries after blood and tissue were found on his band saw, but his conviction was later quashed because of an illegal search. He moved to the UK to marry a British penpal, but ended his days in jail, convicted of possessing illegal firearms. “I gave him acupuncture,” says Kingdon.

Helping stressed City folk may seem a long stretch from treating serial killers but, he says, drugs and alcohol are great levellers. “I’ve worked with people from all walks of life but the symptoms are the same. A lot of addicts are quite similar in the way that they think; there are lots of patterns that are the same,” he says.

“Although I work with some very intelligent people, when it comes to addiction, they’re buffoons. Absolutely clueless.”

His next client, “Chris”, a stock market trader addicted to cocaine and alcohol, certainly seems to lack logic. Chris started using drugs when he was 17. Twenty two years later his wife had had enough, and was on the verge of throwing him out when he managed to stop. Although he has been clean for five months, his wife is still “cold shoulderish”, partly, Chris acknowledges, because she believes he will relapse, and partly because of the damage his addiction has already done to their relationship.

He’s also been having disturbing dreams, and had to make an emergency call to Kingdon the previous week for extra support during a period of stress.

Yet his main concern seems to be that his clients will become dissatisfied because he no longer drinks on their evenings out.

“Taking clients out and not having a drink, I was feeling very self-conscious and talk wasn’t flowing. I’m worried it’s going to affect business.”

While I’m still boggling at the idea that any client might dislike their trader to be sober, Chris asks Kingdon if he thinks gambling might be a problem. Kingdon throws the question back: “Well, what do you think?”

Chris says he supposes he wouldn’t be asking the question otherwise. He admits to “a few little dabbles here and there”, but gradually it transpires that he has been gambling a lot at work with colleagues, mainly spread betting on who will win The X-Factor. “You don’t have any tips do you?” he asks, looking hopefully at me.

Kingdon suggests gambling is not a good idea, pointing out that many people trying to overcome a drug or alcohol habit simply switch addictions. “You are in dangerous territory, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking. So what are you going to try to do between now and next week?” he asks.

“What, not bet?” responds Chris with resignation. It’s clear he knew the answer before asking the question: he just needed affirmation.

Kingdon repeatedly tells Chris how well he has done to get this far, and points out small triumphs, like being able to go trick or treating with his children without getting into a row with his wife because he is drunk, as happened last year.

“It’s not about stopping. It’s staying stopped,” says Kingdon. “The first year, for a lot of people, is the toughest: you have to get through anniversaries, birthdays and Christmas.”

The wall in Kingdon’s office is covered in certificates for courses he has completed, but he says he doesn’t adhere to any particular method when dealing with clients. “I use counselling skills rather than do counselling. I’m trying to empower the client, trying to get them to focus on what their triggers are and how to deal with cravings, stress, high-risk situations. I don’t want to set them up with a dependency on me.”

One treatment Kingdon does use is auricular acupuncture. “I thought it was a load of bollocks, but then I had it done to me, and I really felt a difference. I can see it helps the clients,” he says.

Many people believe that a spell in a residential clinic like the Priory is necessary to conquer addictions. But Kingdon points out that even people who stay in clinics – and many do not – have to be able to function in society, at work and as part of their family when they come out.

That’s where City Beacon’s services come in. The counsellors build up a rapport with their clients, help them to identify what causes them stress and help set goals. Each session is an opportunity to check whether the client is achieving those goals and to nudge them forward to the next stage, the next target.

Although five-hour lunches were axed after the Big Bang brought American investors to the City in the late 1980s, there is still plenty of drinking and drug abuse, both in the evenings and during the working day. “People are predominantly binge drinkers up here. They get smashed on the booze, charlie and birds. The more senior you are, the more likely it is,” says Kingdon.

But while it seems acceptable to drink heavily or disappear to the toilet to snort lines, seeking help for an addiction is not. “If someone has some info on you they’ll use it. It’s knives in the back here,” he says.

Clients require the upmost discretion. For this reason the City Beacon offices are inconspicuous, all sessions are one to one, and Kingdon and his colleagues synchronise meetings so their clients never bump into each other. Kingdon dresses in a pin-striped suit so if a meeting takes place at the client’s office, he can be mistaken as just another City worker. He sometimes spends weeks at a time with clients, saying “it’s a bit of a cover – they come back with a tan and I’m just the friend they’ve been on holiday with”.

