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Major efforts have been taken to eliminate illicit drug use in the Navy, and the programs are working, especially to stop marijuana use. Educational programs, stricter enforcement policies, drug detection dogs, and urinalysis screening for drug use have paid off. Drug abuse is down in the Navy.
I support the Navy’s drug policies to eliminate drug-induced impairment of behavior, judgment, and ability to perform assigned duties. I do not want drug-impaired people treating patients in the hospital where 1 am stationed or working, even if illicit drugs were legalized. However, I do find it bothersome when military personnel focus so closely on urine drug screening that they overlook, forgive, or ignore impaired behavior itself.
Consider, for a moment, the symptoms of drug impairment: declining job performance, reporting to work late (or not at all), financial hardship and irresponsibility, disturbed family relationships, forgetfulness and impaired concentration, problems with legal authorities, and physiological disturbances. Often, when a command observes one of its members with these symptoms, the person is sent for urine screening. If the tests return “positive,” all hell is likely to break loose. The officer or chief petty officer’s career is finished. Junior enlisted members are punished stiffly, told that they too are finished if it happens again, and then kept under a proverbial microscope.
What I find truly amazing, however, is that if that urine screen comes back “negative,” often not much happens to the person whose aberrent behavior started the whole process! The threats to career are less strident, the fines less expensive, reductions in grade more likely to be suspended, and restrictions shorter. At some commands, nothing more than a verbal warning is issued.
Whatever happened to preventing such behavior? If the behavior is so bad if it’s caused by drugs, why is it any better when urinalysis shows it is not drug-related? Drug-screening tests are not foolproof.
Urine screening is designed to answer a simple question: Has the' subject tested used drugs recently? Any lab test answering such a yes/no question can give four possible results: “True positive” means the lab test revealed drug use, and the member really did use drugs. “True negative” means the test said no use, and there really was no use. “False positive” means the test revealed drug use, when in actuality there was no use. Finally, “false negative” means the test said no use, when the member actually did use drugs.
Therefore, behavioral problems leading a command to suspect drug use may be because of drug use, even though a “false negative” lab result indicates no abuse of a controlled substance! Whenever these tests may have “false positive” results, the corollary possibility of “false negative” results exists. Thus, commands should not assume that an aberrant sailor has not used illegal drugs just because the person has a “negative” urine screen. Whether caused by drugs or not, aberrant behavior requires corrective action.
Prevention of such behavior breaks down, however, when officers spend more time reviewing a list of urine screening results rather than working to spot drug abuse behavioral patterns. Reading that list of urine screen results takes only seconds, yet this technique may work against correcting and eliminating impaired behavior. It takes more to keep track of the sailor who is chronically late on Monday mornings, has debts, has a wife seeking “help for her nerves,” or spends much time in the sick bay for minor complaints requiring the prescription of muscle re- laxants or minor tranquilizers.
Truly focusing on drug impairment requires the military leader to get basic education about drug abuse. It takes more time and effort. The officer must be observant of subordinates and be willing to ask some rather intrusive questions. It requires spending the thinking time to analyze what diverse set of symptoms suggest a pattern of drug abuse.
The effective military leader needs to master tactics in his warfare specialty, always remembering, however, that tactics are subservient to strategy. In the war on drug abuse, the strategy is to reduce and eliminate drug-impaired behavior. Urine screening is a useful tactic, but it is only one tactic and not completely effective. Let’s not forget correcting the behavior we wanted to eliminate in the first place—whether or not it is drug induced!
Nobody asked me either, but . . .
By Lieutenant Commander Robert J. Phillips, Chaplain Corps, U. S. Navy
Drunk With Pride?
The other day I encountered a sailor cheerfully swabbing the deck. Above him, a small pipe was trickling water from a barely perceptible leak. I complimented him on his eagerness in swabbing and then asked, “Why don’t you fix the leak?” He paused with a puzzled look. Then, with a slight smile, he returned to work.
The Navy’s approach to alcohol
abuse parallels that of the sailor who merrily swabs while the pipe leaks above him.
