Occupational Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

Employee Assistance Programs can be traced back to the late 1930s as a response by the business community in dealing with occupational alcoholism. During the early 1900’s problems with alcohol impaired worker grew dramatically and drinking on the job became a social norm. These issues ranged from significant injuries or death to simple loss of production or productivity. This became a major problem for industrial industry that was seeing a major boom in production at this time. Therefore, alcoholism became the main focuses for these businesses and job-based alcoholism programs became prevalent. By 1939, the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) movement had begun to spread throughout the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. People in “recovery" began to eagerly share their experiences with other workers and the “work rescue” movement began (Trice and Schonbrunn, 1981). Later, formalized programs were developed with a desire to reach a larger number of employees. Led by the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, a nine step plan for implementing an occupational alcoholism program: 1) education of top management, 2) assignment of program responsibility to an existing department, preferably the medical department, 3) selection and training of a coordinator to administer the program, 4) mobilization of internal intervention resources, 5) development of a company-wide policy

President Nixon signed the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Act of 1970 on December 31, 1970 which was also known as the Hughes Act, for Senator Harold Hughes. Hughes was a recovering alcoholic who championed the cause of alcoholism research who establish a Senate Special Sub-committee on Alcoholism and Narcotics. This committee was brought forth to create a comprehensive Federal program to address prevention and treatment of alcohol abuse and