Many of those who have come to him have indulged their addictions for between 10 to 14 years, then a crisis in one or more of four areas of their lives will spur them into trying to control their habit. “It’s the four L’s,” says Kingdon. “Liver, lover, livelihood or law. We invariably find they have had a problem with their health, relationships, job or have had a run-in with the police. It’s rare I will see someone who hasn’t got a crisis in one of these areas. If your addiction is costing you more than money, you’ve got a problem.”

However it is a mistake to think that people have to hit “rock bottom” before they can do anything about their problem, he says. “However low you think your addiction has taken you, there is always a lower level you can drop to,” he says. “Rock bottom is death. Look at Amy Winehouse.”

He is cynical about suggestions that Winehouse was making progress with her addiction problems by stopping drug abuse while continuing to drink alcohol. “It didn’t look like she had beaten her addiction to me,” he says. “If alcohol came on to the market now, it would be a Class A drug.”

Curriculum vitae

Hours Kingdon works an average of 20 hours a week.

Salary A counsellor working in the criminal justice system or rehab, might earn about £25,000, or £30,000 for someone in management.

Work-life balance Appointments are at the convenience of clients, so counselling sessions might be in the early morning or evening, rather than during the working day. The firm also runs a 24-hour helpline, so sleep could be disturbed by a call from a desperate client. But Kingdon says: “My missus accepts it – it’s what I do.”

Best thing “To watch someone battered and at death’s door come back and be a worthwhile member of society.”

Worst thing “When it’s bad, you’re talking about funerals. It’s frustrating because it doesn’t have to be like that. You just think, why didn’t you effing listen?”

Overtime

Richard is a Londoner through and through and supports Crystal Palace football club. He has been to every Glastonbury since 1999 (favourites include James Brown, the Prodigy and Madness). But he spends most time in the healing fields giving massages and hasn’t actually heard any music at the festival for the last two years. Richard loves travelling and got married in Cuba. He has two sons who have both grown up with a thorough understanding of the damage that drug and alcohol abuse can cause.

This report was written by Jill Insley and taken from www.guardian.co.uk

In March, a bar manager who ran a members-only ‘cocktail and cocaine club’ for City workers was jailed for three-and-a-half years. Anthony Alexander, 47, sold the Class A drug alongside cocktails in Bar Nine on Christopher Street near Broadgate. When police swooped following a two-month operation, they found £7,500 of cocaine in wraps ready to be handed out with the drinks orders. Undercover officers said the majority of members were professional City people buzzed in via a video entryphone.

At the time, City of London police described the case as ‘remarkable’ and ‘unusual’. However, recovering City drug addicts disagree. Tony, a 39-year-old broker who was addicted to cocaine for 15 years until 18 months ago, spoke of an organised criminal underworld with young drug runners on mopeds dropping off cocaine to City bars. He added: ‘Some bars in the area of Leadenhall Market are a front for coke dealing. A lot of them are owned by some seriously naughty fellows. In every single office there is a group of people doing the stuff. Wherever there is a lot of money there is a lot of coke. In the City there are so many ups and downs and coke feeds that. We can buy it anywhere.’

This view is backed up by Daniel, a fellow client of City Beacon, a drugs counselling service set up at the height of the last financial crash in 2008 to specifically target alcohol and cocaine addiction in the Square Mile. He says: ‘We used to go into bars at lunch that were set up for coke dealing. We put our cards behind the bar and got a gram of coke and a few drinks. They would write down “Lunch with Fred” on the receipt, which would be submitted to the company.’

Cocaine addiction has always been a problem in the City. But City Beacon co-founder Richard Kingdon says that the pressure of the global economic meltdown has caused cocaine use to spiral ‘off the charts’ among City workers. The organisation, based in impressive offices on Lombard Street, just yards from the Bank of England, dealt with 40 clients in its first year. Now its team of specialists has more than 100 traders and bankers on its books. ‘Everyone around here are alpha males and females, 25-40 years old, high flyers, highly pressured, with a lot of money. There has always been a problem with drink and that was in the open and socially acceptable. But the banks don’t want to know about cocaine. No one wants to admit to it and it all stays under the radar. The City can be quite brutal and people can use that sort of damaging information against their rivals,’ he says.