Yet, I hasten to add that no branch of the military has done more than the Navy to identify and assist problem
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Proceedings / August 19S5
drinkers. The Alcohol Recovery Center programs are among the best in the nation. The Navy Alcohol Safety Action Program and the Counseling and Assistance Center program continue to do outstanding jobs in alcohol education and referrals of alcoholics. Alcoholics Anonymous groups are welcomed and encouraged at many Navy commands. Through the Navy’s entire chain of command, messages on the importance of moderation in drinking and warnings on the perils of alcohol abuse have been formulated with conviction and packed with punch.
The paradox, however, lies in the double signals the Navy seems to give on drinking. The use of alcohol is a longstanding tradition in the sea services. A division officer may read a command statement to his people in the morning on the pitfalls of overindulgence and have a division party in the afternoon centered around the keg. A commanding officer may breathe “threatenings and slaughters” against sailors convicted of driving while under the influence of alcohol, then sponsor a dining-in where cocktails before the event are followed by several kinds of wine with the event, concluded with adjournment to the bar. Happy hours and alfa strikes are ingrained into the legends and lore of the officer corps.
At such times, one simply does not hear an officer regale his peers with sayings such as, “And after my third Pepsi, I told old So-and-So thus and such.”
The ability to “hold your likker” is a card many young men feel the need to punch to gain peer acceptance or proof of manhood. There is a charisma attached to excessive drinking as symbolized by sayings and signs like the one cheerfully sold at the Navy exchange assuring us no fighter pilot may be considered drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.
The answer to the prevention of alcohol abuse in the Navy lies not in legalized prohibition or in developing a humorless Carrie Nation approach or hair-shirt mentality toward drinking.
The Gordian knot of alcohol abuse may not be untied, but the perception can be challenged that equates being a real sailor or Marine with the (over)indul- gence of alcohol or that the use of alcohol is or must be part of Navy life.
First, we should set limits on the amount of alcohol one may purchase in a week at base package stores and other military outlets. Reasonable limitation on cheap access to excessive
amounts of alcohol will be no impediment to the moderate drinker and will force the problem drinker to review his habit. Of course, a confirmed problem drinker will spend whatever it takes to get alcohol. Even in these situations, the Navy is not obliged to provide a de facto subsidy to the habit by supplying alcohol at bargain-basement prices.
Second, consider having one nonalcoholic social event each year. If simply reading this suggestion makes you wince, all the more reason to consider it! This would not need to be an enforced abstinence. Persons wishing to drink could gather at the bar before and after the gathering, while beverages provided during the event itself would be nonalcoholic. Increasing sensitivity to the pervasive role alcohol plays in the social life of the Navy, such a social gathering would be a symbolic statement of support for our peers developing drinking problems and who find social events difficult because of the abundance of liquor served. It probably would also reduce the cost of the evening. The biggest risk in this suggestion may be in trying to socialize at a gathering where everyone is probably stone-cold sober. Frankly, as someone once observed, some people are hard to rub against socially unless they are well oiled.
Third, ensure a variety of nonalcoholic drinks are readily available at all social functions. I have been to social events where two kegs of beer were “balanced” by a six pack of soda. I also recently attended a Navy dining- out in which the printed program quietly but clearly stated no one would be obliged to drink, a statement backed by the easy accessibility of various nonalcoholic drinks. Creating an atmosphere in which either the use or the nonuse of alcohol are equally legitimate is an important goal in the battle against abuse. This also permits fair and graceful social outlets for those who are problem drinkers or those who for personal or religious reasons choose not to drink but thoroughly enjoy socializing.
Like the sailor whose story began this article, the Navy is doing a positive job in handling the problems of identifying alcohol abusers, swabbing up the leaks. The greater challenge remains, however, of fixing the leak. Some alcohol abuse is inevitable, for reasons beyond the control of the Navy or any other institution. But more steps can be taken to reverse controllable factors, making it easier for a person developing problem-drinking patterns.
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