Kingdon, a trained drug therapist and recovering addict, recently took one client away to Egypt for a week to battle his demons. The man was so frightened his bosses would find out that he insisted his absence from the office must look like a holiday. ‘He came back with a tan to trick his colleagues,’ says Kingdon.

There is little statistical evidence on drug abuse specifically in the Square Mile. However, the latest figures suggest cocaine use is on the rise across all sectors of society. According to the British Crime Survey, 300,000 young adults took cocaine last year. A recent study by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that the numbers of young people using the drug in this country shot up by 50 per cent over the five years from 2003 to 2008, making Britons the greatest consumers of cocaine per capita in the developed world.

‘The benders could last five days at a time,’ says Daniel. ‘No food, just snorting and drinking. I used to black out for eight hours and wake up in places as far away as Brighton. I’d get a six-figure bonus, spend it all on drink, drugs and prostitutes, and then be £20,000 overdrawn three months later. I had a nice house, a flash sports car, a great girlfriend, but I was miserable. My overriding obsession was the pain of addiction.’

The City of London is the most heavily policed borough in the capital, with 600 officers per square mile. However, little is done to tackle drug taking among the 300,000 individuals who work in the area. A senior City of London police source admitted that prosecuting bankers for cocaine possession is ‘not a priority’ for the force: ‘To be frank, we have to concentrate resources on the crimes that most affect society. Traders and bankers taking cocaine does not affect others’ lives as much as violent crime, burglary and fraud. They are wealthy people who can afford drugs and don’t need to rob to fund their addiction. The only real problems are personal.’

Experts believe one factor contributing to the apparent rise in cocaine use in the Square Mile is a surge in late-night bars and clubs. David MacKintosh, policy adviser at the City-based London Drug and Alcohol Policy Forum, says, ‘Nightlife here has changed a lot. Ten years ago it used to be difficult to get a drink after 9pm. Now we have a proper night-time economy.’ Last December, he oversaw the installation of ‘amnesty bins’ at 12 City nightclubs, which allow clubbers caught with drugs to escape prosecution by voluntarily surrendering their cocaine and Ecstasy before entry. ‘The results of Project Eclipse have been unsurprising,’ he says. ‘Most of what we find is cocaine.’

Daniel says he even contemplated suicide as he walked to work along the Thames: ‘I experienced 19 years of pain and suffering and all I’m left with are deep-seated feelings of paranoia and an overriding sense of shame. Cocaine addiction ruined every relationship I ever had. I wasn’t faithful to any of my girlfriends; the only faithful relationship I had was with drink and drugs. I’ve had threesomes, sex in toilets and blown £20,000 in one weekend doing things in suites at The Dorchester. But it’s all horrible to me now. It’s not titillating, it’s foul. Those women weren’t with me because they wanted to be, they were there because I had drugs or I paid them money.’

Tony managed to save his marriage and his relationship with his children – despite regularly staying out all night at brothels on Edgware Road. He says, ‘At one point I was in the gutter. My wife left and took the kids. She was broken. If she were independently wealthy, she would have left me for good a long time ago and I couldn’t have blamed her.’ He was moved to speak out about the dangers of City drug abuse after his friend Christen Schnor committed suicide following a cocaine-fuelled journey of destruction. Tony points to the story of Schnor as a cautionary warning.

In December 2008, the senior HSBC banker hanged himself in a £500-a-night suite in the Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel on Sloane Street. Initially, as it occurred at the height of the credit crunch, it was thought he had a devastating financial secret. However, it soon emerged that the 49-year-old Dane had a serious drug habit and had spent tens of thousands of pounds on cocaine and prostitutes in the months leading up to his death. His wife Marianne, a friend of the Danish royal family, had often been angered by the millionaire father of four’s erratic and violent behaviour, but she had put it down to the stress of work. She had no idea he had a drug problem until she discovered a £10,000 bill for one night at a Sloane Square hotel.

Days before his death, Schnor, who was HSBC’s head of insurance for the UK, Turkey, the Middle East and Malta, insisted on a weekend away with his wife in their seven-bedroom villa in Cannes. The trip was a disaster. On their first night, burglars broke in and stole their suitcases, passports, wallets and mobile phones. Mrs Schnor believes the job was organised by her husband to pay off drug and gambling debts. Returning from France, Schnor told his wife to ‘leave his life’. Heartbroken and at her wits’ end, she did as she was told. Then, two days later, Schnor made a last phone call to his family. ‘He told Marianne he loved her so much, and that he shared everything with her,’ said a friend. ‘He then spoke to the children for the first time in a long time and said goodbye. That evening he hanged himself.’

For Kingdon at City Beacon, the tale of Christen Schnor is not extraordinary. ‘People are committing suicide by instalments. These guys can go out and buy a Ferrari but they can’t buy a new heart or liver.’ Tony agrees: ‘When you’re in it you don’t want people to know how bad you are. We were trying to help Christen but he was too scared and it was too late. Lots of people don’t know where to turn. I’m speaking out about this to tell people there is a way out.’

The above article by Tom Harper appeared in the Evening Standard Magazine on 4th November 2011

See the original article here

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Counselling service founder says record numbers of workers in City of London seeking treatment for drug and alcohol problems

Drug and alcohol problems are rising at an alarming rate in London’s financial district, according to the founder of what claims to be the only specialist addiction counselling service based in the Square Mile.

Richard Kingdon, 42, says the climate of markets going into meltdown and banks implementing mass job cuts has prompted record numbers of City workers to seek treatment for addiction. He says his service, City Beacon, has worked with nearly 100 clients over the past two years.

“I’m seeing increasing numbers of people who’ve been taking a variety of substances to deal with the stress of their lives.”

One of Kingdon’s recovering clients is Daniel (not his real name), now in his mid-40s, who started drinking heavily at 25. He moved on to cocaine and found it impossible to stop his habit of “shoving my six figure bonuses up my nose”, although he has not had a drink or taken drugs for two years.

“It is absolutely rife in the City,” Daniel says. “The cocaine dealers have not gone out of business because I’ve stopped. I could take you five minutes from here to 15 or 20 bars where you would be guaranteed to be able to buy cocaine.”

Daniel claims there are bars in the City where regular customers order bottles of wine that are not advertised. In fact, these vintages aren’t on sale, but are a code for ordering cocaine from bar staff.

“It is all put on the expense account as a £60 bottle of wine, but what the waiters are selling is a wrap of cocaine,” said Daniel. “These bars are run by criminal syndicates where the food and drink is incidental. They are fronts for drugs.”

Daniel did not disclose the names of the bars he used to frequent, although City-based bar staff have recently been convicted for dealing.

In March Anthony Alexander, a 47-year-old bar manager who sold cocaine alongside cocktails, was jailed for three-and-a-half years after a raid by 30 officers on Bar 9, near Finsbury Square.

At the time the City of London police said: “It is an unusual case for the City of London, but it shows that the drug is out there.”

Daniel believes the City’s macho, risk-taking culture plays a part in addiction. His supervisors weren’t interested in him as a person, he says, only the profit he was generating – and quickly the power and the money proved too much. He even stole money from his parents to buy drugs, despite his huge earnings.

According to Kingdon, City workers often buy their coke from colleagues rather than “standard” drug dealers.

Kingdon is himself a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who says the carnage of his former life led to him becoming a football hooligan. At the age of 26 he ended up in a psychiatric unit.

Since then, Kingdon has turned his life around and has used his experiences to advise others – including spells working with addicts inside Swaleside and Belmarsh prisons – before private clients urged him to set up a City-based business three years ago to cope with the demand.

“There’s no doubt the City has a sizeable and growing addiction problem – and the current market turmoil isn’t helping. But addiction isn’t restricted to a specific industry. It’s an illness that’s part of human nature and pops up everywhere.”

Last year the UK topped the European “league table” for cocaine use and now even outstrips the levels seen in the US, according to the annual report of the EU’s drug agency.

Dr Neil Brener, consultant psychiatrist at the Priory, north London, says he spends two days a week treating patients in the City and at Canary Wharf, partly because of the stresses of the financial crisis.

“There is no question that there is a linkage between alcohol and cocaine,” Brener says. “Studies have shown that the brain’s alcohol receptor and its cocaine receptor are so close together that they are linked. If you are using cocaine it is much more likely you will get addicted to alcohol.”

It is a dangerous cocktail. Daniel warns: “I guarantee that this year at City Christmas parties there will be a woman who gets outrageously drunk on the free booze and then gets sexually assaulted by a colleague on cocaine. Yet if you ask that coke user [when not under the influence] if he would ever sexually assault somebody, he would say never in a million years.

“I was not robbing banks, and I didn’t rape anybody as far as I know – but I did have unprotected sex with women in public toilets because they were sharing my cocaine.”

Both Daniel his fellow City Beacon client, 39-year-old Andrew (also not his real name), admit to arriving at their desks and trading while under the influence from the previous night’s binge.

“I used to start the day with a whisky and a coffee to ‘straighten up’ in the mornings,” Andrew recalls. “I got the idea from other people I saw drinking the same combination, but they were just coming off a night shift.”

The pair are not the only traders to speculate on the markets while on drink or drugs – and the effects, predictably, can be catastrophic.

Last year Stephen Perkins, an oil futures broker who went on a drinking binge before trading more than 7m barrels of oil, was banned from working in the City for at least five years by the Financial Services Authority. His client ended up facing a potential loss of $8m (£4.8m).

Story taken from www.guardian.co.uk

“Being addicted is hellish. When I get up in the morning I need to take my meds so I can function, so I can be a whole person.”

Josh, 50, was first prescribed a benzodiazepine, a tranquiliser, as a hyperactive eight-year-old and has been addicted ever since.

He is among the 1.5m people across the UK the All Party Parliamentary Group on Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction (APPGITA) estimates are addicted to this group of drugs, which are also known as ‘benzos’.

Benzos include diazepam and temazepam, and are commonly prescribed by GPs for a range of conditions such as anxiety and insomnia.

They act by enhancing the effect of a brain chemical transmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which depresses or calms the central nervous system, slowing down mental activity to cause relaxation and sedation.

But some experts say that coming off benzos can be harder than stopping taking heroin.

“I estimate about 20-30% (of people) who are on benzos have problems coming off, and about a third have very distressing symptoms,” says Professor Malcolm Lader of the Institute of Psychiatry.

“The anxiety comes back or sleeplessness comes back and they feel physically ill.

“Then they get bizarre symptoms.

“Essentially, the brain wakes up and then over-wakes, sounds appear louder, lights appear brighter, and they feel unsteady. It’s then they’re in a bad withdrawal state.”

Josh has tried to stop taking the drug many times.

“You sweat, hot and cold sweats, you get diarrhoea and a sense of going mad,” he says.

“It’s horrendous. I’ve never found a cut-off point where I’ve said, ‘It’s better’, because the symptoms persist.

“The longest time I’ve been off benzos was eight weeks.

“I know that sounds like a short time but I can assure you that eight weeks is a really long time to be experiencing those symptoms every day, and they don’t get better.

“And without the support, in the end my body said, enough, I must take a tablet, I can bear this no longer.”

Lack of services

The support Josh longs for is the kind that is already provided in drug addiction centres for users of heroin and cocaine.

“We didn’t wake up and say, ‘Lets get addicted’,” says Josh.

“We got addicted involuntarily and those who have been brave enough to try and address our addiction and have failed, we’re still as stuck in that cycle.

“Please help us. Give us some support. Don’t abandon us now.”

Tranx, a support group based in Oldham, Manchester, run by ex and partially-withdrawn addicts, is unique in bringing together two charities – one with NHS funding – to provide two nurses.

“In Oldham I’ve seen six suicides and 50 attempted suicides,” says Barry Haslam, who runs the support group, and is himself a former benzo addict.

“One weekend there were people wanting to commit suicide on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. It’s just so sad there’s nothing out there.

“We’re volunteers in all this. Where are the services to help these people?” he says.

But as Professor Malcolm Lader, of the Institute of Psychiatry says: “The facilities are simply not available.”

He adds: “The great scandal is addicts are referred to illegal drug addiction centres, and they’re sat next to an illegal drug user who’s been injecting heroin, and of course a housewife who’s been prescribed by her doctor will be very upset by this.”

Anne Milton, England’s public health minister, admitted to BBC Radio 4′s Face the Facts that there there had been some denial of the problem, but added the Department of Health is trying to “get a grip” of it and provide help for those who want to withdraw.

“I’m taking this very seriously, it’s an issue that’s fallen through the cracks, it’s a silent addiction. Not many people know about it.

“We want to make sure training and awareness is raised so GPs can prescribe well, and then we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the right services in place to help them enjoy lives as they should be able to.”

Rise in prescriptions

The potential dangers of withdrawing from benzos have long been known.

The recommended maximum time benzos should be prescribed is four weeks, according to government guidance.

Yet in England, the number of prescriptions issued last year rose by 8% to almost 11.5 million.

A recent report by the National Addiction Centre, Kings College London, which looked at prescribing in England for the 19 years up to 2009, found over a third of prescriptions during this period were for more than eight weeks.

But the Royal College of General Practitioners defends the prescription of these drugs, saying the way GPs have been dealing with patients in recent years is a “prescribing success” story.

Dr Clare Gerada, the organisation’s chair, says that benzodiazepines are effective drugs, adding that most patients can withdraw easily, but that for others, staying on the drug may be a better option.

“Patients that I see, on the whole, do not have problems coming off. Some patients may be on them for life.

“It’s not a good thing, but if you balance the risks and benefits then sometimes the benefits of staying on them far outweigh the risks.”

First contact

Resisting addiction

Amy Winehouse’s struggle with drink and drug addiction was well known, reflected in her music and widely reported in the media.
But how much do we understand addiction?
What causes it and why do some people become addicts while others do not?
Addiction is naturally associated with drink and drugs, but that is not the whole story.
The NHS points out that people can “become addicted to anything, from gambling to chocolate”.
First contactAddiction has to start with exposure, and at some point casual use shifts to dependence.
Dr Gillian Tober, president of the Society for the Study of Addiction, said all addiction has to start with first use.
“It is usually for social reasons – boyfriend, girlfriend, group of friends – it’s usually not pleasant but there is a social reward.”
This then becomes reinforced. “People say their first cigarette is disgusting. Some say never again, some break through and reveal the pharmacological effect.”
Drugs directly feed the reward circuitry of the brain, and even in cases such as gambling the brain can learn to look forward to the thrill.
The brain adapts to the drug, becomes tolerant to it and demands more each time. Physiological dependence – addiction – emerges.
Resisting addictionBut not everyone becomes addicted. A great many people drink, even fewer are heavy drinkers, and even fewer become dependent.
Ilana Crome, a professor of addiction psychiatry at Keele University, said great progress had been made in recent years in understanding why that is.
“We’re beginning to understand the variety of mechanisms in the addictive process, but do we know exactly what causes addiction? We don’t.
“It seems to touch the very essence of behaviour, making it very difficult to research and understand.”
Doctors cannot point to a ‘single cause’ of why addictions develop. There are however some risk factors.
The chair of the Faculty of Addictions at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, puts the risks into three categories.
“One way to describe addiction is to think about it as a disorder with biological, psychological and social aspects.”
He said that research suggests “people who are vulnerable to addiction may be ‘wired’ differently” particularly in the brain’s orbito-frontal cortex.
“This part of the brain is involved in the weighing up of the pros and cons of a particular action, in other words, decision making.”
Psychological trauma, such as through childhood neglect or bereavement, is common, he said.
On the social level he lists living where drugs are easily available or having friends who are addicted as well as poor housing and social deprivation.
However there are clearly many cases which do not fit these risk factors.
Harry Shapiro, from the charity Drug Scope, said addiction was a “complicated phenomenon with a combination of risk factors”.
He said it was “impossible to pick people most likely to become addicted, it’s such an individual thing.”
Prof Crome said: “We can’t predict exactly who will become addicted, but many people who are from a difficult background who might be predicted to develop a problem don’t and that is a fascinating thing.”